clash Archives

One Turkish soldier killed in clashes with Kurdish militants: army

March 23, 2017 by administrator

HAKKARI, Turkey’s Kurdish region,— One Turkish soldier was killed and four were wounded in an armed attack by Kurdish militants in the southeastern province of Hakkari in Turkish Kurdistan, the Turkish military said on Thursday.

Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast has been ravaged by violence, as the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has targeted security forces since abandoning a 2-1/2-year ceasefire in July 2015.

In a statement released on Thursday, the military said the four wounded soldiers were not in critical condition.

Since July 2015, Turkey initiated a controversial military campaign against the PKK in the country’s southeastern Kurdish region after Ankara ended a two-year ceasefire agreement. Since the beginning of the campaign, Ankara has imposed several round-the-clock curfews, preventing civilians from fleeing regions where the military operations are being conducted.

Observers say the crackdown has taken a heavy toll on the Kurdish civilian population and accuse Turkey of using collective punishment against the minority. Activists have accused the security forces of causing huge destruction to urban centres and killing Kurdish civilians.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the resulting conflict since then.

A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974, and has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.

U.S. forces look on as Turks, Kurds clash in north Syria

March 4, 2017 by administrator

MANBIJ, Syria— US soldiers aboard Humvee armoured vehicles have been watching from a distance as two of their allies, Turkish-backed forces and a Kurdish-led alliance, battle it out for control of Manbij in Syrian Kurdistan (northern Syria).

An AFP correspondent on Friday saw the American soldiers on patrol north of the city of Manbij, just miles from the fierce clashes taking place further west.

Turkish forces and allied Syrian rebels have tried since Wednesday to capture Manbij, a former bastion of the Islamic State group, now under the control of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance.

The SDF is dominated by fighters known as the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) which Ankara brands as “terrorists”.

On August 24, 2016, Turkey, along with the Free Syrian Army, launched an incursion into northern Syria, east of Afrin canton to stop the US-backed Kurdish YPG forces from extending areas under their control and connecting Syrian Kurdistan’s Kobani and Hasaka in the east with Afrin canton in the west.

Turkey-backed forces also also focused on cleaning the area in northern Syria from the Islamic State (IS) and have captured a number of towns from IS jihadists, including Al-Bab near the Turkish border.

Turkey fears the creation of an autonomous Kurdish region in Syrian Kurdistan — similar to the Kurdish region in Iraqi Kurdistan — would spur the separatist ambitions of Turkey’s own Kurds.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week said the next target would be Manbij, in Aleppo province.

And on Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu threatened to strike the YPG unless they pull out of the northern city.

The SDF is dominated by fighters known as the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) which Ankara brands as “terrorists”.

Turkey fears the creation of an autonomous Kurdish region in Syrian Kurdistan — similar to the Kurdish region in Iraqi Kurdistan — would spur the separatist ambitions of Turkey’s own Kurds.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week said the next target would be Manbij, in Aleppo province.

And on Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu threatened to strike the YPG unless they pull out of the northern city.

But Votel’s spokesman, Colonel John Thomas, said that, while the general supported a peaceful transition of Manbij to a “thriving city”, he did not say if the US would stop any Turkish move towards it.

The United States has special operations forces advising the SDF on the ground in Syria, but no combat units.

Sherfan Darwish, spokesman of the Manbij Military Council which is part of the SDF, tried to play down the absence of US forces in Manbij.

“The coalition is on patrol along the Sarjur river (north of Manbij) and there is coordination with the coalition at the highest level,” Darwish told AFP.

“All our fighters in Manbij were trained by the Americans,” he added.

Syrian Kurdistan’s ruling PYD has established three autonomous zones, or Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016 Syria’s Kurds declared a federal region in Syrian Kurdistan. On Dec. 30, 2016 Syrian Kurds approved a blueprint for a system of federal government in Syrian Kurdistan, reaffirming their plans for autonomy in areas they have controlled during the civil war.

Source: http://ekurd.net/us-forces-turks-kurds-syria-2017-03-04

Syria: Government soldiers, Turkish forces clash in Syria forces

February 10, 2017 by administrator

A monitoring group says Syrian government soldiers and Turkish forces have clashed near Syria’s border with Turkey, in a first such confrontation since Turkish forces entered Syrian territory without permission from Damascus.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday that clashes had erupted between the Syrian soldiers and their allies on the one side and the troops enlisted with Operation Euphrates Shield — the code name for Turkey’s military operation in Syria — on the other in the northwest of the city of al-Bab in Aleppo Province.

The Syrian military has started a determined push to liberate the city from the Takfiri terrorist group of Daesh and just yesterday flushed the terrorists out of two villages on the city’s southwestern edge.

Mohammad Abdullah, a political figure with Turkey-backed militant group known as the Free Syrian Army, said the recent clashes took place after the Turkish troops entered the city. He said the exchange of fire with Syrian soldiers had injured five Turkish forces and destroyed two of their armored vehicles.

Syrian sources, meanwhile, said the army had surrounded town of the Tadif, where Daesh has one of its biggest concentrations to the south of al-Bab.

The situation is tense in the province, whose capital city of the same name was liberated from the control of Takfiri terrorists by the Syrian military last December.

On Thursday, three Turkish forces were mistakenly slain during airstrikes by Russian fighter planes.

Turkey began a major military intervention in Syria in August last year, sending tanks and warplanes across the border in a purported mission to keep away Daesh as well as Kurdish armed groups.

Damascus has denounced the Turkish incursion as a breach of its sovereignty.

Turkish police, mourners clash near Ankara blasts site

October 11, 2015 by administrator

Police prevent mourners from approaching the site of recent deadly explosions in Ankara, Turkey, October 11, 2015. ©AP

Clashes have erupted in the Turkish capital city of Ankara after police prevented pro-Kurdish politicians and other mourners from laying carnations at the site of the recent deadly blasts.

Thousands of people filled Sihhiye Square, located close to the site of the bombings in central Ankara, to remember the victims of the attacks, with some of them shouting anti-government slogans.

Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag Senoglu, co-leaders of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), were held back by police as they tried to approach the site of the incident. Police said that investigators were still working at the explosions’ site.

However, some 70 mourners were eventually allowed to enter the cordoned-off area to pay respect to the victims. They later marched on Sihhiye Square.

On Saturday, twin explosions targeted activists who had convened outside Ankara’s main train station for a peace rally organized by leftist and pro-Kurdish opposition groups. Ankara has said at least 95 people were killed and 246 wounded in the attacks.

Following the blasts, Demirtas said the attack was a repeat of the bombing of an HDP rally in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir ahead of the June 7 elections and a July 20 bombing blamed on the Daesh Takfiri terrorists in the town of Suruc. He also criticized the Turkish government for its security and intelligence failure to prevent the attacks.

The Turkish government has declared three days of national mourning over the fatal Ankara blasts, with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu saying that there were “strong signs” that the attacks were carried out by two bombers who blew themselves up.

On Saturday night, thousands of people also held a demonstration in the Turkish city of Istanbul in protest against the explosions.

Turkey: 36 killed as Turkish forces clash with PKK militants

September 25, 2015 by administrator

Thirty six people have been killed in two separate attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants against Turkey’s armed forces, the Turkish military says.

The raids in the southeastern Sirnak Province took place on Thursday night and Friday, killing two Turkish soldiers and wounding nine others, the General Staff announced in a statement on Friday.

The wounded soldiers were not in life-threatening conditions and were receiving care at the Sirnak Military Hospital.

The military also said that 34 terrorists were “rendered ineffective” in retaliatory operations that followed the attacks.

The PKK casualties are expected to increase as security operations backed by Turkish fighter jets are still ongoing, the statement added.

Since July, a deadly conflict has been going on between the PKK and Turkish security forces. The clashes began when Turkey set off its aerial campaign against purported Daesh (ISIL) targets in Syria as well as PKK positions in Turkey and Iraq.

Ankara’s military campaign against the PKK voided a shaky ceasefire that had been declared in 2013.

Turkey: Rival groups clash at Ankara University, more than 40 detained

February 27, 2015 by administrator

rival student groups at Ankara University on Thursday. (Photo: DHA)

A clash broke out between rival student groups at ankara university‘s Faculty of Language, History and Geography on Thursday, with around 46 students detained.

Students who were injured by sticks and stones thrown during the fighting were taken to nearby hospitals by ambulance.

One man, reportedly a security guard, was shot by his gun during the tumult; however, it is not known whether he mistakenly shot himself or if the gun was fired by someone else.

Teams from Ankara Police Department’s homicide unit, counterterrorism bureau and crime scene investigation department have been dispatched to the university. Dozens of police officers have also been assigned to the campus and have put security measures in place.

The incident comes on the heels of the killing of a nationalist student at another university in a similar clash. Fırat Yılmaz Çakıroğlu was killed during a fight between supporters of the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) at İzmir-based Ege University last week.

Turkey: Mahçupyan and Karaman: A Davutoğlu-Erdoğan clash?

December 6, 2014 by administrator

By İHSAN YILMAZ

ihsan.yilmaz@todayszaman.com

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s chief adviser Etyen Mahçupyan repeatedly confessed that the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) involvement in corruption is real and that half of all AKP voters believe the AKP is corrupt. An AKP deputy and Erdoğan’s biggest mouthpiece, Mehmet Metiner, who claimed to have watched CCTV recording of hundreds of naked men torturing a headscarved woman in Kabataş (a lie Erdoğan used to mobilize his voters against the Gezi protesters), challenged and even subtly threatened Mahçupyan. And yet Mahçupyan insisted on his views. Then Erdoğan’s chief fatwa-giver, professor of Islamic law Hayrettin Karaman started writing in his pro-Erdoğan newspaper Yeni Şafak that the corruption is a fact and that rulers who live in luxury while the poor suffer are sinners.

Both Mahçupyan and Karaman are crucial figures since they are both fatwa-givers of Erdoğan’s authoritarianism and corrupt regime. Karaman is the Islamist fatwa-giver who distorts Islam to produce favorable fatwas, legitimizing the corrupt and illegal practices of the Islamist politicians and businessmen. This includes taking out loans from banks with interest, donating huge amounts of money to charities of politicians in return for favorable public tenders and contracts and even getting people killed for the benefit of the state.

As Ali Bulaç wrote, Erdoğan started getting these fatwas after becoming mayor of İstanbul in 1994. The justification is an Islamically perverted one. They argue that since Turkey is in the Dar al-Harb (an un-Islamic country, in the abode of war) and since what Islamists are doing is jihad, they can bend Islamic rules out of necessity and also break the official law. But so few people knew all this.

After the Dec. 17 corruption operations, Karaman started writing about these issues openly. I think he was trying to convince Erdoğan’s religious voters that “yes, Erdoğan did engage in corruption, but it was for dawah, jihad, for the Islamist cause, not for himself.” I do not know why but Karaman also wrote that for the sake of the state, individuals can be sacrificed and he mentioned Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu, who was killed in a very dubious helicopter accident, as an example. His Yeni Şafak piece is one of the greatest enigmas of the Erdoğan era.

While Karaman has been trying to persuade Erdoğan’s religious voters, Mahçupyan has been doing exactly the same thing for secular, liberal, leftists circles. The AKP would never send Karaman to the Western capitals to defend itself and it would not publish many of Karaman’s pieces in its English mouthpieces, such as Daily Sabah and Yeni Şafak English, but it would frequently ask Mahçupyan and Osman Can to visit the Western capitals to legitimize the authoritarianism of the AKP. Mahçupyan, a renowned and skillful intellectual, is the secular legitimizer of the Erdoğan regime.

Nevertheless, despite their efforts, both Karaman and Mahçupyan seem to be siding with Davutoğlu against Erdoğan. As I have written here before, despite his dreams of restoration (whatever that means), his Ottoman nostalgia, his intense lectures about the past, his zigzags in foreign policy, Davutoğlu is not a corrupt politician. He may eventually be engulfed by the corrupt elite of the AKP, but at the moment he speaks against corruption, nepotism, etc. He continuously mentions meritocracy. He is a relative of the Ülker family, whose business conglomerate is disliked by Erdoğan and had to invest more than $3 billion in the UK since Erdoğan did not permit it to invest in Turkey. It is known that Davutoğlu was not Erdoğan’s first choice for the job of prime minister, but Erdoğan had to chose him to balance Abdullah Gül’s influence on the AKP.

It is not possible in the short run since Erdoğan is still very popular, but Davutoğlu may be thinking of gradually isolating Erdoğan in the presidential palace, thinking that the Erdoğan dynasty is becoming a liability and a burden for the AKP. I know that there are now may people in the AKP ranks who think in that way and who are very upset with the fact that the AKP and the AKP media have become a family business of the Erdoğans. But I do not know if Davutoğlu thinks similarly or not. However, looking at Karaman and Mahçupyan and reading several columns in pro-AKP newspapers that concede corruption is taking place, I am inclined to think that they get their power indirectly from Davutoğlu.

All in all, this may be the wishful thinking of a naive columnist who is unaware of how power intoxicates people.

Turkey police clash with Kurds at border

October 29, 2014 by administrator

Turkish police have clashed with people gathering at a border gate to welcome Iraqi Kurdish fighters bound for the flashpoint Syrian town of Kobani to fight the ISIL terrorists.

Late on Tuesday, Turkish security forces fired teargas to disperse people gathering at Turkish-Iraqi border crossing of Habur, where a military convoy of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government forces, known as Peshmerga, should bypass to enter Syria.

The clashes occurred despite the fact that Ankara said it would allow the Peshmerga to enter Kobani through the Turkish border.

More than 70 Peshmerga forces have just flown into Turkey and will soon be crossing the border and heading to Kobani — the town besieged by militants with the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group.

The Takfiri group launched its offensive on Kobani and nearby Syrian villages in mid-September. More than 800 people have been killed on both sides. The militants captured dozens of Kurdish villages around Kobani and control parts of the town.

Other Kurdish fighters are heading to Turkey via land before their deployment. Syrian Kurds had for long been appealing to fellow Kurds in Iraq to send reinforcements.

Analysts say Ankara, having already won the US green light, plans to let the terrorists seize the Kurdish town of Kobani before sending tanks and troops to fight them in a bid to capture and possibility annex the Syrian territory.

Kurds clash with Turkish security forces on Syria border

October 5, 2014 by administrator

Turkish Kurds and refugees from fighting in Syria have clashed with Turkish security forces on the border between the two countries.

Troops used tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters angry at the situation in Syria, where IS militants are closing in on the town of Kobane.

Meanwhile unconfirmed reports say at least 35 militants were killed in US-led air strikes over northern Syria.

They come amid a Turkish-US row over alleged support for Syrian militants.

On Friday US Vice-President Joe Biden criticised Turkey and US allies in the Arab world for supporting Sunni militant groups such as Islamic State, prompting a sharp response from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“If Mr Biden used such language, that would make him a man of the past for me,” he told a news conference in Istanbul.

“No-one can accuse Turkey of having supported any terrorist organisation in Syria, including IS.”

Turkish security forces used tear gas and water cannon to break up the protests

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Several dead in a clash between Armenians and Azerbaijanis

August 1, 2014 by administrator

Baku, August 1, 2014 (AFP) – A clash between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces killed several people in the border area, close to the Nagorno-Karabakh fought over by the two countries for decades, announced Friday the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense. “Groups of diversion from Armenia attempted to cross the front line” in the night of Thursday to Friday, the ministry said in a statement.

“Following an intense firefight Armenian soldiers were forced back, suffering losses. The Azerbaijani army also suffered losses, “he said, without elaborating. According to the news agency APA azerbaïjdanaise, known for its close links with the government, eight Azerbaijani soldiers were killed in the clash. The Ministry of Defence has neither confirmed nor denied that figure. For their part, the Armenian forces said they killed 14 Azerbaijani soldiers during the attachment, accusing them of attempting to illegally cross the border, and ensuring not have suffered any loss on their side.

In addition, two Azerbaijani soldiers were killed Thursday in another shootout in the border area between Azerbaijan and Armenia, as the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense. The clashes are increasing in recent months around Nagorno-Karabakh, both sides accusing each other of launching attacks that have killed more than 14 soldiers this year before this new confrontation.

Last year, nearly 20 soldiers on both sides had been killed during clashes at the border.

Attached to Azerbaijan during the Soviet era, this separatist region Armenian majority was the issue of a war that has 30,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of refugees between 1988 and 1994. A cease-fire was signed in 1994, but Baku and Yerevan are unable to agree on the status of the region, which remains a source of tension in the South Caucasus, a strategic area between Iran, Russia and Turkey.