'We Want a Massacre': Turkish-Kurdish Tensions Escalate as Election Looms

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/turkish-kurdish-violence-edges-turkey-closer-to-civil-war-a-1053044.html



Earlier this summer, tit-for-tat violence between the Turkish government and the country's Kurdish minority began undermining years of peace negotiations. With clashes now intensify, Turkey is in danger of descending into outright civil war.

'We Want a Massacre': Turkish-Kurdish Tensions Escalate as Election Looms
By Hasnain Kazim
September 17, 2015 – 04:46 PM

~snip~

Return of Violence

It's not just the deaths in the Cagirgas household that seem to be repeating themselves. Between 1984 and 2013, 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, died in Turkey's bloody civil war. Now both sides are ramping things up once again, with attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), assaults by the Turkish army, a state of emergency, restrictions on news coverage and a general climate of fear and violence.

There are two reasons for the current escalation. The first is the loss by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) of its absolute majority in recent parliamentary elections. Then, on July 20, a suicide bomber blew himself up in Suruc, near the Syrian border. The attack, attributed to the Islamic State (IS), killed 32 people, overwhelmingly young, pro-Kurdish activists.

Shortly thereafter, members of the banned PKK killed two police officers in Ceylanpinar, 200 kilometers (124 miles) to the east, in "retaliation for the massacre in Suruc." Two days later, Turkish fighter jets began flying air raids, officially against "all terrorists who are our enemies," as the government put it. As it turns out, the air force did fly a few raids against Islamic State in northern Syria --but it flew considerably more against PKK positions in northern Iraq.

Since then, the war between the Turkish state and the PKK has flared up again, and nothing remains of the peace process that took place over the past two years. Over 100 soldiers and police officers have been killed in attacks; the PKK described these murders, conducted through remotely detonated bombs, as "self-defense." And at the same time, according to Erdogan, 2,000 PKK fighters have since been killed by Turkish security forces, along with a number of civilians. The situation is so heated that conciliatory voices are being ignored. Those who began the violence haven't played a role in the situation in a while -- and now there is little more than provocations and recriminations from both sides.

[bemildred]

1. Erdogan is starting to look a bit demented. nt

[MisterP]

2. we'll attack him, then the Kurds, then the post-IS we supported in Turkey,

then the PMOI death cult we unleashed to stop all this, then Iran (as Clinton promised)