(front page)
Turkish gov’t opens base
to US, attacks Kurd fighters
 

BY BRIAN WILLIAMS  
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is using a suicide bombing attack by Islamic State to launch an assault on fighters for Kurdish rights in Turkey and Iraq, and to deepen Turkish involvement in the civil war in Syria.

Ankara agreed July 23 to allow U.S. forces to use the strategically located Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey to conduct bombing raids against Islamic State forces.

The deal includes setting up a buffer zone in northern Syria by driving Islamic State combatants from a stretch of the border. The Turkish rulers see this as a way to block any further territorial advances by Kurdish fighters in Syria.

Washington, while offering words of caution, backs Ankara’s stepped-up offensive against the Kurdish fighters.

A July 20 suicide bombing attack by Islamic State in Surac, Turkey, a majority Kurdish city located six miles from Kobani, Syria, killed at least 32 people and wounded more than 100. They were part of a meeting of some 300 members of the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations who were planning to go to Kobani to help rebuild it from the devastation caused by Islamic State before being driven out by Kurdish forces in January. “We defended it together and we will rebuild it together,” read one of the banners at the scene.

On July 24 Turkish fighter jets carried out their first-ever attacks on Islamic State in Syria. At the same time they began bombing camps of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq for the first time in years. The Financial Times reported that Turkish warplanes hit three Islamic State targets in Syria that day while 75 planes have since hit 48 PKK targets in northern Iraq.

The airstrikes in Iraq targeted warehouses and living quarters, damaging houses of civilians and wounding at least several children, according to a statement by the People’s Defense Forces, the military wing of the PKK. “The cease-fire has lost its meaning,” the organization said.

The PKK fought a three-decade guerrilla war for rights and autonomy against the Turkish government until a cease-fire was agreed to in 2013. Both Ankara and Washington call it a terrorist organization.

‘Anti-terror’ raids in Turkey

Coinciding with the bombings in Iraq, Turkish police launched “anti-terror” raids July 24-25 in 22 provinces, arresting some supporters of Islamic State and many more fighters for Kurdish rights. More than 1,000 people were detained, including members of the PKK, its youth affiliate and the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the pro-Kurdish party that won 13 percent of the vote in the recent elections and entered parliament for the first time.

In Istanbul, some 5,000 cops were deployed at 140 locations in 26 districts. Helicopters and special operation forces backed the raids, reported Today’s Zaman. Kurds and others rallied in a number of cities in Turkey and beyond to protest these attacks. In the capital, Ankara, about 1,000 demonstrated July 25 despite police use of gas and water cannon to disperse the crowd. The government banned a march called for the next day in Istanbul, but thousands showed up anyway, displaying signs supporting those killed in Surac. Another 1,500 marched in Paris in support of the Kurds.

“Turkey is playing a double game. It is trying to convince international media that it’s hitting Daesh, but the reality is that it’s bombing Kurds over there in northern Iraq,” Kurdish doctor Saleh Mustapha, one of the protesters, told Reuters. Daesh is an Arabic name for Islamic State.

Erdogan said July 28, “It is not possible for us to continue the peace process,” and urged parliament to strip politicians with links to “terrorist groups” of their immunity from prosecution.

Buffer zone targets Kurdish fighters

From the victories won in Kobani in January and in the strategic border town of Tel Abyad in June to recent gains against Islamic State in Hasakah, in northeastern Syria, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) has proven that it’s the most effective fighting force on the ground against IS. They now control about two-thirds of Syria’s 560-mile border with Turkey.

In response, Erdogan made clear in a June 26 speech that his government will “never allow” the Kurds to establish a state “in the north of Syria.”

The Kurds’ fighting capacity and high morale have attracted Arabs, Christians and a faction of the Free Syrian Army, formed to fight the dictatorial rule of President Bashar al-Assad, to join them. “Wherever the Syrian people can be found, the YPG will be,” said Ilham Ahmed, a member of the Executive Council of the Democratic Society Movement, which is affiliated with the PKK, according to mmediaNow. “It has the right to be in Aleppo, Damascus, Deir Ezzor, Raqqa, and on all of Syria’s geography.”

The buffer zone Turkish officials project setting up is aimed at halting further advances by YPG-led forces. The zone, about 55 miles wide and 25 miles deep, would run from the east of the Kurdish city of Azaz to Jarablus and southward to the town of al-Bab, near Aleppo.

The plan involves driving IS forces out of this area through joint airstrikes by Ankara and Washington. Syrian refugees currently in Turkey would then be moved there by Turkish authorities.

On July 24 the Turkish army, using heavy tank fire, shelled positions held by YPG-led forces in the village of Zormikhar, near Islamic State-controlled Jarablus, injuring four fighters and several local villagers, reported YPG General Command. Another attack occurred two days later.

“Rather than shelling the positions of ISIS’s mercenaries, the Turkish army is shelling our positions,” a YPG statement said.

Meanwhile, Assad acknowledged July 26 that the Syrian army has had to “let go” of many areas and now controls less than half of the country. “There is a shortage in manpower” due to desertions and defections, he said in a televised speech.

The Washington Post reported that Iranian and Russian officials, Assad’s key allies, have pressured him to concentrate on holding “a strategic corridor that stretches from Damascus, runs along the border with Lebanon and extends to the western costal areas of the country.”