Kurds Protest against Turkish Strikes on PKK
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Turkey's strike against ISIL and PKK camps in northern Iraq has provoked protests by Kurds who accuse President Tayyip Erdogan of trying to use the campaign against ISIL as an excuse to crack down on Kurds.
Fighter planes carried out strikes against camps of the outlawed PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) in northern Iraq.
At the same time, Turkish ground troops attacked PKK and ISIL targets in northern Syria.
The strike against Kurdish militants provoked a furious reaction with protests erupting in Turkey and in other cities around Europe, according to a repost by Sky News on Sunday.
It led the PKK, which has been fighting Turkey for autonomy since 1984 and is considered a terrorist organization by Ankara, to claim a ceasefire that has been in place since 2013 was meaningless.
The PKK said on its website: "The truce has no meaning anymore after these intense air strikes by the occupant Turkish army."
Until the ceasefire, the PKK waged a violent insurgency against the Turkish Government in order to achieve an independent state. An estimated 45,000 people died in the years after the conflict started in 1984.
An offshoot of the PKK carried out a series of bombings of Turkish holiday resorts in 2006 that left four tourists dead and dozens injured.
The latest action comes after Turkey launched its first airborne attack against terrorist group ISIL inside Syria on Friday.
It has also promised to allow the US to use its air bases.
Strikes across its borders have been accompanied by a domestic police crackdown, with nearly 600 suspected members of ISIL and the PKK being rounded up in raids across the country.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has pledged to fight all "terrorist groups" equally.
The escalation in military activity by Turkey comes after a suspected ISIL suicide bomber killed 32 people, some of them Kurds, in the border town of Suruc.
This triggered violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast, with the PKK killing two police officers, claiming it was retaliation for the suicide attack.
Many Kurds and opposition supporters accuse the regime of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan of secretly backing ISIL against Kurdish fighters in Syria, a charge strongly denied by the government in Ankara.
Kurdish forces based in Iraq and Syria are one of the main ground forces fighting ISIL militants.
Kurds in the Turkish capital of Istanbul and the Iraqi city of Irbil took to the streets to protest against the Turkish attacks.
In Irbil, protesters walking towards the Turkish consulate where they were met with riot police.
One demonstrator Rabia Yassin accused Turkey's ruling party of "supporting the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant group by attacking the Kurdish people".
She said: "We saw that with the massacre of Kobani and after that with the massacre of Persus (Suruc). And last night they started to bomb all the villages in the region of our units."
Turkey has said clearing ISIL militants from northern Syria will create "safe zones" for refugees.
