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Some 260 PKK members killed in Turkey air strikes: report
by Staff Writers
Istanbul (AFP) Aug 1, 2015


Germany urges Turkey not to 'tear down bridges' with Kurds
Berlin (AFP) July 31, 2015 - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday urged Turkey not to abandon the Kurdish peace process despite an upsurge in tension and violence.

Ankara "should not tear down the bridges with the Kurds which have been painstakingly built -- by both sides -- over the past few years," Steinmeier told Bild daily.

"And it must respect the fact that a Kurdish party has been elected to parliament," he said in an interview to be published Saturday, referring to the Peoples' Democratic Party.

"We support all efforts to settle Turkey's conflict with the Kurds peacefully," said Steinmeier, whose country is a NATO partner of Ankara and home to about three million people of Turkish origin.

Turkey has launched military strikes against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants in Turkey and northern Iraq, as well as against Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria, following attacks it blames on the two groups.

The PKK has waged an insurgency for self rule in Turkey's southeast since 1984 that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The parties appeared to be inching towards a peace deal after a 2013 ceasefire, but its prospects are now seen as far off as ever.

Steinmeier warned that "no one can have an interest in Turkey falling back into the cycles of violence of earlier times -- neither the government nor the political representatives of the Kurds."

"Of course, Turkey has a responsibility to protect its citizens against terror. But the last thing the already crisis-ridden Middle East needs is a widening of military confrontation in the region."

Around 260 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have been killed and hundreds more wounded in Ankara's week-long campaign of air strikes against targets of the group inside Turkey and in northern Iraq, the official Anatolia news agency said Saturday.

Without citing its sources, Anatolia said that among those wounded was Nurettin Demirtas, the brother of the leader of pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas.

Ankara has launched a two-pronged "anti-terror" offensive against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants after a wave of attacks inside the country. But so far the bombardments have focused far more on the Kurdish rebels.

In the latest air strikes on Friday, 28 Turkish F-16s destroyed 65 targets of the PKK including shelters and arms depots, it said.

The heaviest air strikes were on Thursday, when 80 Turkish aircraft hit 100 targets of the PKK, Anatolia said.

"Up until now 260 terrorists have been rendered ineffective (killed) and 380-400 terrorists have been identified as injured, including the brother of Selahattin Demirtas, Nurettin Demirtas," Anatolia said. The air strikes are expected to continue, it added.

The Turkish government has so far refused to officially disclose casualty figures, with one official telling AFP that "this is not a soccer game".

But the sheer numbers of planes involved in the daily strikes on the PKK targets in northern Iraq has given an idea of the scale of the operation and raised concern in some Western capitals.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday urged Turkey not to "tear down the bridges" that had been built over the last years with its Kurdish minority.

The PKK's insurgency for greater rights and powers for Turkey's Kurdish minority, begun more than 30 years ago, has left tens of thousands dead. The current violence has shattered a ceasefire declared in 2013.

Selahattin Demirtas openly acknowledges that his elder brother Nurettin went to the Kandil Mountain in northern Iraq where the PKK's military headquarters are based.

"I don't even know if he's dead or alive," Selahattin Demirtas told AFP in an interview earlier this week.

Iraqi Kurdistan urges Turkey to halt PKK bombardment
Washington (AFP) July 31, 2015 - Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region urged Turkey on Friday to halt its air strikes against PKK guerrilla bases on its territory and called for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

On a visit to Washington, Kurdistan's head of foreign relations, Falah Mustafa, criticized the PKK for abandoning its ceasefire but said bombarding them was not the answer.

"Of course we do not want our country to be bombarded and we don't believe it will help solve this situation," he told reporters.

"It will only escalate the tension," he warned. "Therefore we urge both sides to go back to the ceasefire."

"Yes, we do not agree with the actions of the PKK recently, but that doesn't mean that the response should be through bombardment."

"We believe that there is no military solution to such kind of problems. The best way forward would be peace and talks."

Mustafa said the Kurdistan Regional Government was already struggling to assist refugees fleeing the so-called Islamic State group, and that new fighting between Turkey and the PKK would not help.

He welcomed Turkey's decision to cooperate more closely with the US-led coalition fighting the IS jihadists, but said its conflict with the PKK guerrillas was another matter.

And he admitted Turkey had not informed his government about the latest cross-border strikes against PKK bases on Iraqi Kurdish territory until after they had begun.


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