TerrorismPKK escalates terror campaign in Turkey

Seven people, including three soldiers, were killed Tuesday in an explosion that struck a military truck as it traveled along a road in Turkey’s southeastern Tunceli province. Turkish state TV channel TRT reported the deaths and several injuries, and blamed the attack on terrorists.

CNN reports that there may be more casualties, as many ambulances were sent to the scene in central Tunceli.

An official with the Tunceli governor’s office told CNN that the office was not yet able to confirm the number of dead or injured.

No group claimed responsibility for the blast, but suspicion within Turkey is likely to fall on Kurdish militants, especially the militant Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. Tunceli province is a predominantly Kurdish region where frequent clashes have occurred between the Turkish military and PKK fighters.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report last week that Turkey’s long-simmering war with the Kurdish insurgency had escalated, raising casualties to a level not seen in more than a decade.

ICG notes that in the last fourteen months, more than 700 people have been killed in attacks by the PKK on Turkish military and civilians, and in Turkish retaliatory attacks against the organization.

Turkey, the United States, and the European Union have formally labeled the PKK a terrorist organization.

The PKK was created in the early 1970s to promote the cause of Kurdish independence. The organization later modified its declaratory posture, claiming it is now seeking cultural autonomy for the Kurds within the Turkish state. The Kurds are Turkey’s largest ethnic minority, making up about 20 percent of the population.

Until 1984, and since 1999, the PKK campaign against Turkey was mostly a low-intensity guerilla war. The fifteen years between 1984 and 1999, however, saw an intense military confrontation between the PKK and the Turkish military, in which more than 40,000 Turks were killed, with the PKK conducting a concerted campaign to weaken the Turkish state by killing politicians, teachers, tax collectors, policemen, and city and town leaders.

The Syrian connection
The PKK received a major boost in the last six months from developments inside Syria. In order to concentrate on suppressing the Sunni majority, the Assad regime has tacitly given the Kurdish region in northeast Syria a degree of autonomy it had never enjoyed. The regime calculated that the Kurds, now enjoying a self-government, would not join the anti-Assad insurgency. The Syrian government was right, and the Kurds’ refusal to join the insurgency allowed the Syrian military to pull its forces out of the Kurdish region, sending them to augment forces battling rebels in Sunni-dominated regions and cities.

The Syrian government was aware that reducing the Syrian military presence in the Syria’s Kurdish region would have another result: PKK fighters, which until last spring were operating from the autonomous Kurdish areas in north Iraq, would now have additional areas along the Turkish border where they could train, stock arms, and from which they could launch operations inside Turkey.

Until the start of the anti-Assad rebellion, the Syrian military prevented the PKK from establishing itself in Syria, but Turkey’s increasingly hostile attitude toward the Syrian regime has changed all that. Turkey has taken a leadership position in the effort to oust Assad and his clan, and the Syrian regime, not without some Schadenfreude, appears not to mind too much if Syrian territory is now being used by forces aiming to make the life of the Turkish government and people uncomfortable.