Turkey’s ‘war on terror’ lumps all enemies together
Turkey has been hit by a wave of attacks over the past year that have claimed the lives of more than 260 people, mainly in the capital Ankara and the country’s biggest city Istanbul.
The military is also waging an offensive against Kurdish rebels in the southeast of the country that has left hundreds dead on both sides since the conflict reignited last year.
Islamic State
Islamic State jihadists have been blamed for some of the bloodiest assaults in Turkey, including an October 2015 attack on a pro-Kurdish peace rally in Ankara that killed 103 people in the worst attack in Turkey’s modern history.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Wednesday that the group was probably behind the carnage at Istanbul Atatürk Airport, which killed 41 people including foreigners and wounded more than 200.
Turkey was initially criticised by its Nato allies for not doing enough to crack down on Islamic State as its fighters seized large swaths of neighbouring Iraq and Syria in 2014.
But after a bombing blamed on the jihadists in the town of Suruç near the Syrian border in July last year, Turkey swiftly went on the offensive, hitting Islamic State targets in Syria as well as Kurdish militants.
It has incorporated both campaigns into a broad “war on terror”, even though the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the jihadists are opposed to each other, and Kurdish fighters are at the forefront of the battle against Islamic State in Syria.
Over the past year, Turkey has rounded up scores of suspected Islamic State members, which is thought to have set up sleeper cells in many areas.
In the face of sustained pressure from the United States, Turkey launched its first air strikes on Syria as part of the US-led coalition in August last year, and authorised the US to use its strategic air base at Incirlik.
Islamic State has claimed attacks targeting Syrian activists in Turkey but none of the major bombings.
Kurdistan Workers’ Party
The PKK and the Turkish military have been locked in a year of deadly tit-for-tat violence that shattered a fragile March 2013 truce.
The Kurdish militant group, out- lawed by Turkey and its Western allies, has waged an armed campaign against Ankara for three decades that has killed 45 000 people, mainly in the Kurdish-dominated southeast.
PKK fighters have carried out attacks against police and the military since the collapse of the truce triggered by the Suruç bombing.
It has not claimed any of the attacks over the past year in Istanbul and Ankara. But the government has vowed no let-up in its campaign to wipe the rebels from urban centres, often imposing punishing curfews on towns and villages and bombarding hideouts in northern Iraq.
The PKK, which has its main command base across the border in Iraq, has narrowed its demands from outright independence to autonomy as well as cultural and language rights.
In 2012, Turkish intelligence officials resumed talks aimed at ending the conflict, holding several meetings with jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in his remote island prison cell. In March the following year, Öcalan called on his fighters to lay down their arms and withdraw to their Iraq bases and the fragile ceasefire held until mid-2015.
The PKK is believed to have between 3 000 and 5 000 guerrillas.
Kurdistan Freedom Falcons
The shadowy Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) has claimed a string of bombings in Istanbul and Ankara.
The TAK, seen as a PKK splinter group, has said its actions are in revenge for Turkish army operations in the southeast.
It claimed an attack on a police vehicle in Istanbul in June that killed 11 people, as well as bombings in Ankara in February and March that left a total of 63 people dead.
The group claimed to have shelled Istanbul’s second international airport, Sabiha Gökçen, in December.
Although little is known about the group, analysts consider its aims and methods to be more radical than those of the PKK. — AFP