Turkey strikes in Syria and Iraq a week after bombing in Istanbul
Turkey has launched air strikes over northern regions of Syria and Iraq targeting Kurdish groups that Ankara holds responsible for last week’s bomb attack in Istanbul.
Warplanes attacked bases of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and the Syrian People’s Protection Units, or YPG, the ministry said in a statement, which was accompanied by images of F-16 jets taking off and footage of a strike from an aerial drone.
The Turkish Defence Ministry cited Turkey’s right to self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter in launching an operation it called Claw-sword late on Saturday night. It said it was targeting areas “used as a base by terrorists in their attacks on our country”.
Turkey said it was seeking to prevent attacks, secure its southern border and “destroy terrorism at its source”.
The air strikes came after a bomb rocked a bustling avenue in the heart of Istanbul on November 13, killing six people and wounding over 80 others.
Turkish authorities blamed the attack on the PKK and its Syrian affiliate the YPG. The Kurdish militant groups have, however, denied involvement.
Ankara and Washington both consider the PKK a terror group, but disagree on the status of the YPG. Under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the YPG has been allied with the US in the fight against the so-called Islamic State group in Syria.
The PKK has fought an armed insurgency in Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since then.
The DHA news agency reported that F-16s took off from airfields in Malatya and Diyarbakir in southern Turkey while drones were launched from Batman.
Defence Minister Hulusi Akar oversaw the air strikes from an operations centre and congratulated pilots and ground staff. “Our aim is to ensure the security of our 85 million citizens and our borders and to retaliate for any treacherous attack on our country,” he said, according to a ministry statement.
Mr Akar added: “Shelters, bunkers, caves, tunnels and warehouses belonging to terrorists were destroyed with great success. … The so-called headquarters of the terrorist organisation were also hit and destroyed with direct hits.”
The air strikes targeted Kobani, a strategic Kurdish-majority Syrian town near the Turkish border that Ankara had previously attempted to overtake in its plans to establish a “safe zone” along northern Syria.
Syrian Democratic Forces spokesperson Farhad Shami in a tweet added that two villages heavily populated with displaced people were under Turkish bombardment. He said the strikes had resulted in “deaths and injuries”.
Local media reported that the northern iraqi city of sin jar was also targeted. syrian opposition media reported that the Turkish air strikes targeted Kurdishled SDF positions.
The Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, reported that the strikes had also hit Syrian army positions and that at least 12 had been killed, including SDF and Syrian soldiers.