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22 PKK militants killed in Turkey clashes: TV
ISTANBUL |
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Twenty-two Kurdish militants were killed during clashes in eastern Turkey over the last three days, CNN Turk television said on its website on Tuesday, adding to Ankara's concerns over gains by Kurdish groups in neighboring Syria.
Fighting, including bombardment with helicopters and war planes, continued on the outskirts of the town of Semdinli, CNN Turk reported.
Two Turkish soldiers were reported killed and 10 others wounded on Sunday during fighting that broke out in Hakkari province, near Turkey's borders with Iraq and Iran, and hundreds of villagers have fled the fighting.
The province is the scene of recurring fighting between Turkish forces and fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a separatist insurgency in the mainly Kurdish southeast since 1984 and which is regarded as a terrorist group by the United States, European Union and Turkey.
Syrian opposition forces say President Bashar al-Assad's forces last week quit areas further west on the Turkish-Syrian border, now reportedly controlled by members of a PKK-aligned Syrian Kurdish group.
The collapse of Syria's state security presence in a region populated largely by Kurds has stirred Turkish anxieties about the potential for rekindled separatist sentiment in its borders.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said last week that Turkey could intervene in Syria in response to any attack or potential threat deemed to emanate from there.
(Writing by Seda Sezer; Editing by Michael Roddy)
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What “indiscriminate bombing of villages killing women and children”? We’re not like the US which willy-nilly murders civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan on purpose. By your logic the Bush and Cheney are the only ones who should join Assad in being held accoutable and condemned by the US State Department.
The only people Turkiye is killing are terrorists who deserve it. A real crime against humanity was the genocide the US committed against the people of Afghanistan in Iraq.
“the world to demand Recep Erdogan be held accountable”? LOL, what for? He hasn’t done anything wrong and every leader in the world has done infinitely more wrong things than him. If anything he should hold all of them accountable especially genocidal warmongers Bush and Cheney. Recep Erdogan should, if anything, be given a medal for ridding the world of kurdish terrorist filth.
LOL, no, it is NOT “the same scenario”. Assad is murdering 70 % of the population of Syria, Sunni Arabs. Turkiye is fighting the most righteous fight against terrorism on the planet against kurdish terrorists who don’t even receive support from even a fringe of the population of the country.
I don’t think you understand what genocide is. The US has never apologized for and paid reparations for the Native American Genocide. It’s about time it has. The US has never apologized for and paid reparations for the Vietnamese Genocide and the 4 million Vietnamese civilians it murdered. It’s about time it has. The US continues to commit genocide in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s about time it pulled out Afghanistan and Iraq and apologized for the genocides it committed against the Afghan and Iraqi people and pay reparations.
What is there for the State Department to stay “silent” about? They know that Turkiye is carrying out a service to humanity. Even if the State Department entertained any delusions that Turkiye was doing anything wrong (which they aren’t), they wouldn’t say anything because they know that the US has and continues to do infinitely times worse.
The “kurdish” ethnic group and kurdish nationalism are the inventions of 19th century european imperialists. Read christopher dickey’s “Don’t Redraw Middle East Map”. The “kurds” in Turkiye, iraq, syria, and iran are all genetically dissimiliar and liguistically incoherent. The reality is that they are iranic offshouts from india who have always lived on other people’s land. Even then the kurds in northen iraq have haplogroup J in frequencies of higher than 40 % making them more Arab than some Arabs. The kurds in Turkiye didn’t even inhabit Eastern Anatolia until the Ottoman sultan defeated the Persian shah and gave a large amount of land to a kurdish servant of his. Historically, the “kurds” defined their allegiance by tribe, faith, or the nation to which they were stealing the culture from. Even kurdish nationalists admit that one-hundred years ago “kurdish” was mostly Turkish, Persian, and Arabic.
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