Turkish air strikes kill 13 Kurdish militants

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkish air force jets and attack helicopters pounded Kurdish militants along the border with Iraq on Thursday, killing 13, the local governor's office and security sources said on Friday.

The attack was launched after a drone identified a group of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants on the second day of operations in Turkey's southeastern province of Hakkari, bordering Iraq and Iran, the Hakkari governor's office said.

ca.reuters.com...

Now in my attempt to see if this breaking news had been posted already, I stumbled across quite a number of ATS threads from years past illustrating the Turkish legacy of indiscriminately bombing suspected PKK militant outfits.

Additionally, due to the location of the event, I wonder how long before someone accuses Iran of harboring these PKK militants and demands action? I would have said Iraq instead of Iran, but we all know why i cant...

However, i found this note in this developing story of key interest.

Ankara has linked the increased violence to the chaos in neighboring Syria, accusing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of resuming support for the PKK and arming the militants.

Links to Assad and Syria are being blamed for a host of incidents throughout the middle east and I as have been discussing with my fellow members, this seems to be a baseless accusation due the fact that this conflict over social/cultural differences has ancient roots.

Regardless, I can not say for certain if this attack has some kind of indirect link to Syria or not.

Also this:

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict between Turkey and the PKK, which launched its insurgency in 1984 with the aim of carving out a separate state in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.

Wow, grant it this conflict has been going over a much longer time span then the recent Syrian conflict, but 40,000 dead, is still 40,000 dead.

It would be interesting to look into the details of that continuing conflict as well and its relation to the larger global climate.

Here is an article, from some time back

Turkey's Kurdish rebels will retaliate to any Turkish attacks on Kurds in war-torn Syria, the second in command of the outlawed PKK said in an interview published Wednesday.

"Turkey should stay out of this conflict and stop its scheming," Murat Karayilan, who heads the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the absence of its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, told Swiss daily Le Temps.

Link

I wonder if this foreshadows some kind of violent response in light of this current incident.

The interconnected web of violence seems to be cast over the entire middle east. As i have alluded to many other previous threads, the environment has turned into a powder keg, awaiting the right kind of spark to ignite something more dramatic and widespread.

I hope this is not the case of-course, but every morning when I look at the news, its headline after headline of the violence and deaths taking place in this part of the world.