Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday Kurdish militants would “drown in their own blood” as he led political and army chiefs in paying respects to troops killed in a clash with the rebels.
The fighting on Saturday, which marked a fresh escalation in the 26-year-old insurgency, killed 11 soldiers and 12 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas in the southeastern province of Hakkari, near the border with Iraq.
The soldiers’ coffins, draped in red-and-white Turkish flags, were laid out on tables for a ceremony at a military base in the city of Van where Erdogan and armed forces chief General Ilker Basbug listened to a Muslim prayer with other leaders.
“Today we will not make the traitors happy,” Erdogan said. “We will defend this ground heroically. Resolute against enemies, resolute against terrorism.”
“I say here very clearly, they will not win. They will gain nothing. They will melt away in their own darkness ... they will drown in their own blood,” he said.
The death toll in Saturday’s clash was one of the highest in recent years in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people since the PKK took up arms against the state in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast.
After Saturday’s battle, the Turkish air force struck PKK targets in the mountains of northern Iraq, where several thousand of the rebels are based.
Military sources said yesterday one Turkish soldier was killed and one injured overnight in a Kurdish rebel attack on a military outpost in the southeastern province of Elazig.
They said the militants threw a hand grenade at the base before opening fire with rifles in the Palu district of Elazig.
Turkish troops entered northern Iraq overnight, penetrating 10km, after the deadly attacks, a security official said yesterday.
Three people were killed in the incursion into the Qandil mountains, where the PKK maintains rear bases for its campaign, he said.
The official did not specify whether the dead were civilians or PKK fighters, but he said that the incursion happened in the Shamarsha district of Arbil province north of the town of Sidikan.
It was the second time in five days that Turkish ground forces had crossed the border.
On Wednesday, Turkish troops crossed from Sirnak Province into Dohuk Province farther west, in their first ground operation across the border in two years.
“Two of our men were killed in the clashes that took place on Wednesday,” PKK spokesman Ahmed Denis said in the Iraqi Kurdistan regional capital of Arbil on Friday.
The intensifying clashes between the PKK and Turkish troops prompted Denis to warn on Saturday that the rebels would take their armed campaign to cities across Turkey if the army pressed on with a policy of military confrontation.
A local official said Turkish air raids in Iraq’s Kurdish north killed a teenage girl — the first reported civilian death from shelling that began last week.
Karmang Ezzat, mayor of the Soran border town, said yesterday that the girl’s mother and three-year-old brother were also wounded in the previous night’s attack.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2