Turkish tanks and artillery attacked the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed 10 tourists, Turkey’s prime minister said on Thursday — the country’s first significant strike against the militants in months.
Turkey agreed last year to take on a larger role in the fight against IS amid two major attacks that left 135 people dead. However, critics contend the country has shown only limited engagement, striking only when attacked and focusing instead on quelling Kurdish rebels.
Turkey rejects the accusations, pointing out that it has opened its bases to the US-led air campaign against the IS, boosted security along its 900km border with Syria to try to prevent IS fighters from crossing it and cracked down on suspected terror cells in Turkey, detaining or deporting thousands of militants. Turkish forces are also training Iraqi Kurdish forces fighting the militants.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said about 200 militants had been killed over the past 48 hours in Turkey’s offensive against the IS along the Syria-Turkish border and near a Turkish camp in northern Iraq. He did not rule out possible airstrikes against the group, although a day earlier he said Russia was obstructing Turkey’s ability to conduct airstrikes against the IS in Syria.
The Turkish leader said Ankara acted after determining that the IS was responsible for the “heinous” suicide bombing on Tuesday in Istanbul’s main tourist district, just steps away from the landmark Blue Mosque. All of the dead were German tourists.
Turkish officials say the bomber, a Syrian born in 1988, was affiliated with the IS and entered Turkey by posing as a refugee. Interior Minister Efkan Ala said seven people had been detained in connection with the bombing.
“Turkey will continue to punish with even greater force any threat that is directed against Turkey or its guests,” Davutoglu said. “We will press ahead with our determined struggle until the [IS] terrorist organization leaves Turkey’s borders ... and until it loses its ability to continue with its acts that soil our sacred religion, Islam.”
Davutoglu was speaking in Ankara hours after Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in southeastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms. Six people were killed, including three children, authorities said.
Clashes between Turkey’s security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, reignited in July, shattering a fragile peace process.
Turkey has carried out a number of airstrikes against PKK positions in northern Iraq and imposed extended curfews in flashpoint neighborhoods and towns in its mainly Kurdish southeast as security forces battle Kurdish militants linked to the PKK.
The conflict between government forces and the PKK, considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies, has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984.
As a result, “Turkey continues to identify the main problem as the PKK and [Syrian President Bashar] Assad,” the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute director Svante Cornell said. “Turkey continues to view [IS] as a lesser evil.”
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