Turkey Bombs Kurdish Militia in Reprisal For Istanbul Attack

Selcan Hacaoglu, Firat Kozok and Taylan Bilgic
·3 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Turkey carried out air strikes against US-backed Kurdish militant groups in Iraq and northern Syria in retaliation for a deadly bombing that targeted civilians in Istanbul a week ago.

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The offensive could shore up flagging domestic support for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of the 2023 election. Yet it risks stoking tensions with Washington, which supports Kurdish forces who have played a major role in the US-led effort to defeat Islamic State.

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The Turkish air stirkes targeted Kurdish bases in Iraq and northern Syria and Iraq starting late Saturday. The Defense Ministry said the strikes were to “eliminate the threat of terrorist attacks emanating from those areas.” The operation was “completed with success,” the ministry said on Sunday.

Turkey’s interior ministry accuses the separatist Kurdish group PKK, based in Iraq, and its affiliates in Syria, PYD, of carrying out the Nov. 13 attack which left six people dead and over 80 injured in a popular pedestrian corridor in central Istanbul.

Among the targets overnight were the Syrian border town of Kobani, or Ayn al-Arab, where resistance of Kurdish fighters against an Islamic State siege in 2014 made international headlines.

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Turkey received tacit approval for its actions from Russia, which controls parts of the airspace over Syria. But that doesn’t mean Russia and Turkey are completely aligned. The Syrian war has often pitted them on opposite sides, with Russia backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while Turkey was the most vocal proponent of overthrowing and replacing him.

Erdogan last week signaled that Turkey may reset its ties with Syria.

“Especially after the June 2023 elections we may restart from scratch,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by the state-run Anadolu Agency in response to a question about Turkey’s relations with Syria and Egypt.

Turkey and Russia have been cultivating ties, even amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and Erdogan is keen to play a key role in mapping out the future of Syria.

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For Turkey, Washington’s support for Kurdish militants in Syria remains a sore point between the NATO allies. Kurdish groups retain control over a large swathe of territory in Syria’s northeast while Assad’s Damascus-based government has largely consolidated its rule elsewhere in the country with the help of Russia and Iran.

Turkey says the PYD is merely an extension of the PKK, designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and EU. The PKK has denied responsibility for Istanbul bombing, although Turkish authorities said several suspects captured after the attack admitted links to the militants.

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Turkey’s last major military operation in the area was in late 2019, with the stated aim of pushing armed groups away from the Turkish-Syrian border. Turkey later halted its operations following cease-fire agreements with the US and Russia.

The air campaign also comes as Turkey continues to insist on the full cooperation of Sweden and Finland in combating the PKK and Kurdish militants in Syria before approving their bids to join NATO. Both Nordic countries have repeatedly condemned terrorism and said they do not support the Kurdish groups.

(Updates with start and end of operation in third paragraph.)

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