Roundup: Turkey military locked in fight with PKK militants amid political concerns

Death toll is on the rise as Turkey keeps up with its military operations against militants of the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in the southeast of country as well as in northern Iraq, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is pushing a snap election to regain the single-party government.

Three Turkish soldiers were killed on Thursday in an attack on a military post in the southern province of Sirnak, which borders both Syria and Iraq.

A police officer and a civilian were killed in the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Wednesday, which was followed by the murder of two policemen by a PKK attack on a police station in the southern province of Adana on Friday.

A worker employed by the national railroad carrier, Turkish State Railways, was killed when suspected PKK militants attacked a group of railway workers who were repairing lines that were damaged by an earlier bomb attack by the PKK in the eastern province of Kars on Thursday.

Quoting security sources, local media reported that some 190 Kurdish militants were killed in military offensive that saw the deployment of F-16 jets in cross-border operations into northern Iraq where the PKK commanders are based.

Some 300 PKK militants were estimated to have sustained injuries during the crackdown.

Around 40 fighter jets were reportedly deployed in northern Iraq on July 28, while some 30 jets carried out air strikes on July 30.

Turkish land forces also engaged in the battle with howitzers shelling hundreds of targets, mainly anti-aircraft gun batteries employed by the PKK in Northern Iraq.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Ankara has been negotiating with the jailed leader of the PKK since 2013 over the settlement of the decades-long Kurdish-Turkish conflict. The process was thwarted when the PKK refused to lay down arms in opposition to an earlier pledge.

Meantime, analysts said that the ongoing military operation in the southeast, has brought the conflict to zero point.

"Every day there are "operations," there are killings and so on," Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a political analyst, has said.

Also, as a sign of more pressure on Kurdish politicians, a government-led investigation has recently been launched against pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) leader Selahattin Demirtas for allegedly provoking people by arming them during violent protests triggered by events in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani late last year.

Turkish prosecutors had asked the parliament to lift the immunity of the Kurdish leader.

The HDP was a critical party in the June 7 elections, during which the AKP lost the majority in the parliament for the first time in 13 years when Kurdish voters defected the AKP in favor of the HDP.

That propelled the AKP officials and former leader and current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to publicly bash the HDP.

The Turkish president accused Demirtas of supporting the Kobani protests over Islamic State (IS) attack on the Syrian Kurdish town and held him responsible for the death of more than 30 people during protests on Oct 6-7, 2014.

He also urged parliament this week to lift the immunity of politicians with suspected links to the PKK.

Erdogan and his allies in the government are looking for the possibility of regaining their strengths in a snap election likely to be held in November.

They hope that the surge in the PKK violence will cause some voters to defect the HDP over security concerns.

Cengiz states that in an early election, the Kurdish HDP may very well remain below the 10 percent national threshold that was required to enter the parliament.

The AKP be will the main beneficiary of this scenario.

"If this conflict continues this way, some voters may distance themselves from the HDP," Cengiz underlined.

Omer Taspinar, a Turkish expert at Brookings Institution, also believed that Erdogan is betting that any attack from the PKK or any other group like IS "will create a national security emergency that will strengthen his case for the need of a stronger government and leadership."

The Turkish president has already been lobbying for a snap election.

He told reporters on Thursday that the country would need to go to the polls once more if ongoing coalition talks do not bear fruit.

"A minority government supported by one or two parties could manage to bring Turkey to elections," Erdogan said.

"Obviously, the HDP's being made a target is part of the president's re-election plan," Cafer Solgun, long-time observer of Kurdish politics, commented.

"The AKP believes that to come to power as a single-party government again, it has no other choice," he added. Endit