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PKK Warns Turkey Rebels Will 'Escalate the War'
[AnNahar] The Kurdish rebel PKK movement is ready to step up its fight against ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... in response to Ankara's blistering military campaign, its leader warned in a BBC interview released Monday. Since the collapse of a two-year ceasefire with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) last year, Turkish government forces have been carrying out operations against the group in the southeast of the country. PKK leader Cemil Bayik said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... was "escalating this war". "The Kurds will defend themselves to the end, so long as this is the Turkish approach -- of course the PKK will escalate the war," he told the British broadcaster. Erdogan said this month that 355 members of the security forces had been killed in fighting as well as over 5,000 PKK members -- although this could not be independently verified. Its rebels are accused of trying to create a separate Kurdish state within Turkey -- but Bayik denied it. "We don't want to separate from Turkey and set up a state. We don't want to divide Turkey. We want to live within the borders of Turkey on our own land freely... The struggle will continue until the Kurds' innate rights are accepted," he said. The PKK was ready to escalate the conflict "not only in Kurdistan, but in the rest of Turkey as well", he added. Erdogan "wants the Kurds to surrender. If they don't surrender, he wants to kill all Kurds. He says this openly - he doesn't hide it," Bayik said. The PKK launched a bloody insurgency against the Turkish government in 1984 seeking independence, beginning a decades-long fight for greater autonomy and rights for Kurds which has left 40,000 dead. It later watered down its demands to seek instead more autonomy with cultural and language rights. Jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan called a truce in March 2013, but tensions over the Syrian conflict kickstarted the violence last year. Erdogan has proposed stripping Turkish citizenship from supporters of Kurdish rebels and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is trying to alter Turkey's constitution, to allow prosecutions of pro-Kurdish politicians accused of "terrorist propaganda". Posted by: trailing wife 2016-04-26 |
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