BERLIN
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has backed Turkey’s anti-terrorism operations amid escalating violence, but also urged Ankara not to give up efforts for a political solution to the conflict with the illegal Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
Merkel spoke over the phone on Sunday with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Turkey’s recent air raids against the terrorist groups, including religious extremist Daesh and the left-wing extremist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
“Chancellor Merkel has expressed her sympathy for the victims of recent attacks and assured Turkish Prime Minister that Germany will continue to be in solidarity with Turkey and support her in the fight against terrorism,” deputy government spokesman Georg Streiter said in a written statement on Sunday.
“Within this context, she has recalled the principle of proportionality in the implementation of necessary measures. Besides, Chancellor has appealed to [Davutoglu] not to give up the peace process with the Kurds but to stick to it despite all the difficulties," the statement said.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Davutoglu also held phone talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to inform them about Turkey's multi-faceted strategy against the terrorist groups Daesh, the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) and the DHKP-C (far-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front), Turkish Prime Ministry sources said.
Turkish warplanes hit Daesh targets in Syria on Friday morning, a day after a group of Daesh militants attacked the Turkish border post, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
The attack followed a Daesh-suspected suicide attack on July 20 in Suruc district of the southeastern Turkish province of Sanliurfa, which killed thirty-two people, most of them young activists planning aid work in the Syrian town of Kobani near Suruc.
On Friday night and Saturday, Turkish air forces also bombed PKK camps in northern Iraq.
Turkey’s air raids against the PKK, first time in the last two-and-a-half years, came after a new wave of attacks against Turkish security forces in the country’s southeastern regions, believed to have been carried out by the outlawed organization.
At home, Turkish security forces have detained over 800 people in three days of raids throughout the country against the PKK, as well as other terrorist groups including Daesh.
The new wave of tension is feared to pose a severe blow to what is known in Turkey as the “solution process”, during which the PKK declared a cease-fire in 2013.
The "solution process" was launched to end the decades-old conflict with the outlawed PKK, a dispute which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people over more than 30 years in Turkey.
