PKK

A 51-year-old Australian nurse was arrested at Istanbul Airport, accused of being involved with Marxist terror group the PKK.

Pentagon press secretary Gen. Pat Ryder described it as a ’regrettable incident.’

Authorities say fighting between Turkish forces and Kurdish rebels in the restive southeast of the country has killed eight Turkish soldiers and 35 Kurdish fighters.

Turkey was expected to offer a democratic model for other Muslim nations in the Middle East. Instead, the country under President Recep Erdogan is displaying familiar authoritarian tendencies, with the Kurdish minority as a special target. “The parliament’s May 20 decision to approve an amendment to the Constitution to strip a select group of MPs, many from the predominantly Kurdish HDP, of immunity from prosecution may be the last nail in the coffin of the Turkish democratic experiment,” explains Mohammed Ayoob, author and professor emeritus of international relations at Michigan State University. “This amendment sponsored by the ruling AKP was passed with the help of ultra-nationalist MHP members viscerally opposed to any concession to Kurdish demands.” Refusal to work with the Kurds has divided the ruling AKP Party with the resignation of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Turkish policies, including attempts to neutralize Kurds’ political power and target Kurdish fighters along the Syrian-Turkish border rather than the Islamic State, are eroding the nation’s regional and international standing.

Dozens of villages have been abandoned and hundreds of families displaced close to Iraq’s northern border with Turkey as a result of Turkish airstrikes targeting militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, better known as the PKK.

It’s worth exploring the identities and motivations of the different players in what is clearly a complex and increasingly violent security situation in Turkey.

Turkey lashed out Monday at Kurdish targets, bombing military positions in northern Iraq and rounding up dozens of militants at home after a suicide car bombing.

Turkish authorities on Sunday declared new 24-hour, indefinite curfews for two mainly-Kurdish towns where Turkey’s security forces are set to launch large-scale operations to battle Kurdish militants.

Turkey’s state-run news agency says the military has carried out air strikes against Kurdish rebel targets across the border in northern Iraq, killing at least 67 militants.

A Syrian national with links to Syrian Kurdish militia carried out the suicide bombing in Ankara that targeted military personnel and killed at least 28 people and wounded dozens of others