Türkiye. New battle with the Kurds

A large-scale operation against units of the Kurdistan Workers' Party is being carried out by Turkish government forces in the Silvan region of Dyarbakir province in the southeast of the country. The operation involves special forces, helicopters and armored vehicles.

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At 7:00 local time, a curfew was declared in the operation area, after which Turkish security forces went on the offensive. As a result of their actions, 17 Kurdish fighters were killed.

A new aggravation of relations between the Kurds and the Turkish government occurred this summer. At the end of July, an Islamist suicide bomber carried out a large-scale terrorist attack in the Turkish city of Suruc, during a solemn ceremony for sending Kurdish volunteers to the besieged Syrian city of Kobani. The Kurdish underground responded to this with attacks against Islamists in Turkey itself, after which the Turkish government brought down repression on the Kurds and thus provoked a new wave of confrontation. The peace process, which had progressed with difficulty in recent years, was disrupted.

Only in early September, the Kurds inflicted a number of sensitive blows on Turkish forces, killing more than three dozen soldiers. In response, aircraft launched massive strikes on Kurdish positions in northern Syria, and Turkish ground forces carried out a raid south of the state border.

Türkiye does not hide its support, incl. and the military, fighting the Syrian opposition against Assad, and at the same time, in early August, Ankara announced its participation in a joint fight with the United States against the Islamic State. For these purposes, the Turks provided their Incirlik military base for the deployment of American aircraft aimed at Islamists. At the same time, some observers claim that, under the guise of attacks on the positions of Islamic State militants, Turkey is attacking the positions of the Kurds opposing them.

To coordinate positions on the eve of Vladimir Putin's speech at a meeting of the UN General Assembly, Turkish President Recep Erdogan visited Moscow. The reason for the visit was the opening of the Cathedral Mosque in the capital of Russia, the largest of its kind in Europe.