President Erdoğan is pushed to adopt proportionate military response hours after he said it was impossible to continue process

The Turkish government has been pressed at a special Nato meeting to adopt a proportionate response towards Kurdish militants and not abandon the increasingly fragile peace process.

The Nato conference, held on Tuesday at the request of Turkey, came only hours after Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, said he could not continue a peace process with Kurdish militants and urged parliament to strip politicians with links to “terrorist groups” of their immunity from prosecution.

“It is not possible for us to continue the peace process with those who threaten our national unity and brotherhood,” Erdogan told a press conference in Ankara before his departure on an official visit to China.

Last week, following a suicide bombing in the small border town of Suruç, the Turkish government took on a more active role in the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State and agreed to open its airbases to allied fighter jets as well as flying its own missions against Isis militants. In doing so, however, it also turned its guns on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), a militant Kurdish group that has long – and successfully – been fighting Isis in Iraq and Syria.

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The US and other Nato members welcomed the strikes against Isis, but air strikes against the PKK, which has long been engaged against Turkey, are more problematic. While Nato designates the PKK as a terrorist organisation, the Kurds have proved to be among the most effective fighters against Isis, and the US and others in the 28-member alliance do not want to alienate them.



Wary of growing Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria, Ankara does not share the qualms of its Nato allies. The recent air raids, conducted in retaliation for a string of terrorist attacks blamed on the PKK, effectively put an end to the two-year ceasefire that is part of an embryonic peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdish rebels. The peace process, started in 2012, aims to end a bloody conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.

The PKK said the air strikes rendered the ceasefire meaningless but stopped short of formally pulling out of the peace negotiations.

After Tuesday’s Nato meeting – only the fifth in its history to be called under article 4, under which a nation can request an emergency session when it feels threatened – secretary general Jens Stoltenberg carefully avoided all mention of Kurdish militant groups.



“All allies stand in solidarity with Turkey. We strongly condemn the terrorist attacks,” Stoltenberg said. “We express our condolences to the Turkish government and to the families of the victims in Suruç and other attacks against police and military officers.”

At the meeting, most members expressed the hope that, despite Erdoğan’s rhetoric, Turkey would continue to pursue the peace talks. They also pleaded for Turkey to be proportionate in its military response to the PKK. The Turkish side said the views expressed would be conveyed to the government.

There was no discussion of a joint Turkish-US proposal to establish an Isis-free “safe haven” along its border with Syria. The plan is still at an early stage, with no decision on issues such as who would protect it. Nato said it was a matter for Turkey and the US, who had devised the plan.

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The Turkish government has been adamant in handling Isis and the PKK as equal terrorist threats. Speaking at a press conference in Lisbon on Monday, Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said: “How can you say that this terrorist organisation is better because it fights against Isis?” he asked. “They are the same. Terrorists are evil. They all must be eradicated. This is what we want.”

The latest developments unfolded amid intense instability in the country. A wave of violence has rolled through Turkey since the Suruç bombing killed 32 people in a cultural centre.

While Turkish officials blamed Isis for the attack, angry fingers have been pointed at the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), which is accused of directly supporting Isis against the Kurdish struggle in Syria. Violent protests erupted in several cities, and the PKK killed two Turkish policemen as retaliation for the Suruç attack.

Then came the Turkish authorities’ response: a nationwide sweep against Isis, the PKK and radical leftist groups. According to the prime minister’s office, more than 1,000 people with suspected ties to outlawed organisations have been detained. Almost 100 websites and Twitter accounts, the majority of them pro-Kurdish news sites, were blocked while the PKK stepped up its attacks. Two Turkish soldiers were killed in a car bomb on Saturday and two more officers died in armed PKK attacks on Tuesday and on Monday. On Monday, a gas pipeline was blown up close to the Iranian border in eastern Turkey in an attack blamed on the PKK by Turkish authorities.

The rapid spread of violence is not the only issue. The country also still lacks a government following national elections on 7 June, when Turkish voters snubbed Erdoğan’s push for an executive presidency, resulting in AKP losing the parliamentary majority for the first time since it swept to power in 2002. The elections also saw the People’s Democratic party (HDP) send 80 MPs to parliament, the first ever pro-Kurdish party to successfully overcome the high 10% threshold.

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Given the uncertain domestic political situation, the HDP has accused Ankara of using a crackdown on Isis cells as a pretext to suppress the Kurdish opposition and to push for snap elections in the hope of increasing nationalist votes in its favour. The AKP now has until 28 August to form a coalition government, or call early elections. Many suspect Erdoğan would prefer the latter.

Reacting to Erdoğan’s demand to lift immunity for HDP parliamentarians, the party’s co-chair, Selahattin Demirtaş, said on Tuesday that his party would gladly comply – and asked if the AKP would agree to do the same.

“It’s the people who open and shut down political parties. Those 13% who voted for the HDP today might only grant [the HDP] 1% tomorrow. We would respect that and understand our party as shut down,” Demirtas said at a parliamentary group meeting. “Are you talking about immunity? Tomorrow, we will file a petition to the parliament in order to strip us of our immunity from prosecution.”

Responding to Erdoğan’s call for HDP politicians to renounce the PKK, Vahap Coşkun, assistant professor at the Dicle University in Diyarbakir, said that the HDP should be more openly critical of PKK attacks inside Turkey.

“Nobody expects them to pick a fight with the PKK, but they should not just criticise the AKP for the current clashes,” he said. “In order not to lose the wide support they enjoyed in all of Turkey [before the elections], they need to underline the importance of the political struggle for a solution to the Kurdish issue.”

Coşkun also underlined the importance of returning to the negotiating table. “At the moment tension is running high, and we don’t know in which direction these clashes will go, and for how long they will go on,” he said. “But what we know with certainty, from decades of experience, is that all parties need to sit down again and negotiate. We know that peace, not violence, will be the only way to find a lasting, sustainable solution to the Kurdish issue.”