Turkish fighter jets have mounted their heaviest assault on Kurdish militants in northern Iraq since air strikes began last week, hours after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said a peace process had become impossible.

The strikes hit six Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets including shelters, depots and caves, the prime minister’s office said. A senior official told Reuters it was the biggest assault since the campaign started. .

The Iraqi government condemned the attack as “a dangerous escalation and an assault on Iraqi sovereignty”. In a statement posted on the website of the prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, Baghdad called on Turkey to avoid further escalation and seek a resolution to the crisis.

Turkey began bombing PKK camps in northern Iraq last Friday in what government officials have said was a response to a series of killings of police officers and soldiers blamed on the Kurdish militant group.



On Tuesday, fighter jets also bombed PKK targets in the south-eastern Turkish province of Şırnak, bordering Iraq, after an attack on a group of gendarmes.

Erdoğan said the peace process, launched in 2012 in order to put an end to the bloody conflict between the Turkish government and the PKK that has killed over 40,000 since it began in 1984, had become impossible to maintain. The PKK has said the air strikes, launched virtually in parallel with Turkish strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria, rendered the peace process meaningless. But it has stopped short of formally pulling out.

In a special Nato meeting called by Ankara on Tuesday, the US and other Nato members expressed solidarity with Turkey and underlined the country’s right to self-defence, but also urged a proportionate response to the security threat and called on the government not to abandon the fragile peace process, now hanging by a thread.

The Turkish government said the operations would continue until the threat posed by the PKK was neutralised.

On Tuesday, Turkish fighter jets also launched strikes on several PKK targets inside Turkey. According to the Turkish general chief of staff, the operation was launched following an attack on Turkish military police by suspected PKK militants close to the Iraqi border in Șırnak province. The statement added that security forces were currently carrying out a damage assessment after the air raids.



The Turkish air strikes on Kurdish rebels were launched in tandem with Turkey’s first ever military operations against Islamic State in Syria after a suicide bomb killed 32 in the small border town of Suruç last Monday, an attack that Ankara blames on Isis. Critics have accused Turkey of using the Isis threat as a pretext to weaken the Kurdish opposition. Turkey’s Nato allies have expressed unease about the operations aimed at the PKK, since the Kurds have been a crucial ally in the fight against Isis both in Syria and in Iraq.



Later on Wednesday the Turkish parliament was due to discuss the ongoing military operations in Syria and Iraq, and Erdoğan’s call to strip politicians with suspected links to the PKK of immunity from prosecution, a request clearly aimed at the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP).

The HDP has accused Erdoğan of pushing for snap elections at the expense of the peace process in the hope of increasing nationalist votes for the ruling Justice and Development party, or AKP. The party lost its parliamentary majority in the 7 June elections, and the country still lacks a permanent government. The acting prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, will need to form a government by 28 August, but so far the coalition talks have not borne any fruit.

In a statement published on Wednesday, the HDP called Erdoğan’s demand to strip parliamentarians of their immunity “a civilian coup” and called on all 550 MPs to volunteer to have their immunities lifted in response.

“In ignoring the election results of 7 June, in trying to launch its own dictatorship, the palace state implements a coup that threatens the inner peace of our country,” the statement said, referring to Erdoğan’s contentious presidential palace in Ankara. “We are going through the process of a civilian coup.

“We are calling on the whole parliament. Come and lift the immunity for all 550 MPs. Everyone should justify their own actions. We call on the AKP and the [nationalist Nationalist Movement party] MHP who feel it is a merit to attack the HDP. If you have the courage, if you are genuine, give up your immunity. Everyone’s files, including those on corruption and robbery, should be opened.”

The HDP’s leader called on Wednesday for an immediate halt to hostilities on both sides.

“Hostilities should immediately come to a halt,” Selahattin Demirtaş told reporters, calling on all parties to act with “common sense”.