Getty forum Erdoğan’s ‘election war’ As Turkey braces itself for a possible snap vote in November, violence is spinning out of control.

ISTANBUL — Turkey sustained an unprecedented slew of militant attacks Monday, the product of a controversial “war on terror” instigated by an interim government under the guidance of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

In recent weeks the Turkish military has carried out hundreds of air strikes while police have arrested more than a thousand suspects linked to ISIS, the Kurdish militant group the PKK, and far-leftist groups including the DHKP-C. Almost all suspects in Monday’s attacks belonged to the latter two groups. In total, six security personnel were killed in attacks carried out in Istanbul and the Kurdish southeastern region, raising concerns about Turkey launching anti-terror operations at a time when it has no elected government and is facing likely snap elections in November amid continuing regional unrest.

In the early hours of Monday, a car bomb exploded in front of a police station in Sultanbeyli, Istanbul and was followed by a fire fight which left one police officer and two gunmen dead. The attack has been claimed both by the People's Defense Unit, a far-leftist organization, and by the military unit of the PKK, raising questions that the attacks may have been a collaborative effort by members from each group. At around 8 a.m., two women opened fire on the U.S consulate in Istanbul; one of them was injured and arrested. The attack was claimed by the DHKP-C, which was also responsible for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Ankara in 2013.

Later in the morning, the PKK remotely detonated an IED on a road in Silopi, south eastern Turkey, killing four policemen in an armored car; shortly afterwards, PKK militants shot at a helicopter in nearby Beytüşşebap, killing one soldier. Later in the day PKK militants attacked military helicopters in Tunceli and policemen in Diyarbakir.

The sheer volume of attacks in a single day is testament to the risks undertaken by Ankara in its lopsided “war on terror” which has largely ignored Islamic State targets and has, instead, concentrated on the PKK; so far three air strikes have been launched against ISIS, compared to hundreds against the PKK, mainly in its base in the Qandil mountains in Northern Iraq, killing both militants and Kurdish civilians.

Ankara officially started its anti-terror campaign on July 24 after a suspected ISIS suicide bombing on July 20 in the town of Suruc, which killed 32 young activists delivering aid to the besieged Kurdish town of Kobane across the Syrian border. The PKK assumed the complicity of Erdogan’s AK party (AKP) in the bombing and the next day claimed the retaliatory murders of two policemen in Urfa (the claim was later retracted without explanation); in response, Ankara launched hundreds of air strikes against PKK targets in Northern Iraq. Monday’s attacks by PKK militants came in the wake of clashes between security forces, militants and civilians last week in Silopi, which left five dead, and are being viewed as retaliatory measures.

While publicly backed by NATO and supported by a deal with the U.S. which has granted the latter use of the Incirlik airbases in southern Turkey, the current Turkish campaign has come under severe condemnation on home ground and from international observers as a form of veiled electioneering.

Turkey now faces probable snap elections in November after general elections on June 7 in which the AKP lost its majority for the first time in 13 years, resulting in a hung parliament. This was largely due to the 13 percent gained by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is now facing mass arrests of its elected deputies after Erdoğan called for investigations into their “terrorist links.”

Selahattin Demirtaş, the HDP co-chair, has accused Erdoğan’s government of engineering unrest for his own ends.

“The government tried to make the HDP pay the political price [for denting its majority in June’s general elections],” Demirtaş said. “It attacks us and tries to destroy our votes and our public prestige so that it can call an early general election and come to power on its own. We were moving toward peace and now all this has happened because of one man’s ambition.”

President Barack Obama strongly insinuated last week that Ankara was overstretching the terms of the Incirlik deal, which is largely assumed to consist of Turkey’s granting its air bases in return for the U.S. curbing its support to the Kurds. Speaking at the White House, Obama said that he had warned the Turks to “stay focused” against ISIS, the “largest threat to the region.”

However, some analysts have also blamed the PKK for engaging in violence after a two-year ceasefire negotiated between the AKP government and the PKK with the help of the HDP.

“The deterioration of the security situation is multi-faceted,” said Aaron Stein, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

“Much of this is spillover from the Syrian conflict and the Kurdish-rebel tensions inside Syria,” Stein said. “However, it is also due to the surge in government rhetoric [against Kurdish peace] beginning in February and continuing up until the present. Both the Kurds and the government are now using violence to gain leverage for the eventual restart of peace talks. And it's terribly counterproductive.”

In an interview Monday with the BBC, Cemil Bayik, the acting leader of the PKK while founder Abdullah Öcalan serves a life sentence on an island jail near Istanbul, said the group would end its attacks if Turkey ended its military operation, and called for a ceasefire to be overseen by international monitors.

While treated with suspicion in many Turkish quarters, some analysts have taken Bayik’s call for renewed negotiations as sincere.

“It's clear the PKK has fired its shots and wants a return to status quo ante,” said Dov Friedman, an independent analyst specializing in Turkey and the Northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan. “The same cannot be said for Erdoğan. The HDP stands in the way of his political ambitions, so he's taking action against its leaders and supporters.”

According to Friedman, it will be difficult for either side to disengage from the current cycle of violence, particularly given what is at stake politically for Erdoğan.

“Erdoğan has shifted tactics unpredictably before, but this anti-Kurdish activity is so new, so flagrant, that imagining an about face is difficult right now.”

However, Friedman argues that the U.S. may have some useful role to play in applying pressure on Turkey to stop its attacks on the Kurds via the Incirlik deal.

“A U.S. condemnation of the crackdown on HDP — and Kurds more generally — could carry considerable weight. The U.S. holds significant leverage in terms of Turkey's forays across international borders. The U.S. doesn't have to back Turkey strikes in Qandil. It can insist that if Turkey won't participate in the anti-ISIS coalition under U.S. direction, that it better not strike Syrian Kurdistan, even inadvertently.”

Most commentators agree that the Kurdish quest for autonomy will not be ended by violence, despite Ankara’s hardline stance. Stein in particular is concerned that the Kurds’ legitimate political process, embodied by the HDP, will be hurt by the PKK’s return to violence.

“The surge in violence hurts all sides, including Demirtaş, who may now come under fire for being too outspoken in his relatively mild — but nevertheless very important — condemnations of the PKK. The airstrikes won't defeat PKK, either. The only feasible way to solve this is through genuine peace talks.”

This is a sentiment echoed by both Bayik and Demirtaş, who has repeatedly called for a bilateral ceasefire and a renewal of negotiations:

“The two sides should take their fingers off the trigger and the weapons should be silenced. If we can succeed in this then we can force the two sides back to the negotiating table. But we need support both domestically and from the international community.”

Alev Scott is the author of the book Turkish Awakening and a freelance writer based in Istanbul. Follow her on Twitter @AlevScott.