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Two Kurdish militants armed with a Russian-made grenade launcher and a Kalashnikov rifle strode confidently toward their target in broad daylight.

The scene was captured by a security camera on Aug. 4 moments before the masked men attacked the police headquarters in the Turkish town of Yuksekova. They fled on foot after a 20-minute shootout.

The audacious assault by gunmen able to evade police detection underscores a shift by the autonomy-seeking Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Insurgents who historically fought from rugged mountains have moved into towns and cities in the nation’s southeast from where they can target the economy. They have attacked dams, bridges, trains, oil and gas pipelines, and killed more than two dozen soldiers and police officers over the past month as a three-year truce collapsed.

“The PKK has bolstered its presence in Turkey’s urban centers since 2013, which means that it’s in a stronger position to harm the economy and further erode investor confidence,” Anthony Skinner, head of analysis for the Middle East and North Africa at U.K.-based forecasting company Verisk Maplecroft, said by e-mail Aug. 5.

The group “undertook the job of arming in towns and cities” as security forces used a peace process from late 2012 to build fortified outposts and strategic highways, according to Mehmet Kaya, head of the Tigris Communal Research Center in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir. The PKK is considered a terrorist group by the U.S., European Union and Turkey.

City Sweeps

Police have rounded up about 1,600 people with links to the PKK since July 24, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency. The pro-government Sabah newspaper cited intelligence reports that the group had stashed 80,000 rifles, as well as pistols and hand grenades, in urban centers in the southeast.

Turkey’s government and the Kurds blame each other for the resumption of fighting.

Tensions escalated after gains by a pro-Kurd party in June’s parliamentary election stripped the ruling AK Party of its majority. Military victories in northern Iraq and Syria by Kurdish groups allied to the PKK also contributed to the friction.

A bombing in southern Turkey on July 20, attributed to Islamic State, led to a surge in clashes. Turkey’s air force struck the jihadist group in Syria but also extended its offensive to include PKK fighters. The Kurdish militants stepped up their attacks.

Losing Kurds

Violence on Monday left at least five police officers and three militants dead. The attacks included the car-bombing of a police station in Istanbul, which was claimed by the PKK on Tuesday, the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency. The U.S. embassy in the city was also hit, with blame falling on a far-left group.

On Tuesday, seven customs officials were feared kidnapped by the PKK on their way to the remote Uzumlu border crossing with Iraq, Anadolu reported.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who as prime minister pursued talks to end the three-decade Kurdish conflict, now says the PKK poses as great a threat to Turkey as Islamic State.

“Silencing the guns is not enough,” he said on Tuesday. “We will maintain our struggle until all weapons are buried, covered with concrete and no terrorist left within our borders.”

‘Big Risk’

Such rhetoric is also part of a “strategy to win more nationalist votes” should efforts to form a coalition be abandoned and a new election called, said Skinner.

Whatever his objective, Erdogan’s taking “a very big risk of losing further Kurdish support in the area,” said Naci Sapan, a co-founder of the Tigris center. That may make it even harder to restart peace talks, he said.

Leading Kurdish politicians are warning that the violence could get much worse unless the government returns to the negotiating table.

Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the main Kurdish party HDP who has accused the government of stirring the conflict for political ends, on Saturday called on both sides to “immediately” cease fire.

That doesn’t appear likely. A day later, acting Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu urged political leaders to rally around democracy and help to disarm the PKK. On Tuesday, Erdogan said the Kurdish peace process “is in the refrigerator.”

PKK Reach

At least 33 soldiers and police -- as well as 11 civilians -- have died in clashes since July 7, mostly in the southeast. Security forces, meanwhile, have killed about 20 PKK militants, including one shot dead in the town of Varto, in the same period in Turkey. Turkish airstrikes against rebel bases around Mount Qandil in northern Iraq have killed 390 militants since late July, Anadolu said on Saturday, without citing anyone.

Yet in this latest spasm of fighting, the PKK is also demonstrating its reach.

“The PKK tried and failed to start an uprising in residential areas in the 1990s due to a lack of militants,” said Nihat Ali Ozcan, who studies the group at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara. “Today, it seems to be better prepared and poses a much bigger threat.”