One month after the failed coup, Turkey’s east and southeast are being rocked by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) violence. A provincial center in the east, Elazig, witnessed a dramatic car bombing Aug. 18 that took the lives of three police officers and wounded 217 people. The PKK claimed responsibility.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and Chief of Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar rushed to the scene. That attack came just hours after a car bomb that targeted the police headquarters shook the eastern city of Van. While Yildirim was expressing the government's determination to fight terror and violence, the PKK ambushed a military convoy near the provincial center of Bitlis, which lies between Elazig and Van.

The escalated PKK attacks starkly illustrate the security vacuum left by Turkey's extreme post-coup purges of the military, police and intelligence forces.

There had been an apparent lull in the PKK’s activity in the immediate aftermath of the July 15 failed coup. That lull apparently prompted the government to make a premature, misguided and somewhat optimistic assessment of the situation.