After 2½ years of non-hostility, Sept. 6 went on record as the bloodiest day suffered by Turkish government forces since the war against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) erupted again July 24.

The PKK attack occurred in the rural area of Daglica in Yuksekova district in Hakkari province, where Turkey’s borders with Iraq and Iran intersect. Roadside bombs exploded as two military armored vehicles passed, killing 16 soldiers and wounding others.

The toll on the Turkish military is the highest from a single attack since the end of the 1990s, which witnessed the most violent clashes with the PKK. Heavy casualty-causing PKK attacks since 1984, at the beginning of the armed insurgency, have dramatically affected the public, and the course of the conflict. It is now highly likely that the Sept. 6 Daglica attack will be a turning point, an omen that the separatist trend in the PKK is becoming dominant.

On the same day, a rocket hit a police car in Diyarbakir, the biggest city in the heavily Kurdish-populated southeast. Two policemen were killed and three others were wounded. A curfew was declared for part of the city. With these fatalities, the number of police killed by the PKK since July 24 is now 33, another sign of the escalating warlike atmosphere in the east and southeast of the country.