The fierce conflict between the Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the 1990s claimed some 40,000 lives, but it never devolved into a Turkish-Kurdish civil war. Although a number of bloody incidents took place in residential areas of western Turkey where Kurdish minorities lived, they were quickly contained before they could spread.

The first sign that real Turkish-Kurdish strife is possible came in October 2014, during the deadly street protests referred to as the “Kobani unrest.” During Oct. 6-8, Kurds across Turkey took to the streets to protest the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which they held responsible for the siege of the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani by the Islamic State (IS). In ethnically mixed, Turkish-majority cities, such as Gaziantep, Turkish crowds confronted the demonstrators. In fact, clashes in Gaziantep claimed four lives. Deaths from the unrest, which spilled over to 35 cities, totaled 50, and thousands of public and residential buildings, businesses, schools and vehicles were vandalized or destroyed.

Since Sept. 8, Turkey has been the scene of nationwide attacks on Kurds that are unprecedented since the PKK took up arms in 1984. The wave of violence erupted after two massive PKK bomb attacks killed 16 soldiers and 14 policemen on Sept. 6 and Sept. 8, respectively, spreading to almost all the provinces outside the Kurdish-majority regions of the southeast. Nationalist groups took to the streets, assaulting Kurdish civilians, Kurdish-owned businesses and offices of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which had emerged as Turkey’s third-largest party in the June 7 elections, winning 13.1% of the vote and 80 seats in the 550-member parliament. The party’s offices in 56 provinces and districts were stoned, vandalized and torched. The attacks reached a peak late Sept. 8 when a mob of some 500 people stormed HDP headquarters in downtown Ankara, ransacking and burning part of the building.

Turkish nationalists, reported to have mobilized via social media, also attacked intercity buses carrying passengers to Kurdish-majority regions. Dozens of buses, singled out according to their license plates or company names, had their windows broken under hails of stones, while others were stopped and their passengers verbally and physically harassed. As a result, bus companies operating between the western regions and Diyarbakir, the largest city in the southeast, canceled services Sept. 9-10 to protest the violence.