Is Turkey winning the war against the PKK?

A terrorist attack in Istanbul on March 19 killed at least five people, among them two Americans with dual Israeli citizenship, and wounded dozens more. This attack comes less than one week after a suicide bombing in Ankara took 37 lives.

Turkey is fighting a two-front terrorist war. While early reports indicate that the Islamic State (IS) may be responsible for the bombing in Istanbul, the Turkish government has implicated Kurdish separatists as responsible for the murders in Ankara on March 13. Al-Monitor supports Turkey in defeating terrorists from any and all quarters, and expresses its deepest sympathy for the innocent victims of these inexcusable crimes. 

The terrorist offensive in Turkey, whether from IS or the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), can be understood in the context of Turkey’s disastrous policies in Syria. As this column said more than two years ago, “The blowback from terrorists is connected to popular discontent with Turkey’s Syria policies. The vast majority of Turks want their government to stay neutral and keep out of the Syria conflict. [Then] Turkish President Abdullah Gul made public the "open secret" of his own dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Syria policy. In a Jan. 13 [2014] speech to Turkey’s ambassadorial corps, he said, 'When developments in Syria are considered in particular, the threats and potential threats that have emerged are growing.' He added, 'In view of the realties that have emerged on our country’s southern flank, we have to recalibrate our diplomacy and security policies by also taking into consideration the threat perceptions that have emerged around us.'”