Turkey’s latest cross-border raid has failed, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems determined to make use of the killings of 13 Turkish citizens whose remains were discovered in a cave in the Gare region in northern Iraq, where outlawed Kurdish militants are based.
The question of why the Turkish government had taken no action to rescue the hostages held by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) over the past five years despite numerous pleas by their families has gone unanswered. Yet Erdogan has already turned the tragic incident into a propaganda tool in both domestic and international politics.