Turkey bombs PKK in northern Iraq for first time since failed coup

TURKEY:-- For the first time since last Friday’s failed coup, state media says that Turkish warplanes have carried out air strikes against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK in northern Iraq.

F-16 fighter jets are said to have killed 20 Kurdish militants in the Hakurk region, late on Tuesday night.

Turkey frequently launches air attacks against PKK targets in mountainous northern Iraq near the Turkish border, where the group’s leadership has camps.

A ceasefire between Turkey and the PKK fell apart last year, triggering some of the worst violence in the three decades of the Kurdish insurgency.

-- (c) Copyright Euronews 2016-07-20

They must have gotten their pilots from the same place they got their F-4 Phantom IIs. Maybe all their F-16s and their pilots are in Greece?

Edited July 20, 20169 yr by MaxYakov

Yes Phatoms not F-16 must be pretty poor archive film. But restarting their murder of the Kurdish people

The Turks have a long history of these incursions into Northern Iraq. During the time I was there, some of these incursions were very deep into Northern Iraq -- it was very unlikely Turkish rebels would retreat that far in land. There was also a strong correlation with other factors happening in Turkey and it always seemed that the attacks were a convenient diversion for other problems (at that time mostly very bad economic news). It worked well to whip up nationalism inside Turkey.

At that time, there was never a report of them actually killing any PKK fighters, but they did do a fair amount of bombing, including Iraqi villages which had nothing to do with the PKK.