Deadly attack threatens to crank up conflict with Kurds

An attack by suspected Kurdish rebels who blew up a military bus in Istanbul, killing four people, is likely to lead to an intensification of the conflict between the Turkish authorities and the country's Kurdish minority.

The explosion, which left three Army sergeants and a 17-year-old woman dead and two others seriously wounded, came after a violent weekend in which PKK Kurdish guerrillas killed 12 soldiers and police in southeastern Turkey. The provincial Governor of Istanbul, Huseyin Avni, said the bombing was "a terrorist attack", the aim of which was "to create divisions, tensions and despair".

The resumption of guerrilla warfare ends an unofficial truce between the PKK and the Government, which last year initiated plans to give Kurds greater civil rights. That was partly an attempt to terminate a 26-year-civil war in which 40,000 people have been killed.

But the ruling Justice and Development Party - known by its Turkish acronym, AKP - of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered on few of the promised reforms because it was frightened of being portrayed as soft on Kurdish rebels in the elections.

Speaking at a service to honour the dead soldiers, Erdogan said he would "annihilate" the PKK. "They will drown in their own blood," he said, adding that "such kind of bloody attacks will not be able to divert the direction of our nation to grow and be a strong and estimable nation."

Such is the degree of anger over the soldiers' deaths that Erdogan and other senior Government members are in danger of being mobbed at funerals by angry relatives and members of the political opposition. Television screens and newspapers were yesterday dominated by pictures of soldiers' coffins draped with red-and-white Turkish flags.

Turkish commandos were also being dropped by helicopter along the mountainous border with Iraq, although in the past this has had little effect since the bases of the PKK are well concealed in caves and gorges on both sides of the border. Turkish warplanes have made bombing raids against PKK guerrillas in northern Iraq, but with limited effect.

The PKK justified its military actions and the ending of its 14-month ceasefire by saying its unilateral truce had become meaningless as the Government had not reciprocated. With 6500 experienced fighters in Iraq and Turkey, the group is probably capable of making pinprick attacks for as long as it wants. Though the fighting is not extensive it has a political impact out of proportion to its scale.

The resumption of war in southeast Turkey may also undermine the increasingly friendly relations between Turkey and the Kurds of northern Iraq, grouped under the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Iraqi Kurds are beginning to see Turkey as a counterbalance to the Baghdad Government.

President Massoud Barzani, who heads the KRG, recently visited Ankara, where he has long been demonised, for friendly talks. The United States has also been encouraging greater Turkish involvement in Iraq, to fill the vacuum left by the departure of US troops and to offset Iranian influence.

The AKP seemed poised, after it first came to power in 2002, to take over from the PKK's political representatives in Kurdish-majority areas in the southeast. But it has seldom lived up to its promises. When former PKK fighters returning under a de facto amnesty last October were greeted as heroes by supporters, there was a backlash against Erdogan.

The main Turkish Kurd political party was dissolved and many Kurdish mayors and elected officials arrested. The resumed fighting may lead to a rise in the Army's role in politics. Erdogan's main feat has been to entrench civilian Government and limit the influence of the Army, which has staged four coups since 1960.

- INDEPENDENT