2023-06-14 16:17:06
The banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has announced the end of the ceasefire it declared unilaterally in February after the severe earthquake in Turkey. “The need for active struggle has become unavoidable,” the pro-Kurdish news agency Firat quoted the Union of Kurdistan Societies (KCK) as saying on Wednesday, which lamented “new waves of attacks”. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently launched massive action against the militant group.
“We announce that we have ended the unilateral ceasefire as of today,” said the militant Kurdish umbrella organization to which the PKK belongs on Tuesday. This threatens to flare up again in the conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state, in which more than 40,000 people have been killed since 1984.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was re-elected for another five years last month, recently stepped up operations against the militant group and its offshoots in Iraq and Syria. According to Ankara, several dozen Kurdish fighters have been killed in northern Syria since Sunday.
The severe earthquake in February, which killed more than 50,000 people, hit a region close to the scene of the heaviest fighting between the Turkish government and the PKK. Four days after the earthquake, the PKK, classified as a terrorist organization by the EU, the US and Ankara, announced that it would suspend its “operations” in Turkey “as long as the Turkish state doesn’t attack us.”
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