Kurdish militants scrap Turkish peace

Kurdish militants scrapped a month-old ceasefire in Turkey yesterday, a day after president Tayyip Erdogan vowed to “liquidate” them, dashing hopes of any let-up in violence in the wake of a national election.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group said the ruling AK Party, which won back its parliamentary majority in Sunday’s election, had shown it was on a war footing with attacks launched this week.

“The unilateral halt to hostilities has come to an end with the AKP’s war policy and the latest attacks,” it said in a statement carried by the Firat news agency, which is close to the militant group, based in the mountains of northern Iraq.

Erdogan, who oversaw a peace process with the PKK that collapsed in July, vowed on Wednesday to continue battling the group until every last fighter was “liquidated”.

Twenty people were killed in clashes with the military in the mainly Kurdish southeast yesterday, bringing this week’s death toll to more than 40.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the insurgency since it began in 1984.

The PKK’s latest declaration, on top of the renewed surge in violence, was a fresh source of concern for foreign investors who broadly viewed Sunday’s election as offering the potential for increased stability in Nato-member Turkey.