WEAKENED by Turkish warplane strikes in northern Iraq, separatist Kurdish guerrillas are stepping up bomb attacks in Turkey's cities in an attempt to show they are still a force to be reckoned with. Analysts said two car bomb attacks in the Turkish coastal cities of Mersin and Izmir in the last three days bore the hallmarks of bombings earlier this year which officials have blamed on the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). But the wave of violence represents a campaign by the group to grab headlines rather than a serious security threat to Turkey, a NATO-member country which aspires to join the European Union, they said. “The PKK has lost many of its bases in Iraq, and in the countryside of southeast Turkey they can't move so easily. Hence to protect their existence they are turning their attention more to urban attacks,” said Ercan Citlioglu, who heads the Strategic Research Centre at Istanbul's Bahcesehir University. The attacks, including one on Thursday which wounded eight police officers and three soldiers when a car bomb ripped through a minibus in the western city of Izmir, are likely to reinforce the government's determination to destroy the group's military capability in northern Iraq. The country's powerful armed forces have conducted regular air strikes on rebel targets in the mountains of northern Iraq since launching a major incursion across the border in February, dealing a severe blow to the rebels. President Abdullah Gul on Thursday was to chair a bi-monthly National Security Council meeting, and violence blamed on the PKK was expected to be high on the agenda. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks. One senior military source said the group was employing leftist militants in its operations, while media cited police intelligence warning of further PKK car bomb attacks. School blast The PKK's use of such bombs was highlighted in January when six people were killed in a blast outside a school in Diyarbakir, the largest city in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey. Experts believe the bombers are being trained in Iraq, the scene of extensive insurgent violence. “I think these attacks are inspired by events in Iraq and I think they were trained there,” Citlioglu said. As part of a campaign to erode support for the rebels, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has unveiled plans to increase investment in the southeast and in Kurdish-language broadcasting. The explosives used in Tuesday's attack in Mersin, carried out by a suspected suicide bomber who killed himself and wounded nine police officers, were the same as those used in a double bombing in Istanbul last month, media reports said. Eight people are being held in connection with that attack, which the government says was the work of the PKK. “The PKK is seeking to win back the old authority which it has lost in the region and recover with headline-grabbing attacks,” said Samil Tayyar, a columnist with Star newspaper. According to a story on the website of Zaman newspaper, police intelligence issued an internal report last week warning of four potential PKK car bombs targeting cities across Turkey. Election risk The PKK launched its armed insurgency in 1984 with the aim of creating a Kurdish state in southeast Turkey. Around 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Some 3,500 PKK fighters are believed to be based in northern Iraq, from where they launch attacks mainly on security force targets in Turkey, where another 1,200-1,600 rebels are based. Tayyar said the group may try to step up its attacks ahead of local Turkish elections scheduled for March 2009. “It seems there is a high probability that the PKK, which is being drawn into a whirlwind of inner conflict and which is losing underlying support, will try and increase the dose of bloody attacks in the run-up to local elections,” he said. In the last parliamentary election the ruling AK Party encroached strongly upon traditional support in the southeast for the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, which faces possible closure in a court case on charges of PKK links. A senior military source told Reuters the PKK was resorting to using leftist militants to carry out attacks which in the past were executed by the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, believed to be a PKK splinter group. “(Leftist) group members are being trained in the PKK's camps in northern Iraq to try and carry out attacks in big Turkish cities,” the source said. “This shows that the PKK is having trouble finding people (to carry out attacks).” It was also focusing more on daytime attacks on security forces in southeast Turkey because of the PKK's vulnerability faced with the night-vision cameras used by the military. “They are not entering into clashes in their attacks on police and military installations but are trying to strike from a distance. These are low-risk attacks,” Citlioglu said. - Reuters __
