News / Turkey

Turkey faced with biggest wave of terror: Erdogan

Monday, 21 March 2016 3:50 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 21 March 2016 3:49 PM ]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gestures as he delivers a speech during a meeting at the Presidential Complex in Ankara, March 16, 2016. (AFP photo)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to curb what he calls “one of the biggest and bloodiest terrorist waves” that his country has ever seen.

Speaking in Istanbul two days after five people were killed in a bombing attack in the Turkish city, Erdogan vowed to overcome Kurdish fighters and Daesh Takfiri terrorists who he said posed an unprecedented threat to the country’s security.

"We will hit these terrorist organizations as hard as possible," he said Monday.

The Turkish head of state added that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and other groups were in cahoots with the Daesh Takfiri group in their terrorist operations.

"Faced with the terrorists' new strategies we will develop new modes of combat and quickly overcome them," Erdogan said, promising to refrain from sacrificing democratic values.

He also accused Europe of “two-faced behavior” for allowing PKK supporters to camp outside a summit between the European Union and Turkey in the Belgian capital city of Brussels last week.

PKK supporters rallying against the Turkish government’s policies in Brussels, Belgium. (AFP photo)

The PKK has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey, which has an 18-25 percent Kurdish population.

However, the Ankara government considers the PKK a terrorist group and has waged a campaign of attacks against it, resulting in a three-decade conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people.

The Saturday deadly bombing in Istanbul was the sixth of its kind to rip through various Turkish cities over the past eight months.

People surround the victims of a deadly bombing attack that killed at least 5 people in Istanbul, March 19, 2016. (AFP photo)

Ankara has blamed four of the attacks on Kurdish fighters, while holding Daesh responsible for the other two.

Despite being a member of the so-called US-led coalition against Daesh in Syria and Iraq, strong evidence suggests that Turkey is heavily involved in training and equipping the foreign-backed militant groups who are wreaking havoc in the two Arab countries.

Aside from facilitating weapons and resources supply to these groups operating in neighboring Syria, Turkey is accused of buying smuggled Syrian oil from Daesh.

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