Turkey, Anticipating Attack, Strikes 3 ISIS Targets in Syria With Jets
By CEYLAN YEGINSU

ISTANBUL — Turkish fighter jets struck three Islamic State targets in Syria on Friday in an effort to pre-empt a planned attack on Turkey, a senior Turkish government official said.

The airstrikes came the day after Turkey engaged in its first reported direct combat with the Islamic State militant group, and gave permission for staffed American warplanes to conduct strikes against the group from two Turkish air bases.

Late Friday, local television channels reported that in a separate operation Turkish jets bombed at least five camps run by Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, although Turkish officials did not confirm those reports and they could not be independently verified.

A member of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the P.K.K. for the initials of its Kurdish name, speaking from the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, said that the airstrikes started just after 10 p.m. and continued for three hours.

“The airstrikes also targeted villages and places where people live,” the P.K.K. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. “We don’t know the scale of the damage yet because it is still going on.”

The Turkish government also announced on Friday that it had arrested 297 people, including 37 foreigners, who were suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations. The arrests were made in simultaneous raids in 13 provinces, officials said.

During one of the raids, on a house in the Bagcilar District of Istanbul, a member of an outlawed leftist group called the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front was killed, the police said. The member’s identity was not released.

The group, known as the DHKP-C for the initials of its name in Turkish, has carried out sporadic attacks against police officers over the past year and was responsible for a 2013 suicide bombing at the United States Embassy in Ankara, the capital, that killed a security guard.

Among those arrested in the raids was Ebu Hanzala, a Salafist cleric considered to be one of the spiritual leaders of the Islamic State in Turkey. Mr. Hanzala has been arrested in counterterrorism operations, but the authorities have never had enough evidence to prosecute him.

The airstrikes on Friday were the first by Turkish warplanes against Islamic State targets inside Syria. The office of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that three F-16 jets bombed two command centers and a rendezvous point across the border from Kilis in southern Turkey, and that the planes did so without entering Syrian airspace.

“We received intelligence about stockpiles of weapons and a gathering of Islamic State militants very close to our border,” the senior government official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under his government’s rules.

The tactical shift toward directly engaging the militants in Syria came after Turkey’s Western allies pressed it to take a more active role against the Islamic State. American officials welcomed the decision on Thursday, calling it a “game changer.”

Senior United States military commanders on Friday offered a more detailed assessment of the agreement to allow American staffed and unoccupied aircraft to fly strike missions from Turkey, greatly shortening the time and distance to their targets.

“It provides additional flexibility and agility in addressing this enemy ISIL that we’re dealing with in Iraq and in Syria,” Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. “It also means that Turkey has taken another step forward in being more committed to helping us.”

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey described the airstrikes as “a first step” against Islamist, Kurdish and leftist militants. He called on terrorist groups to lay down their arms and said they would “face consequences” if they failed to do so.

Violence in Turkey this week has raised tensions with the country’s restive Kurdish population. On Monday, a suicide bomber suspected of having ties to the Islamic State struck a cultural center in the Turkish border town of Suruc, killing 32 people and wounding 100 others.

Thousands took to the streets afterward to accuse the government of tacitly cooperating with the Islamic State in the Suruc bombing. The military wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, whose 30-year insurgency ended only recently in a fragile peace, retaliated for the bombing by killing two police officers on Wednesday.

土耳其再炸IS 抓600恐怖嫌犯

土耳其軍方廿五日再度空襲遜尼派激進組織「伊斯蘭國」（IS）在敘利亞的據點，以及伊拉克北部庫德族武裝民兵組織「庫德工人黨」（PKK）的盤據地。土耳其過去一周遭受多起恐怖攻擊，土耳其國內外質疑政府對恐怖組織「無作為」的聲浪愈來愈大；土軍廿四日清晨起首度空襲IS，警方翌日逮捕近六百名恐怖嫌犯，矢言根除恐怖組織。

過去一周，土耳其恐怖攻擊頻傳，包括一名軍人在邊界遭IS分子殺害、土耳其和敘利亞的邊界城鎮蘇魯克遭自殺炸彈客攻擊，卅二人喪生，另有兩名警察遭PKK分子暗殺。

土耳其總理達夫托葛魯指出：「有人趁兩名警官熟睡時殺害他們，我們不會坐視。」

土耳其戰機廿四日首度空襲IS及PKK在敘利亞和伊拉克的據點，地面部隊則砲轟這兩個組織的多個目標。達夫托葛魯說：「不該有人懷疑我們的決心。我們不容許土耳其變成無法治的國度。」土耳其警察掃蕩恐怖分子，共逮捕五百九十名可疑分子。

美國與北約聯軍合力空襲IS數月，身為北約主要成員國的土耳其袖手旁觀，遭西方聯軍批評對抗聖戰士的努力不足。

土耳其廿四日清晨起空襲IS和PKK，炸毀PKK在伊拉克的防空洞，並空襲PKK軍事領袖據為基地的甘迪勒山區。

英國廣播公司分析家雅迪茲認為，土軍空襲IS和PKK的軍事策略，可能是一步險棋。

IS手段凶殘，將人肉炸彈送往各處殺人，並將自身塑造成非常危險的組織。PKK則在土耳其及敘利亞庫德族自治區獲得廣大支持；與PKK關係密切的土耳其在野黨「人民民主黨」在六月的國會選舉中贏得百分之十三的選票。

土耳其與庫德族的宿怨難解，PKK與土耳其前年初達成停火協議，未料雙方緊張情勢再度升高。土耳其官員說PKK拒絕裁武且多次攻擊政府安全部隊，PKK則譴責土耳其軍方空襲PKK據點，形同片面公然背棄和平進程。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/25/world/europe/turkey-isis-syria-airstrikes.html

2015-07-26．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯陳韻涵