The continued role of Nato-member Turkey in the global fight against Daesh was in the spotlight last week, with many media outlets closely scrutinising its escalating offensive against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as part of its so-called anti-terror operations.

“Turkey significantly escalated its involvement in Syria’s civil war by carrying out air strikes against [Daesh] targets in Syria and announcing that it would allow American military aircraft targeting the terrorist group to fly sorties out of Turkey,” said the New York Times in an editorial. “But that shift was immediately followed by a dangerous development that will create even more turmoil in the region. Turkish war planes launched air strikes against the camps of the PKK… Turkey’s opportunistic decision to conflate the risks posed by [Daesh] with its three-decade conflict with Kurdish separatists could set back the broader efforts of the American-led coalition,” it said. While noting that “allowing American war planes to operate out of Turkey significantly cuts down flight time to and from targets,” and that Turkey “also appears more willing than ever to take meaningful steps to choke off [Daesh’s] pipelines of fighters and money,” the newspaper said that US officials appeared reluctant to criticise Turkey’s bombing of the PKK, since they had sought its greater involvement in Syria for a long time. “In the short term, Turkey’s action is counterproductive for fighting [Daesh]. A Syrian offshoot of the PKK … has been among the most reliable allies for the American military in Syria.

But Turkey’s simultaneous campaign against the Kurds could seriously undermine those efforts,” it said. Arguing in the same vein, the Independent said in an editorial: “Belatedly, Ankara has joined the coalition fighting [Daesh]. But to the anger of its allies, notably the US, it is using that commitment as cover to launch air attacks against Kurdish positions in northern Iraq, and this at the very moment the Kurds have proved themselves the most effective — many would say the only effective — force on the ground against [Daesh].” Taking note of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambition to change the Turkish constitution and hand more powers to the presidency, the newspaper delved into the domestic political dimensions to analyse Ankara’s decision to join the fight against Daesh and use it to attack PKK. “It is argued that the new confrontation with the PKK [will] attract support from conservative nationalists.

Some opinion polls suggest the strategy may be succeeding,” the newspaper said, adding: “It was inevitable that Turkey, a Nato member and an Islamic country bordering violence-racked Syria and Iraq, would at some point be drawn directly into the conflict and chaos of the region. But its domestic instability and conflicting ambitions — is the main enemy [Daesh] or the Kurds? — threaten only to complicate matters… In the longer run, Turkey must make a new effort to solve its Kurdish problem, both in the interests of the war against [Daesh] — and its own.” The Boston Globe, meanwhile, exhorted Turkey and Kurdish separatists not to squander the chance to make peace, and said: “The PKK resumed its attacks on Turkish forces after a [Daesh] suicide bomber killed 32 Kurdish fighters in a Turkish border town. The PKK, which accuses Erdogan of collaborating with [Daesh], holds him responsible. That’s a far-fetched claim. But Erdogan is vulnerable to it because he has done so little to combat [Daesh]. Indeed, he seems to worry more about battle-tested Kurdish fighters on his border than [Daesh].”

Observing that Erdogan has bombed several PKK camps in Iraq recently, killing hundreds of Kurdish fighters and some civilians, the newspaper said in an editorial: “It’s a tragedy that Turkey and the PKK are turning their guns on one another rather than fighting [Daesh], the biggest threat on their doorstep. The current rash of tit-for-tat violence threatens to destroy Turkey’s historic chance to build a new relationship with its Kurdish citizens. That may well be Erdogan’s goal. It’s possible that he’s feeling so threatened by Kurdish success at the ballot box in Turkey and on the battlefield in Syria that he’s changed his mind about peace.”

Commenting on what it called Erdogan’s “war of convenience,” the Observer also mounted a shrill criticism of the Turkish president’s policies. “At every corner, the Middle East is now more combustible than at any time in the past century, with [Daesh] continuing to erode the authority of Iraq and Syria especially and the post-Ottoman state system more generally. Yet to Ankara, ground zero of the region’s disintegration remains its south-eastern mountains where the subversive Kurds are using the chaos to advance their own goals,” the newspaper said in an editorial.

In the backdrop of looming elections in Turkey, the newspaper said the country’s “principal preoccupation seems to be neither [Bashar] Al Assad, nor [Daesh]”.

Instead, it said, “Erdogan hopes a new poll, after weeks of fighting the Kurds, will draw the support of nationalists attracted by the anti-terror narrative and splinter the HDP. Only then, with a restored majority, would Erdogan turn his attention to a groundswell that could define the region’s very future. The danger is that the increasingly mercurial Turkish leader is in danger of pursuing his own political and national interests at the expense of the search for a wider regional settlement that could at last offer peace to the region.”