Turkey expands crackdown on IS, targets Kurds too

Police arrests militants from both groups in nationwide raids

Turkey carried out a second wave of airstrikes and broadened its targets to include Kurdish rebels as well as Islamic State, while police arrested militants from both groups in nationwide raids.

F-16 warplanes took off late Friday to bomb Islamic State positions in Syria, according to a statement from the office of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, after carrying out initial strikes early the same day. The "shelters, bunkers, logistical points and caves" of Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq were also hit by airstrikes, it said in the statement. The operations were backed by "fire support" from Turkish land forces, according to the statement. At least 320 "terrorist organization members" were detained across Turkey, it said.

Turkey's actions against Islamic State follow months of US pressure for the NATO member to take a more active role. Turkey acceded to another longstanding US request this week by allowing use of a key base for airstrikes by American jets.

Yet Friday's roundup of militants shows how differently the two allies still view the conflict in Syria. The US has given air support to the Syrian Kurds, who have close ties with the autonomy-seeking PKK group in Turkey, as they battle jihadists. Turkey considers both sides to be terrorists.

"The raids are consistent with Turkey's public comments about viewing the PKK and ISIS as equal threats," said Aaron Stein, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

That stance has infuriated Turkey's Kurdish minority, as much as 20 percent of the population, and may further endanger the government's stalled peace talks with the PKK to end a three-decade insurgency.

In his comments about the police raids, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan focused on the "separatist" threat of the PKK. The government will go after all "terrorist groups no matter what their names are," he said.

The main legal Kurdish party said the police crackdown showed that Turkey isn't sincere about fighting jihadists.

The government is "trying to give the appearance that it's in a struggle against Islamic State," but is using it as a cover to target political opponents at home, the People's Democratic Party or HDP said in a statement. The group said some of its leaders were arrested in the raids.

Erdogan and the ruling AK Party, which he co-founded, broke a longstanding taboo in Turkish politics by initiating a dialog with the PKK, but recently they've been backpedaling from the plan.

That may reflect electoral calculations: in a vote last month, the AKP lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in more than a decade. The absence of a clear winner may force the country to go back to the polls within months. The AKP lost support both to a Turkish nationalist party opposed to any concessions to the Kurds, and to the Kurdish HDP.

Turkey's week of violence began with a suicide bomb that killed at least 32 people, mostly pro-Kurdish activists, near the Syrian border on Monday. Authorities said Islamic State was probably behind it.