Al Monitor quotes Rafik Hariri Center Nonresident Fellow Aaron Stein on the violence between the PKK and Turkish army:
News of ordinary Kurds being randomly beaten — one was stabbed to death by a group of men while he stood at a bus stop as he was speaking to his mother on his cellphone in Kurdish — has raised the specter of intercommunal conflict that the country had managed to avert until now. There is much talk of “a return to the 1990s” when the conflict — and state brutality — were at their peak. More ominously still, this time around the war is being waged not so much in rural areas as within towns and cities where the YDGH appears to be deeply entrenched, increasing the risk of civilian casualties. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Aaron Stein, a security analyst who monitors the conflict, said, “The Turkish state will at some point have to move into these areas to retake control. But such an operation will be bloody and reinforce the image among many Kurds that the Turkish military is an occupying force, working in tandem with the AKP to suppress the Kurdish minority.”