Eight Turkish soldiers and 22 Kurdish militants have been killed in clashes over the last two days, authorities said on Friday, as violence widened in the largely Kurdish southeast following two bombings.
After the collapse of a ceasefire between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the government last July, Turkey's southeast has seen some of its worst fighting since the height of the Kurdish insurgency in the 1990s, Reuters reported. President Recep Tayyib Erdogan has said the violence and a concurrent threat from the self-styled Islamic State militants justify Turkey's broad anti-terror laws, which have become a sticking point with the EU in talks about a landmark deal to stem the flow of illegal migrants to Europe.
Erdogan, who once spearheaded the peace process between the state and PKK, has ruled out any return to negotiations and vowed to crush the militant group.
