In November 2015, Turkish authorities said that a number of towns and areas in the Eastern Anatolia Region had come under the control of PKK militants and affiliated armed organizations.

[24] In March 2017, the United Nations voiced "concern" over the Turkish government's operations and called for an independent assessment of the "massive destruction, killings and numerous other serious human rights violations" against the ethnic Kurdish minority.

[26][27][28][29] In May 2022, the conflict gained global geopolitical significance as Turkey opposed the accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO, accusing them of supporting the PKK.

[30] The Kurdish-Turkish peace process saw negotiations begin between jailed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan and the Turkish government in late 2012.

[35] There have been recurring reports of the resurfacing Jitem "military police intelligence and anti-terrorist service" which had been responsible for massacres in the 1990s, and of irregular foreign jihadists, being employed.

[43][44] From the traditional preceding Turkish-PKK conflicts the PKK insurgency has transitioned into urban warfare in the country's densely populated south east.

[45] On 20 July 2015, a bombing in the predominantly Kurdish district of Suruç, reportedly perpetrated by the Dokumacılar group linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), killed 32 young activists and injured over 100.

Most victims were members of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) Youth Wing and the Socialist Youth Associations Federation (SGDF), university-aged students who were giving a press statement on their planned trip to reconstruct the Syrian border town of Kobanî in the de facto autonomous Federation of Northern Syria - Rojava.

[408] According to Turkish Human Rights Foundation, there have been 52 intermittent curfews in seven predominantly Kurdish towns where 1.3 million people live, sometimes lasting as long as 14 days.

Diyarbakir branch of the Human Rights Association said Turkish Armed Forces and Gendarmerie was targeting civilians under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

[462] On 11 January 2016, more than 1000 scholars and academics from 90 Turkish Universities and abroad signed a petition entitled "We won't be a party to this crime,"[463] calling for an end to the government's crackdown on the Kurdish activists and politicians, and a resumption of the peace process.

[464] On 12 January, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sharply criticized the dissident academics which included David Harvey, Immanuel Wallerstein, Slavoj Žižek and Noam Chomsky and said they were from the fifth column of foreign powers.

"[467] That same day, Turkish authorities arrested 14 signatories, including 12 academics from Kocaeli University, said they were spreading "terrorism propaganda" and of insulting the state.

"[469] On 16 January, main opposition leader Kemal Killicdaroglu sharply criticized Erdoğan over detention of dissident academics and called him a dictator.

On 3 March 2016, HRF's president, Șebnem Korur Fincanci, found a human jawbone in the remains of a basement in the Sur district of Diyarbakir, where according to HRA seven people were killed in February 2016.

[475] Respect for human rights has deteriorated at an alarming speed in recent months in the context of Turkey's fight against terrorism.There is a need to restart the Kurdish peace process.

The European Union recognizes that PKK is a terrorist organization, but there is a need to re-engage from the Turkish authorities' side with the Kurdish political representatives and the ones that express their position in a peaceful way.The European Parliament has been highly critical with respect to human rights abuses and denial of political dialogue with respect to the Kurdish issue under the cloak of fight against terrorism in Turkey.

[476][479][480] The institutions of the European Union have persistently criticized the broad application of anti-terror legislation as well as a criminal law against "denigrating Turkishness" in Turkey as stifling peaceful advocacy for Kurdish rights.

With the civil conflict with the Kurdish population unremitting, President Erdogan has not found a better justification for toughening the punitive operations in the [Kurdish-populated] southeast than to accuse Russia of supplying arms to the Kurdistan Workers' Party.Let me emphasize that we condemn PKK terrorism absolutely.

"More and more information has been emerging from a variety of credible sources about the actions of security forces in the town of Cizre during the extended curfew there from mid-December until early March," he said in a press release.

"Most disturbing of all are the reports quoting witnesses and relatives in Cizre which suggest that more than 100 people were burned to death as they sheltered in three different basements that had been surrounded by security forces.

"However, the Turkish foreign ministry offered an open invitation to U.N. agencies to visit the country's southeastern provinces after the reports were made and refuted those statements, saying they were "based on insufficient information".

[489] According to the UN Commissioner, unarmed civilians, including women and children, were shot by government snipers in the south-east during the clashes and Turkish forces also inflicted significant damage on the local infrastructure.