Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish insurgent hideaways in the country’s remote eastern regions Tuesday, threatening the delicate peace process between Ankara and the nation’s ethnic Kurdish minority.

The strikes are the first of their kind since the Turkish government entered into a peace process last year with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a three-decade war against Turkey.

The bombardment was in response to several recent PKK attacks on military installations in Turkey’s southeast, officials told local media. There was no immediate report on casualties.

The Turkish strikes came as tension appears to be mounting between government officials in Ankara, the capital, and the nation’s Kurdish minority. The more than three-year-long war in neighboring Syria has added a destabilizing element, contributing to riots last week across Turkey.

Many Kurds are outraged that Turkey has refused to take action to prevent a militant Islamist takeover of the Syrian city of Kobani, a Kurdish enclave just south of the Turkish border. For the last month, extremists from the Islamic State group have besieged the town, prompting a U.S.-led aerial assault on militant positions in support of Kurdish militiamen.

On Tuesday, the U.S.-led coalition said its warplanes had escalated the attack on Islamic State positions, launching 21 airstrikes in the most sustained bombardment to date in the Kobani area.

The battle for Kobani, with images of gunfire and bombardment beamed worldwide from news cameras based on the Turkish side, has become a pivotal strategic and symbolic battle for both the militants and their adversaries, Kurdish militia fighters backed by U.S. air power.

Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States, has refused to allow Kurdish reinforcements or supplies into the city, which is controlled by a Syrian Kurdish faction linked to the PKK.

Deadly riots flared throughout Turkey last week, as Kurds protested what many view as Turkey’s complicity in the militant assault on Kobani. More than three dozen people were killed and hundreds injured in some of the worst civil unrest in Turkey’s recent history.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to crush “hoodlums,” while likening Turkey’s Kurdish insurgents to Islamic State extremists.
“This is not a state that will bow to a few hoodlums,” said Erdogan, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News. “We will bring those vandals to account.”

For years, Kurdish activists have sought enhanced civil rights and some degree of autonomy for the long-repressed minority. The Kurds’ plight has generally improved under the more than decade-long rule of Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party.

A year ago, many Turks were hopeful that a comprehensive peace settlement could emerge. Now there is considerable fear that the fragile peace could unravel.

“I am worried that the peace process will collapse,” said Eren Kalinbacak, a 28-year-old teacher speaking in the southern town of Suruc. “The Kurds have suffered, but they also need to stop blaming the state for everything and begin focusing on fixing their own problems.”

The 21 U.S.-led airstrikes conducted in the last two days near Kobani included targeting extremist staging posts, mortar positions, buildings and an artillery storage facility, according to a statement from the U.S. Central Command.

“These airstrikes are designed to interdict ISIL reinforcements and resupply and prevent ISIL from massing combat power on the Kurdish held portions of Kobani,” the Pentagon said Tuesday in a statement, using a common acronym for Islamic State. “Indications are that airstrikes have slowed ISIL advances. However, the security situation on the ground there remains fluid, with ISIL attempting to gain territory and Kurdish militia continuing to hold out.”

After weeks of battle, the fighting in Kobani appears to have ground to a fragile stalemate. The Kurds, cut off from supplies but bolstered by U.S air power, seem to have slowed the multi-pronged Islamic State advance.

On Tuesday, columns of smoke again rose from the embattled city, accompanied by the familiar rattle of gunfire. Kurds massed in fields on the Turkish side of the border chanted slogans in support of their ethnic kin holding out in the city.

In recent days, Islamic State militants have sent car bombs screaming into Kobani in a bid to break the Kurdish defenses.

The town’s Kurdish defenders, reported to number several thousands, are dug in throughout the city center and are fighting amid familiar urban terrain. But they are ill equipped to counter the Islamic State’s superior numbers and firepower, including tanks and heavy artillery.

As many as 700 civilians, many of them elderly and infirm, remain trapped in the city, according to United Nations estimates, raising fears of a slaughter if the militants manage to overrun the town.

Special correspondent Johnson reported from Mursitpinar, Turkey, and staff writer McDonnell reported from Beirut.