“Turkish warplanes have carried out airstrikes against an outlawed Kurdish group for the first time since a 2013 cease-fire, reports said Tuesday, in attacks that underscored the regional political spillover from battles against the Islamic State.

The bombardment targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, risked further inflaming tensions with the country’s Kurdish population, which has protested Turkey’s refusal to help Kurdish Syrian fighters trying to hold back Islamic State fighters just across the border in the town of Kobane.

Clashes last week between Turkish security forces and Kurdish demonstrators left more than 30 people dead. It also highlighted the internal pressures complicating Washington’s efforts to persuade Turkey to expand its role within the international coalition confronting the Islamic State, a radical and heavily armed Islamist group also known as ISIS or ISIL.”* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

*Read more here from Liz Sly / The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkish-warplanes-hit-kurdish-rebels-as-tensions-stoked-by-islamic-state-fight/2014/10/14/cca48b44-538a-11e4-ba4b-f6333e2c0453_story.html