As Turkey prepares to intensify attacks on Kurdish villages in Syria, expect a muted global reaction from the “Free Palestine” crowds. On Friday, a militant wing of the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Ankara’s Aerospace Industries headquarters, which left five people dead. Turkey is retaliating with intensive air bombing of villages it claims are PKK bases.

Vowing that “the terrorists” will “pay a very heavy price,” President Erdogan said the assailants in the Wednesday attack on a Turkish firm that manufactures fighter jets and drones came in through the Syrian border, and Turkish planes immediately launched heavy bombardment sorties against Kurdish villages in Syria. 

By Friday, assaults widened to include attacks in Iraq as well. Reuters cited the Turkish National Intelligence Organization as saying 120 Kurdish targets had been hit in Iraq and Syria since the Wednesday attack at Ankara.  

The bombings in Syria seemed aimed at the Syrian Democratic Forces, which Turkey says is part of the PKK but is in fact allied with America. Since the start of Syria’s civil war more than a decade ago, the SDF had fought alongside U.S. special forces against ISIS and confronted the Damascus strongman, Bashar Assad, and his allied Iranian-backed Hezbollah. 

“The Ankara bombing has nothing to do with the SDF,” a Turkey watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Sinan Ciddi, tells the Sun. Yet, he adds, “it creates a lot of space for Erdogan to mercilessly hit the SDF and the Syrian Kurds.” 

Within 24 hours of the PKK attack at Ankara at least 27 civilians were killed in Syrian Kurdish villages, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Yet, though these Kurds have proved to be America’s most effective allies in fighting terrorists there, Washington is yet to comment on the Turkish bombardment. 

The Syrian Kurds are hoping their relations with America could be a “little bit more transactional,” the founder of the Washington-based American-Kurdish Information Network, Kani Xulam, tells the Sun. “They want to get some political interaction between the parties, but so far the U.S. government has only thought of it as a military alliance.”     

Beyond Washington, silence over escalating Turkish attacks against Kurds was nearly universal. From the halls of the United Nations to America’s campuses and European streets, the killing of Kurds failed to rouse the kind of passions that animate pro-Palestinian groups. 

“I spent months with the Kurds,” a French activist, Bernard-Henri Levy, wrote on X, noting he has filmed Kurdish bravery, loyalty, and the “savagery of Erdogan against them.” Yet, he added, “I never received an answer to my question: Why don’t they get even a fraction of the attention Palestine receives?”

During a visit to Russia to attend the anti-Western Brics summit, the United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, conferred with Mr. Erdogan, but he is yet to issue a statement on the deadly escalation of the Turkish leader’s war on the Kurds.  

“When Israel acts in self-defense against terrorist organizations, Guterres constantly attacks, but when his anti-Semitic friend commits war crimes, he simply disappears,” the Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, writes on X. 

One reason the Kurds get little world sympathy, perhaps, is the intense rivalry between Kurdish factions. Even the PKK, which has long served as Mr. Erdogan’s bogeyman, seems to have fractured and is now sending conflicting messages.

The People’s Defense Forces, or HPG, known as the PKK’s military wing, claimed responsibility for the Wednesday terrorism at Ankara. It was carried out by “a team from the Immortals Battalion,” the HPG said in a Telegram posting. One man and one woman used guns and explosives against the manufacturer of planes and drones, which the PKK says are used to assault Kurdish villages. 

The attack had been “planned for a long time,” the HPG posting said, apparently attempting to separate it from last week’s surprising attempts at reconciliation between Ankara and the PKK. A Turkish party allied with Mr. Erdogan, the MHP, called on the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, to address parliament and denounce terrorism there. 

Since 1999 Ocalan has been held in solitary confinement in a Turkish island prison. This week, his nephew, Omar Ocalan, was allowed to visit the PKK leader for the first time since 2020. In the eyes of many Turks, though, the Wednesday attack at the capital shattered any prospect of a thaw with the PKK.

Was the Ankara attack really long-planned, as the militant PKK faction contended, or did a runaway militant faction aim to sabotage peace advances Ocalan might have considered? Either way, Mr. Erdogan seems intent on using the moment to assault the American-allied Syrian Kurds, which he seems to consider a major foe. 

Mr. Erdogan “can sell ice to eskimos,” the FDD’s Mr. Ciddi says. “The Turkish public cannot differentiate between the SDF and the PKK. They demand to bomb the Kurds, so, yes, I expect a huge escalation.”