AKIPRESS.COM - Forced into battle against Islamic State as it presses on Turkey's borders, President Tayyip Erdogan is seizing the chance to keep another foe in check, bombing Kurdish militants he sees as a threat to the integrity of the Turkish state, reports Reuters.

Casting the operations as a war on terrorist groups "without distinction", Turkey launched air strikes against Islamic State in Syria for the first time last week and granted the U.S.-led coalition access to its air bases after years of reluctance.

It also bombed camps in northern Iraq belonging to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the first time in at least three years. Hundreds of suspected Islamic State and PKK members have been rounded up in raids across Turkey.

Launching wars on two fronts is a high-risk strategy for the NATO member, leaving it dangerously exposed to the threat of reprisals by jihadists and at risk of reigniting a Kurdish insurgency that has cost 40,000 lives over three decades.

Turkey has been a conduit for foreign jihadists, with thousands thought to have crossed its borders to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, many concealed among the millions of tourists who flock to Turkey's shores each year.

They have often been aided by Turkish smugglers linked to the Islamist insurgents; a network Turkey has been trying to dismantle but which could retain capacity to launch attacks on Turkish soil after the fashion of last week's suicide bombing, blamed by Ankara on the militants, that killed 32 people.

Western diplomats have long feared that Istanbul, one of the world's most visited cities, or Turkey's Aegean or Mediterranean coastal resorts could be soft targets. Attacks that killed dozens of foreign tourists in Tunisia earlier this year served only as a reminder of the risks.

"Ankara's recent adoption of aggressive policies towards both the PKK and the Islamic State has considerably raised the risk of terrorist attacks and sustained civil unrest inside the country," Wolfango Piccoli of risk research firm Teneo Intelligence said in a note.

Yet on both fronts, Erdogan looks to be hoping to seize opportunity out of crisis. He is reviving Turkey's international standing with the more robust stance on Islamic State, but also undermining the pro-Kurdish opposition and bolstering nationalist support at home with the attacks on the PKK.