Kurdish militant group TAK claims responsibility for Ankara bombing

February 22 04:19 2016

Turkey reeled Wednesday from a deadly bombing of a military convoy in the capital, plunging its leaders deeper into crisis mode and underscoring the country’s vulnerability to the Syrian war and revitalized Kurdish insurgency.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that his government has evidence that a Syrian national linked to the main Kurdish militia fighting in Syria was behind the bombing that killed 28 people in Ankara on Wednesday. It has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks since 2004.

As BBC News points out, the Iraqi-based PKK Kurds are closely allied with the YPG, the Syrian-based Kurds, though both groups are separate from the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, which is the only one Turkey has good relations with. Turkey has also reinforced its 900-km long border with Syria with concrete fencing.

Yeni Safak, a newspaper close to the government, said the assailant who detonated the vehicle bomb near the military buses in an apparent suicide attack had been registered as a refugee in Turkey and was identified from his fingerprints. But while the USA, like Turkey, lists the PKK as a terrorist organization, it has dismissed Turkey’s requests that the US cut off its support from the YPG, calling the group “an effective fighting force”.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has conveyed his condolences to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu over the Ankara attack. The group, supported by the U.S.in the support against the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, rejected any involvement in the attack.

“The attack was carried out by the PKK together with a person who sneaked into Turkey from Syria”, he said, adding nine people had been arrested in connection with the bombing.

Davutoglu also said that a member of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – a militant branch of the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Kurdish political group – joined Neccar in crossing from Syria to Turkey and carrying out the attack. It said the attack was in retaliation to the military’s stepped up operations against the PKK.

Davutoglu called on the USA to end its co-operation with the YPG and list it as a terrorist group. “Turkey reserves the right to take any measure against the Syrian regime”. “And the ones – the groups that we’re supporting are actually not the same groups”, according to State Department spokesman Mark Toner.

The group is seen as a splinter that broke away from the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) more than a decade ago, though some security experts claim there are still links.

MSF calls for independent probe into deadly air attacks on hospital in Syria

Kurdish militant group TAK claims responsibility for Ankara bombing
 
 
  Categories: