Turkey Arrests 14 Over Ankara Bombing; Leaders Blame Kurdish Groups

A Syrian national with links to Syrian Kurdish militia was the suicide bomber who killed at least 28 people in an attack targeting buses carrying military personnel, Turkey’s prime minister said Thursday.

Earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the UNSC states’ ambassadors will be summoned to the foreign ministry to be familiarized with facts proving that the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) are terrorist groups.

A bomb-laden vehicle caused the deadly powerful explosion during the evening rush hour, hitting military vehicles at an intersection.

The Syrian war itself is raging along Turkey’s southern border.

The leader of the main Syrian Kurdish group has denied that his group is behind the Turkey blasts and warns Ankara against taking Syria ground action. But the attack, he said, could be an answer to “massacres in Kurdistan”, referring to the Kurdish region spanning parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Turkish artillery in the south of the country shelled positions of Kurdish fighters in Syria for the fifth day in a row on Wednesday, despite calls from both the United States and Russian Federation to cease all hostilities towards the YPG in Syria. The site of the bomb attack, where military headquarters are near Parliament and government offices, has clearly demonstrated that the assailants targeted the military.

Cemil Bayik, the leader of a Kurdish umbrella organization that includes the PKK, told the pro-Kurdish Firat News agency that he did not know who was behind it. But he suggested that Kurdish militants, angered by Ankara’s military operations in southeastern Turkey, may have acted independently.

Authorities have detained 14 people in connection with the attacks and are trying to identify others.

The blast hit the armoured vehicle on the highway linking Diyarbakir, the largest city in the mainly Kurdish southeast, to the district of Lice. “The stance against the PYD has become a major bone of contention between allies USA and Turkey“. The deadliest came in October when a peace rally outside Ankara’s main train station killed 102 people.

The PKK and its offshoot YPG have become the usual suspects in the latest bombing attack on military convoys on Wednesday.

Turkey’s air force has been striking PKK positions in northern Iraq since a fragile two-and-a-half year-old peace process with the group collapsed in July, reigniting a fierce three-decade old conflict. It has been pressing its ally, the United States, to recognize the Syrian Kurdish forces as terrorists.

“Our determination to respond in kind against such attacks against our unity and future from outside and inside is even more strengthened through such attacks”, Erdogan said in a statement after Wednesday’s attacks.

The government meanwhile, imposed a gag order which bans media organizations from broadcasting or printing graphic images of the dead or injured from the scene of the explosion and also banned reporting on any details of the investigation.

The PKK has in the last months killed dozens of soldiers, often in roadside bombing attacks against military vehicles.