Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed a Syrian Kurdish militia fighter working with Kurdish militants inside Turkey for a suicide car bombing that killed 28 people in the capital, Ankara, and he vowed retaliation in both Syria and Iraq.
A car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses, as they waited at traffic lights near the armed forces’ headquarters, parliament and government buildings in the administrative heart of Ankara late on Wednesday.
Davutoglu said the attack was clear evidence that the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia that has been supported by the US in the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria, was a terrorist organization and that Turkey, a NATO member, expected cooperation from its allies in combating the group.
Photo: Reuters
Within hours, Turkish warplanes bombed bases in northern Iraq of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and which Davutoglu accused of collaborating in the car bombing.
Turkish armed forces would continue their shelling of recent days of YPG positions in northern Syria, Davutoglu said, promising that those responsible would “pay the price.”
“Yesterday’s attack was directly targeting Turkey and the perpetrator is the YPG and the divisive terrorist organization PKK. All necessary measures will be taken against them,” Davutoglu said in a televised speech.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan also said initial findings suggested the Syrian Kurdish militia and the PKK were behind the bombing, adding that 14 people had been detained.
The co-leader of the YPG’s political wing denied that the affiliated YPG perpetrated the Ankara bombing and said Turkey was using the attack to justify an escalation in fighting in northern Syria.
“We are completely refuting that ... Davutoglu is preparing for something else because they are shelling us as you know for the past week,” Saleh Muslim said by telephone.
The co-leader of the PKK umbrella group, Cemil Bayik, was quoted by the Firat news agency as saying he did not know who was responsible for the bombing.
However, the attack could be an answer to “massacres in Kurdistan,” he said, referring to the Kurdish region spanning parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
Davutoglu named the suicide bomber as Salih Necar, born in 1992 and from the Hasakah region of northern Syria, and said he was a member of the YPG.
A senior security official said the alleged bomber had entered Turkey from Syria in July 2014, although he may have crossed the border illegally multiple times before that, adding that he had had contact with the PKK and Syrian intelligence.
Davutoglu also accused the Syrian government of a hand in the Ankara bombing and warned Russia, whose air strikes in northern Syria have helped the YPG to advance, against using the Kurdish militant group against Turkey.
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