A female member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was one of two suspected perpetrators of a car bombing that killed 37 people in the Turkish capital, Ankara, security officials said yesterday.
Sunday’s attack, tearing through a crowded transport hub about 300m from the Turkish justice and interior ministries, was the second such strike at the administrative heart of the city in less than a month.
Evidence has been obtained that one of the bombers was a female member of the PKK who joined the militant group in 2013, the security officials told reporters.
PHOTO: AP
She was born in 1992 and came from the eastern Turkish city of Kars, they said.
Violence has spiraled in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast since a two-and-a-half-year ceasefire with the PKK collapsed in July last year. However, the militants — who say they are fighting for Kurdish autonomy — have largely focused attacks on security forces in southeastern towns, many of which have been under curfew.
Attacks in Ankara and in Istanbul over the past year, and the activity of the Islamic State group, as well as Kurdish fighters, have raised concerns among NATO allies who see Turkey’s stability as vital to the containment of violence across its borders in Syria and Iraq.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also eager to dispel any notion he is struggling to maintain security
“With the power of our state and wisdom of our people, we will dig up the roots of this terror network, which targets our unity and peace,” Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Twitter.
Turkish warplanes bombed camps belonging to the PKK in northern Iraq early yesterday, the army said.
A round-the-clock curfew was also imposed in the southeastern town of Sirnak in order to conduct operations against Kurdish militants there, the provincial governor’s office said.
Turkey’s government sees the unrest in its southeast as closely tied to the war in Syria, where a Kurdish militia has seized territory along the Turkish border as it battles Islamic State militants and rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The government fears those gains are stoking Kurdish separatist ambitions at home, saying that Syrian Kurdish fighters share deep ideological and operational ties with the PKK.
They also complicate relations with the US, which sees the Syrian Kurds as an important ally in battling the Islamic State group.
A police source said hours after the explosion that there appeared to have been two attackers, a man, and a woman whose severed hand was found 300m from the blast site.
The explosives were the same kind as those used in a Feb. 17 attack that killed 29 people, mostly soldiers, and the bomb had been packed with pellets and nails to cause maximum injury and damage, the source told reporters.
As part of a US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in neighboring Syria and Iraq, Turkey faces multiple security threats.
Islamic State militants have been blamed for at least four bomb attacks on Turkey since June last year, including a suicide bombing that killed 10 German tourists in the historic heart of Istanbul in January.
In its armed campaign in Turkey, the PKK has historically struck directly at security forces and says it does not target civilians. A direct claim of responsibility for Sunday’s bombing would indicate a major tactical shift.
The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) claimed responsibility for the previous car bombing, just a few blocks away, on Feb. 17. TAK said it has split from the PKK, although experts who study Kurdish militants said the two organizations are affiliated.
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