The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has claimed responsibility for an attack on the TUSAS security agency in Turkey that killed five people in Ankara on Friday, the group said in a statement.
Two attackers – a man and a woman – attacked the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TUSAS) headquarters on Wednesday with automatic rifles and explosives. Twenty-two others were injured.
The interior minister said the attacker was identified as a member of a Kurdish organization, and Turkey has since indicated that the PKK was responsible for the attack. Two people were killed in the attack.
Turkey’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Ahmet Yıldız, internationalized the issue and said that the information obtained showed that the terrorist attack was planned by the PKK and that the PKK had branches in Syria.
Turkey’s response
In response, Ankara launched ground and air strikes in Syria, killing 27 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Turkey’s defense ministry announced that 32 “targets” had been bombed, referring to the positions of the PKK and its allies in northern Iraq and Syria.
In the statement, “In accordance with our right to self-defense as enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, an air operation was conducted against terrorist targets in northern Iraq and Syria (…) and a total of 32 terrorist targets were successfully destroyed.”
He also said that the flight services will continue.
“In addition to residential areas, Turkish warplanes and unmanned aerial vehicles targeted bakeries, power stations, oil facilities and checkpoints of the (Kurdish) Internal Security Forces,” the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said in a statement to the US-backed autonomous regional government.
Proposal for PKK and Öcalan
The Turkish press linked the PKK attack to a proposal by far-right party leader and Erdogan’s government partner Devlet Bakceli that the group’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, could be released on parole if he renounced armed action and disbanded the group.
In fact, Turkish authorities on Wednesday allowed Ocalan to visit the island of Imrali in the Propontis, where he has been held for the past 25 years, for the first time in 43 months.
He was visited by his son-in-law, Omar Ocalan, and reportedly sent the message that if the conditions were right, he had the power to move the process from conflict and violence to a legal and political basis.
According to analysts, the PKK attack may have originated from the organization’s hardliners in an attempt to disband their operation and direct Ankara’s efforts to find peace with Ocalan.
Security has been beefed up at airports following the attack
Meanwhile, security measures have been stepped up at all airports in Turkey.
In particular, security measures at airports have been increased to an “orange” alert level. At two airports in Istanbul, entering and exiting vehicles are inspected while passenger IDs are checked.
Hence, travelers are advised to be on time at the airports in case of delays.