Wednesday’s bomb attack was carried out by a Syrian national working with Kurdish militants, Turkish PM alleges, as military convoy hit in south-east

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Turkey has blamed Wednesday’s car bomb attack on a military convoy in Ankara on Kurds based in Syria, as another explosion hit a convoy in the south-east.



The Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, alleged that Wednesday’s attack, which left 28 dead, was carried out by a Syrian Kurdish fighter with links to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish militia that has been supported by the US in the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) assisted with the attack, Davutoğlu said.

Turkey attacks: a timeline Read more

“We collected intelligence all night,” Davutoğlu told reporters in Ankara. “The perpetrators have been fully identified. The attack was carried out by YPG member Salih Necer, who came in from Syria.”



Fourteen people have been held in connection with the attack.

Davutoğlu said Turkish intelligence had established where the militants had crossed into Turkey and how their networks were organised.

“This information will be given to all countries, primarily the five permanent members [of the United Nations security council],” Davutoğlu said, once more underlining Turkey’s opposition to the YPG’s participation at UN-brokered Syria peace talks in Geneva.

“The evidence that shows that the YPG is a terrorist organisation will be given to all countries … Just as we don’t sit down with al-Qaida and Islamic State, we cannot sit down with the YPG either. Those that see Turkey’s enemy as their friend will lose Turkey’s friendship.”

The Turkish government has lashed out at its western allies, foremost the US, over their refusal to designate the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD) and its armed wing, the YPG, as a terrorist organisation.



The head of the PYD denied allegations that it or the YPG was involved. “We have never heard of this person Salih Necer,” Salih Muslim told Agence France-Presse. “These accusations are clearly related to Turkish attempts to intervene in Syria.”

Ankara bombing: blaming Kurds suits Erdoğan's political ends Read more

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said the evidence pointed to the Syrian Kurdish group. “Despite the fact that their leader says they have nothing to do with this, the information and documents obtained by our interior ministry and all our intelligence organisations shows that [the attack] was theirs,” he said.

On Thursday morning a bomb detonated by remote control hit security forces travelling in a military vehicle on a road linking Diyarbakır to the district of Lice. The military said six people died and one was seriously injured.

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 US and Russia to cease all hostilities towards the YPG in Syria.

Turkish military also conducted airstrikes against several PKK targets in northern Iraq.

Cemil Bayık, the leader of a Kurdish umbrella organisation that includes the PKK, said in an interview with the pro-Kurdish Firat News Agency that he did not know who was behind the attack in Ankara. But he suggested that Kurdish militants, angered by Turkish military operations in the country’s south-east, may have acted independently.

Security analyst and al-Monitor columnist Metin Gürcan said such an attack would set a dangerous precedent, as it would suggest “a sort-of Isis-style franchising, involving semi-independent Kurdish networks. It would be a sign of decentralisation of PKK violence – an attack not directly ordered by the organisation, and not claimed by them.”

Gürcan criticised the “toxic politics of polarisation” driven by the Turkish government, arguing that Erdoğan relied on this polarisation in order to secure the necessary majority for his project of an executive presidency. “The [Ankara] attack will further feed this deep [division that runs through] Turkish society, it will exacerbate the conflict that has become increasingly difficult to manage for the government.”

The bombing prompted Davutoğlu to scrap a planned trip to Brussels on Thursday to discuss Europe’s migrant crisis. Erdoğan also shelved a trip to Azerbaijan.



Wednesday’s car bomb detonated when a convoy of military buses carrying dozens of soldiers stopped at traffic lights in central Ankara, sparking panic and chaos. Plumes of smoke could be seen from all over the city rising from the scene, close to the headquarters of the Turkish military and the parliament.

Ankara has been on high alert since October, when 103 people were killed in a suicide attack on a crowd of peace activists, the bloodiest attack in the country’s modern history. Last month 11 people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the tourist heart of Turkey’s biggest city, Istanbul.

Those attacks were blamed on Islamic State, as were two other deadly bombings in the country’s Kurdish-dominated south-east in 2015.

Turkey is waging an all-out assault on the PKK, which has repeatedly attacked members of the security forces with roadside bombings on their convoys in the south-east.

The PKK launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984. It was initially fighting for Kurdish independence although now its aim is more focused on greater autonomy and rights for Turkey’s largest ethnic minority.

The banned ultra-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) has also staged a string of usually small-scale attacks in Istanbul over the past few months.