Turkey vows action against enemies
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TURKEY’S leaders have blamed enemies that include Kurdish militant groups in Turkey and Syria as well as the Syrian government, for a suicide bombing in Ankara and vowed strong retaliation against the perpetrators, threatening to further complicate the Syria conflict.
The rush hour car-bomb attack on Wednesday evening that targeted buses carrying military personnel killed 28 people and injured dozens of others as Turkey grapples with an array of issues, including renewed fighting with the Kurdish rebels, the threat from Islamic State militants and the Syria refugee crisis. The blast was the second deadly bombing in Ankara in four months.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters that a Syrian national with links to Syrian Kurdish militia carried out the attack in collaboration with Turkey’s own outlawed Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Davutoglu also accused Syria’s government of responsibility for allegedly backing the Syrian Kurdish militia.
The attack came as Turkey had been pressing the United States to cut off support to the Kurdish Syrian militias, who Turkey regards as terrorists because of their affiliation with the PKK. The US already lists the PKK as a terror group. But Washington relies heavily on the Syrian Democratic Union Party, or PYD, and its military wing, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, in the battle against the Islamic State group and has rejected Turkish pressure.
Turkish artillery has been shelling PYD and YPG positions along its border in Syria, apparently concerned by a series of recent gains by militias in the area. Any Turkish escalation against the PYD is likely to further strain ties with the US.
“It has been determined with certainty that this attack was carried out by members of the separatist terror organization together with a member of the YPG who infiltrated from Syria,” Davutoglu said, identifying the bomber as Syrian national Salih Neccar, born in 1992.
Neccar, whose name sounds Kurdish, was born in the mostly-Kurdish populated Syrian town of Amouda, near the Turkish border, according to Davutoglu.
At least 14 people have been arrested since Wednesday in connection with the attacks, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, adding that the numbers of suspects detained was likely to increase.
The leader of the main Syrian Kurdish group, Salih Muslim, denied his group was behind the Ankara attack in an interview with The Associated Press and warned Turkey against taking ground action in Syria.
Erdogan insisted that evidence obtained by the Turkish authorities pointed to the 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 organizations shows that (the attack) was theirs,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan said the attack would show the international community the strong links that exist between the PKK and the Syrian Kurdish militias.
“Those who directly or indirectly back an organization that is the enemy of Turkey risk losing the title of being a friend of Turkey,” Davutoglu said in an apparent reference to Washington.
“It is out of the question for us to excuse a terror organization that threatens the capital of our country.”
Paul Levin, head of the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies, told reporters: “It will be interesting to see how the United States reacts because they view the YPG as an ally.”
Yesterday, the ambassadors of the five permanent UN Security Council member states were invited separately to Turkey’s foreign ministry and were briefed on the attack, a ministry official said. The ambassadors of Germany and the Netherlands as well as the head of the European Union delegation to Turkey were also invited.
The five permanent members are Britain, China, France, Russia and the US.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Turkey in renewed fighting following the collapse of the peace process in July and tens of thousands have been displaced in large-scale military operations against PKK-linked militants in several urban districts.
Six soldiers were killed in southeastern Turkey yesterday after PKK rebels detonated a bomb on a road linking the cities of Diyarbakir and Bingol, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
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