Turkey’s Grand National Assembly head Numan Kurtulmus (4th L), main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Ozgur Özel (2nd R) and relatives next to the coffin of Cengiz Coskun during his funeral the day after his assassination. Prayed. In a bomb attack on the state-owned Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) building in Ankara on October 24, 2024. Photo courtesy: AFP
Banned Kurdish PKK militants claimed on Friday (October 25, 2024) Attack on a Turkish defense company in which five people were killedOfficials said the perpetrators infiltrated from Syria and carried out the shootings and suicide attacks.
The Turkish government said it had evidence the PKK was behind an attack on a top defense company near Ankara on Wednesday, hours after its warplanes bombed militant targets in Iraq and Syria.
“The attack on state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI)” was carried out by a team from (the PKK’s) Immortals Battalion, the group said on Telegram.
It said the attack by two PKK militants, a man and a woman, had been “planned for a long time”, denying any connection to recent developments, saying it was the result of a decades-long negotiated settlement. There was a reference to the Turkish authorities’ apparent leniency towards Turkey. Confrontation.
The PKK, which has waged a sustained insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, is designated as a terrorist group by Türkiye and its Western allies.
In 2011 President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave his blessing to several backchannel peace efforts to resolve the so-called Kurdish problem, but the fragile ceasefire broke down in a new round of violence in 2015.
Since then, Erdogan’s AKP government, together with its junior ally, the far-right MHP, has maintained military pressure on Kurdish rebels.
On Tuesday (October 22, 2024), the MHP leader surprised everyone by offering an olive branch. PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was jailedHe suggested that he should come to Parliament, give up terrorism and dissolve his movement.
A day later, Ocalan – who has been held in solitary confinement on a Turkish prison island since 1999 – met for his first family visit since 2020.
His nephew, Ömer Öcalan, a lawmaker with the main pro-Kurdish DEM party, confirmed the visit on X, saying the family last saw him “on March 3, 2020”.
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And DEM party officials have reportedly suggested that Ocalan could ask the PKK to lay down their weapons, as he did in a letter in 2013.
But the trip had just ended when the attack on Ankara began.
‘Heavy price’
Mr Erdogan vowed there would be no let up in the fight against the PKK, in comments quoted by state TRT television and other media that the overnight bombing campaign had caused “the terrorists to pay a very heavy price”.
He said the attackers had “infiltrated from Syria” and that one of them had “blown himself up”, his comments confirming media reports that what started as a shooting attack also included a suicide bombing.
27 civilians were killed in Syria by Turkish drone strikes in a 24-hour military escalation after the deadly attack, the Syria war monitor said on Friday (Oct 0, 2024).
Turkish forces have “dramatically increased their air and ground attacks in north and east Syria”, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
It said it had documented 45 drone strikes targeting infrastructure, including water and electricity networks and gas stations, and four strikes by fighter jets.
The Turkish military rejects claims that it targets civilian targets.
Mr Erdogan chaired a security meeting in Istanbul on Thursday (October 24, 2024) shortly after landing from Russia, where he attended the BRICS summit of major emerging economy countries.
published – October 25, 2024 04:41 PM IST