The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has claimed responsibility for an attack last week at a Turkish defense firm near Ankara, the capital city, which killed five and injured 22. The PKK, in a post to Telegram, referred to the attack as “an act of sacrifice” conducted by its “immortals battalion.”.
In fact, during the raid on the Turkish Aerospace Industries-also known as TUSAS-Wednesday, an attacker blew himself up and sprayed automatic weapons fire at the facility. These are specialized in designing and manufacturing civilian and military aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other miscellaneous defense systems.
Reacting against the attack, the Turkish Ministry of National Defence said that airstrikes in northern Iraq continued, hitting 34 PKK targets over two nights, raiding their infrastructure in such places as Hakurk, Gara, Qandil, and Sinjar.
This was a military action following a high-level security meeting presided over by the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Istanbul. In this session, key ministers and military leaders were present. While the Turkish government issued a statement claiming that it had evidence linking the PKK to the attack on TUSAS, the group named as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union, it received denials from the PKK.
With Sunday’s attack, Turkish forces had, since the bombing, hit 29 targets across northern Iraq and 18 targets in north Syria. Erdogan said the bombers had entered Turkey from Syria and repeated a pledge to “destroy terrorism at its source.”
After the attacks, Erdogan emphasized that a military response made deep cuts in the PKK. According to different reports, as many as 120 PKK sites have been hit so far by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation in Iraq and Syria since the incident of the Ankara attack.
However, that escalation has caused civilian casualties, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights putting fatalities at 27 civilians in northern and eastern Syria from Turkish drone strikes within a single day. The Turkish military denied any accusations of targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure in its military operations.
Moreover, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced the arrest of 176 suspects for alleged links with the PKK after operations in many parts of the country. The fighting, which dates back to the 1980s, has centered on the demands of the PKK for greater autonomy in southeastern Turkey and has killed tens of thousands of people.
