Turkey 'rejects' US condolences over Istanbul attack, here's why

Istanbul: Turkey on Monday rejected US condolences over the death of six people in a bomb attack in Istanbul that Ankara blamed on an outlawed Kurdish militant group.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan often accuses Washington of supplying weapons to Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, deemed as “terrorists” by Ankara.

“We do not accept the US embassy’s message of condolences. We reject it,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in televised comments.

Turkish police quoted by private NTV television, said the chief suspect is a Syrian woman working for Kurdish militants.

“According to our findings, the PKK terrorist organisation is responsible,” Soylu said.

The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, has kept up a deadly insurgency for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkey since the 1980s.

PKK-affiliated Kurdish militants control most of northeastern Syria.

“We believe that the order for the attack was given from Kobane,” he said, referring to a city in Syria near the Turkish border.

It was also the site of a 2015 battle between Kurdish militants and Islamic State jihadists, who were driven out after more than four months of fighting.

Regularly targeted by Turkish military operations, the PKK has been at the heart of a tussle between Sweden and Turkey, which has blocked Stockholm’s bid to join NATO since May, accusing it of leniency towards the group.

With inputs from AFP

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