Turkey strikes Kurds in Iraq after Ankara bombing

Hours after Kurdish militants claimed responsibility for the first bomb attack in the capital Ankara in years, Turkey claimed to have launched airstrikes on militant targets in northern Iraq and apprehended suspects in Istanbul overnight. In Ankara, on Sunday morning, two assailants killed each other and two police officers when a device they were carrying exploded near government offices. The militant organisation known as the PKK, also known as the Kurdistan Workers Party, took ownership. The PKK’s tunnels, shelters, and depots in Iraq’s Metina, Hakurk, Qandil, and Gara districts were among the 20 targets hit by airstrikes, according to the defence ministry, which claimed that several militants were “neutralized”—a phrase typically used to signify slain. In recent years, Turkey has intensified military operations against the PKK in northern Iraq. Turkey, the US, and the EU have all recognised the PKK as a terrorist organisation. In 1984, it began an insurgency in southeast Turkey, which has resulted in the deaths of almost 40,000 people. CCTV images acquired by Reuters on Sunday showed a car pulling up in front of the interior ministry’s main entrance in Ankara and one of its occupants hurriedly approaching the structure before being hit by an explosion. According to the interior ministry, security personnel killed one attacker and the bomb killed the other. In an attack timed to the reopening of the assembly, the blast shook a neighbourhood that houses ministries and the parliament. According to a statement from the interior ministry, one of the attackers was recognised as a PKK member, while efforts to identify the other attacker were ongoing. The statement also stated that numerous firearms, grenades, explosives, and a rocket launcher had been confiscated at the scene. According to the report, the terrorists kidnapped the car and murdered its driver in Kayseri, 260 kilometres (161 miles) southeast of Ankara. According to Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya, 20 persons have already been seized in raids targeting PKK-linked suspects in Istanbul and abroad. According to Yerlikaya on messaging platform X, those arrested include district chairmen of a sizable pro-Kurdish political organisation and a provincial Kurdish spokesman who is suspected of assisting and housing PKK members. The website for ANF News, which is connected to the PKK, cited the militant group as saying in a statement on Sunday that a team from its Immortals Battalion unit had carried out the attack. The bombing on Ataturk Boulevard was the first in Ankara since a wave of attacks in Turkish cities in 2016 that were carried out by Kurdish militants, the Islamic State, and other organisations. Turkish military forces have engaged in a number of significant combat operations against Kurdish insurgents in northern Iraq and northern Syria in recent years. On Sunday, President Tayyip Erdogan addressed parliament, saying that Turkey would continue to pursue its goal of creating a 30-km (19-mile) wide “security strip” outside its southern borders with Syria and Iraq and that “new steps” on this issue would eventually be taken. At a reception in parliament, Defence Minister Yasar Guler said that Erdogan did not mention “anything new” when asked if his remarks hinted at future large-scale cross-border operations into Syria. (With agency inputs)