Turkey is bent on retaliation against the Kurdish militants blamed for Wednesday’s bombing in Ankara, a development likely to further complicate the fight against the Islamic State radical group and efforts to handle the flood of Syrian refugees.
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He made the extraordinary comments after Kurdish militants apparently carried out a deadly auto bombing in the country’s capital on Wednesday in which 28 people including six Turkish soldiers were killed.
Turkey insists that a YPG member, Salih Nejar, carried out the bombing in Ankara that killed 28 military personnel and civilians on Wednesday.
“The Turkish population, regardless of how polarised it is on domestic issues, on the Kurdish issue they are united…that the Kurdish groups fighting Turkey should be dealt with [using] force”, Elshayyal said.
Bulent Aliriza, a Turkey expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that few had heard of TAK before December 2015, when the group said it was responsible for a mortar attack at an airport in Istanbul that killed one and injured one.
He added he would speak to US President Barack Obama by phone later Friday to warn him over “the weapons support they (the United States) give to those organisations”, referring to the PYD and YPG.
“It has been revealed that a YPG member who infiltrated from Syria with members of the separatist terror organization conducted this attack”, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said at the time, according to CNN.
Turkey fears the Syrian Kurds want to carve out an autonomous region across the border in northern Syria stretching from the Iraqi border nearly to the Mediterranean.
Hours after the attack, Turkey’s air force launched new strikes on PKK targets in northern Iraq, acting on intelligence that there were dozens of fighters including top rebel leaders in the area, the army said.
US State Department spokesman John Kirby said Thursday it was still an “open question” who had carried out the Ankara attack. The latest suspects are believed to be linked to the PKK, it said. Maintaining this line, Davutoglu said, “Those who directly or indirectly support a group hostile to Turkey will risk losing their status as a friend”.
Turkey has been hit by a series of attacks in recent months including its worst terror attack in modern history in October previous year. Turkey’s assertions that Syrian Kurdish fighters are to blame for the deadly blast have been greeted with scepticism from the United States, causing a rare and increasingly acrimonious split between the key North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies.
Davutoglu said the attack was the result of a collaboration between “the PKK together with a person (Necar) who sneaked into Turkey from Syria”.
Davutoglu said 12 people were detained in connection with the attack.
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“Yesterday’s attack was directly targeting Turkey and the perpetrator is the YPG and the divisive terrorist organization PKK”.
