A bomb detonated by remote control killed seven Turkish security force members travelling in a military vehicle in southeast Turkey on Thursday, security sources said, a day after a auto bomb attack in the capital Ankara killed 28 people.
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Davutoglu said that nine people have been detained in connection with the attack.
Turkey’s military said that its jets struck Kurdish rebel positions across the border in northern Iraq in retaliation.
Turkish forensic teams inspect scene of Wednesday’s explosion in Ankara, after a auto bombing that targeted military vehicles.
“This attack has very clearly targeted our esteemed nation as a whole and was carried out in a vile, dishonorable, treacherous and insidious way”, said Kurtulmus.
The Turkish military said it was targeting “top figures” from the PKK in Thursday’s airstrikes.
“People started to run in all directions in panic as soon as we heard a strong explosion”.
According to preliminary information, three military and one private vehicles were hit in the attack and among the casualties are both servicemen and civilians. Turkey’s leaders are vowing to retaliate.
The Turkish prime minister cancelled his planned visit to Brussels where he was scheduled to attend a EU-Turkey meeting on the migrant crisis. Erdogan also shelved a trip to Azerbaijan.
Images on social media showed the charred wreckage of at least two buses and a auto.
Turkish police threw a security cordon around the area.
Erdogan, Turkey’s president, said Wednesday’s attack demonstrated that there are strong links between the PKK and Syrian Kurd fighters.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also condemned Wednesday’s bombing, saying there can be no justification for such horrific acts.
The political arm of the YPG, denied involvement in the bombing, while a senior member of the PKK said he did not know who was responsible.
He also says that the blast in Ankara that killed around 28 people is similar to bombings carried out in the past by the Islamic State group.
The attack was the latest in a series of bombings in the past year mostly blamed on Islamic State militants.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters that a Syrian national with links to Syrian Kurdish militia carried out the attack in collaboration with Turkey’s own outlawed Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
Davutoglu said the attack was clear evidence that the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia that has been supported by the United States in the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria, was a terrorist organization and that Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member, expected cooperation from its allies in combating the group.
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The Turkish military condemned what it described as a terrorist attack on the buses as they waited at traffic lights.
