The attack was the latest in a series of bombings in the past year mostly blamed on Islamic State militants. Turkey has been battling the PKK for decades.
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Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says the attack was carried out by a Syrian who belongs to a Syrian Kurdish militia group, in collaboration with the outlawed PKK.
The head of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) on Thursday denied Turkish allegations that the group was involved in a bombing in Ankara that killed 28 people.
The attack came as Turkey had been pressing the U.S.to cut off its support to the Kurdish Syrian militias that Turkey regards as terrorists due to their affiliation with the PKK. Turkey considers it a terror group and indistinguishable from the PKK.
He also said 60 to 70 militants had been killed in the overnight air raids targeting rebel positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
The Kurds, an ethnic minority spread in the intersecting parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, have long sought an independent state.
“We have conducted no military attack and the ones who know it the best are the Turkish army and AKP government”. “It is possible that those who did it will soon explain why they did it”. Turkey’s leaders are vowing to retaliate. In October, suicide bombings blamed on IS targeted a peace rally outside the main train station in Ankara, killing 102 people in Turkey’s deadliest attack in years.
A vehicle laden with explosives was detonated in the administrative heart of the capital next to military buses as they waited at traffic lights near the Turkish General Staff’s headquarters, Parliament and government buildings late on Wednesday.
At least two military vehicles caught fire and dozens of ambulances were sent to the scene.
“There is no cause that can justify such a barbaric and inhuman act”, Plevneliev said, adding that he was confident in the professionalism of the Turkish investigating authorities and hoped that very soon the organisers and perpetrators of the bombing would be apprehended and punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Erdogan said that 20 of those killed were military personnel. Any Turkish escalation against the PYD is likely to further strain ties with the U.S.
Turkey is alarmed that the YPG now controls much of the Syrian border with Turkey and is essentially creating a state within a state.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack as of yet.
“We call on all the countries to take a clear stance against those terrorist organisations…either stand by the side of Turkey as a state or take side with terrorists”. It has been bombarding YPG positions in an effort to stop them taking the town of Azaz, the last stronghold of Turkish-backed Syrian rebels north of Aleppo before the Turkish frontier. The country says the YPG and the PKK are both terrorist organizations.
The Syrian war, meanwhile, is raging along Turkey’s southern border.
However, the YPG, which has strong links to the PKK, has been fighting the Islamic State terror group, alongside the US.
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“Our determination to respond in kind against such attacks against our unity and future from outside and inside is even more strengthened through such attacks”, Erdogan said in a statement after the attacks. “It must be known that Turkey will not refrain from using its right to self-defense at all times”.
