Within hours of the Ankara attack, Turkish warplanes bombed bases in northern Iraq of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against Turkey and which Davutoglu accused of collaborating in the vehicle bombing.
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The attack happened while a high-level security meeting, hosted by Turkey’s President, was taking place at the Presidential Palace.
TAK has in the past said its relationship with PKK militants has been severed.
Anadolu Agency said authorities have now taken 17 people into custody as part of the investigation into Wednesday’s attack, which targeted buses carrying military personnel.
TAK says deadly blast was in response to policies of Turkish government and that it would continue with its attacks.
“It has been determined with certainty that this attack was carried out by members of the separatist terror organisation together with a member of the YPG who infiltrated from Syria”, Mr Davutoglu said, identifying the bomber as a Syrian man named Salih Neccar who was born in 1992.
Davutoglu on Saturday again criticised USA support for Kurdish fighters in Syria, and appealed to Washington to “show solidarity with Turkey in its fight against terrorism”.
The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) has directly linked the TAK to the PKK, calling it the “urban terrorist wing” of the cult-like Marxist-inspired group, which has been officially designated a terrorist group by the United States and some of its allies. Turkey blamed the Syrian militia group as well as Turkey’s own Kurdish rebels for Wednesday’s bomb attack.
The TAK is a little-known group which has nonetheless risen to prominence in recent months after it claimed firing mortar shells on Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport on December 23.
Turkey considers the PKK, PYD and YPG to be terrorist outfits, while the US designates only the PKK as a terrorist organization and regards the YPG as a “reliable partner” in northern Syria.
On Thursday, however, both Arab and Kurdish components of the SDF denied involvement in the Ankara bombing, while warning against its possible use by Turkish forces as a justification for escalating military operations in Syria.
Earlier in February, Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala said that a military operation against the Kurdish militants in the country’s southeastern district of Cizre had been completed.
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Six Turkish security force members were also killed on Thursday, as a bomb detonated by remote control hit a military convoy in southeast Turkey, according to Reuters.
