Turkey labels both groups as terrorist organizations and is pressuring allies to stop backing the Syrian Kurdish militia group.
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“If Turkey were to launch full-throttle battle against the PYD, this would nearly certainly hurt U.S.-Turkish ties, which is exactly what the PKK would want to achieve from the attack in Ankara”, Cagaptay said.
Six Turkish security force members were killed and one soldier was seriously wounded in a blast in the mainly Kurdish southeast, the armed forces said in a statement on Thursday.
The rush hour car-bomb attack on Wednesday evening targeting buses carrying military personnel killed 28 people and injured dozens of others as Turkey grapples with an array of issues, including renewed fighting with the Kurdish rebels, the threat from Islamic State militants and the Syria refugee crisis.
Davutoglu said the attack was the result of a collaboration between “the PKK together with a person (Necar) who sneaked into Turkey from Syria”. The Turkish jets attacked PKK positions in northern Iraq’s Haftanin region, hitting the rebels, which it said included a number of senior PKK leaders.
The route allowed the rebels to avoid crossing Kurdish or regime-held territory to reach northern Aleppo, where the SDF and pro-government forces have recently advanced.
The Kurds, an ethnic minority spread in the intersecting parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, have long sought an independent state.
A top PKK leader, Cemil Bayik, said his organization did not know who carried out the bombing.
“I’m not going to speak to specific evidence that others may be looking at or be talking about while, as far as we know, an investigation is ongoing”, said State Department spokesman John Kirby. “Those who conducted the attack will probably announce why soon”.
“Fourteen people have been detained”, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday, according to the Anadalou Agency. A YPG leader, moreover, later denied responsibility for the blast and warned Ankara against launching a ground incursion into Syria. The source added that the shelling came in response to cross-border fire.
Anadolu Agency said Thursday that the rebels detonated a bomb on a road linking the cities of Diyarbakir and Bingol as a military vehicle was passing by.
Erdogan said that 20 of those killed were military personnel.
Ambassadors from the Netherlands, Germany and delegations from the European Union and the United Nations were also invited to the briefing.
Earlier this month, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation defense ministers chose to intensify intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance at the Turkish-Syrian border.
Turkey considers the YPG an off-shoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is fighting Turkish security forces in the country’s Kurdish areas. The U.S. already lists the PKK as a terror group.
Turkey is concerned that the YPG is trying to create an autonomous region in northern Syria on its southern border. The fighting has displaced tens of thousands in the southeast as Turkey carried out large-scale military operations against PKK-linked militants.
“NATO stands in strong solidarity with Turkey. Even the best of friends aren’t going to agree on everything”, Kirby said.
“The bombing will pose a greater challenge to the U.S. policy of differentiating the PYD from the [terrorist] PKK”, Erdemir said.
Ahmet Davutoglu said Thursday that Turkey’s Kurdish rebels collaborated with the Syrian man to carry out the attack.
Erdogan insisted that evidence obtained by Turkish authorities pointed to the Syrian Kurdish group. “It must be known that Turkey will not refrain from using its right to self-defense at all times”.
The U.S. has rejected Turkish pressure to brand those Kurdish groups as terrorists.
The prospect of increased Turkish actions against Syrian Kurdish forces also threatens to raise tensions further between Ankara and Moscow, which has provided air cover to the YPG.
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“Despite all the provocations and attacks by the Turkish army on the border of Rojava [Syrian Kurdish area] we have not responded and acted in a historic responsible manner”, the statement said. Its organizers and masterminds have to pay for what they’ve done.
