According to NBC News, the attack at the U.S. Consulate began just hours after the announcement of the U.S. military that a contingent of six F-16 fighter jets have landed at Incirlik Air Base in the southern part of Turkey to participate in the battle against ISIS militants.
Advertisement
Parallel to the renewed attacks against the PKK has been a more aggressive approach by Turkey toward the Islamic State. No one else was wounded and it was not clear what happened to the second attacker.
Four policemen were also killed in Sirnak when their armored vehicle was attacked with a roadside bomb, the Dogan news agency reported. The suicide bombing was blamed on ISIL. The blast set in motion a new cycle of violence.
The airstrikes coincided with nationwide raids inside Turkey and serious confrontations between Kurdish activists and the Turkish police. The attacks come amid the rising tension taking place between the Turkish government and Kurdish militants.
The larger concern, though, about Turkey’s military re-engagement with the Kurds is that it distracts attention away from the main coalition effort in Syria and Iraq: namely, defeating Isil. Within days, Turkey launched its first airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria.
Turkey has been roiled by increasing violence between the military and the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The PKK formed in the 1970s and began combating the Turkish government in 1984, demanding an independent Kurdish state within Turkey.
One PKK militant was also killed in a clash in Bingol province, the local governor’s office said.
Broadcaster CNN Turk said two gunmen and a senior officer from the police bomb squad, who rushed to the scene, were killed in a firefight that continued into Monday morning in the district on the Asian side of the Bosphorus waterway dividing Istanbul.
In the Sirnak province, at least four police officers were killed by an explosion on a road. “A member of the occupying forces has been punished in the suicide attack“, it stated, vowing the assaults would proceed.
But the Istanbul police attack was also claimed by a smaller leftist group, the People’s Defence Units (HSB), on its Twitter feed.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the consulate would be open for business on Tuesday.
A far-left group behind a 2013 suicide bombing of the US embassy in Ankara claimed responsibility for the gun attack at the consulate.
“Hatice Asik is a revolutionary who rioted against American tyranny”, said a statement posted on Halkin Sesi, or The People’s Voice-a website affiliated with the DHKP-C. Take our country quiz.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the BBC in an interview a key goal of the Turkey-US cooperation would be the creation of a “safe area” inside Syria, free of Isis fighters, where some of the 1.8 million Syrian refugees hosted by Turkey could go home.
Advertisement
Their air force did carry out a handful of attacks on ISIL targets, but it has focused its attention on Kurdish strongholds in northern Iraq. “We couldn’t danger having U.S. forces hit by Turkish bombs”.
