The main accusations against the Kurdish groups came today from Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who said, “YPG is a pawn of the Syrian regime and the regime is directly responsible for the Ankara attack”.
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28 people were killed in auto bomb blast targeting military vehicles in Ankara. In response to USA demands to stop shelling the group, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that Washington should pick a side.
A vehicle laden with explosives exploded next to military buses as they waited at traffic lights near Turkey’s armed forces’ headquarters, parliament and government buildings in Ankara on Wednesday evening. “They don’t consider Turkey as an enemy”.
Russian Federation has promised to protect Kurdish fighters in Syria in case of a ground offensive by Turkey, a move that would lead to a “big war”, the Syrian group’s envoy to Moscow said in an interview on Wednesday. It said that despite Turkey’s “provocations and attacks” on Kurdish areas in Syria, it has never retaliated against Turkey.
Turkey has in the last months waged an all-out assault on the PKK, which has repeatedly attacked members of the security forces with roadside bombings on their convoys in the southeast. Syrian government forces are working in tandem with the Syrian Kurds to flush out Islamic State and rebels from the country’s north, he said in an interview.
Davutoglu said he also held embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad responsible because Assad and his government have acknowledged on a number of occasions that they provide arms to the YPG.
Turkish security officials claimed on Thursday that the 24-year-old Syrian-born terrorist entered Turkey from the ISIS-controlled province of Deir ez-Zor.
Last October, ISIS killed 102 in coordinated suicide bomb attacks in Ankara while PKK was blamed for other acts of terror.
The situation is complicated by Syrian Kurdish militia groups in Iraq and Syria who have been fighting Islamic State, or ISIL, militants alongside the United States and its allies. The fighting has displaced tens of thousands in the area as Turkey carried out large-scale military operations against PKK-linked militants.
Turkey had been pressing the U.S.in recent weeks to cut off its support to the Kurdish Syrian militias that Ankara regards as terrorists due to their affiliation with the PKK.
Eleven people, all German tourists, were also killed on January 16 when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the tourist heart of Istanbul.
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Turkey, fearing the YPG’s success could motivate Kurdish separatists across the border in Turkey, has been increasingly forceful in demanding the Kurds vacate the area, punctuating the demand with artillery fire, and allowing battered rebel forces to regroup on Turkish soil before re-entering Syria to fight the Kurds. The Syrian Kurds are in position to cut off vital supply lines to Aleppo, where the opposition groups are holed up, and their territorial gains may also set an example for Kurds seeking autonomy inside Turkey. The claim couldn’t be verified.
