Tunahan Turhan/SOPA Images/SIPAPRE/AP
Police officers in Ankara are standing guard after Sunday’s explosion.
Istanbul CNN –
The Turkish military carried out airstrikes on Kurdish militants in northern Iraq on Sunday, just hours after the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing in the capital in the latest assault in its nearly four-decade insurgency.
In a statement, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said its warplanes destroyed 20 PKK targets, including caves, bunkers, shelters and warehouses in the Metina, Hakurk, Kandil and Gara regions.
“Many terrorists were neutralized by using the maximum amount of domestic and national ammunition,” said the statement, which cited self-defense rights under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter to justify the attacks.
The PKK, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, had previously said it was behind Sunday’s explosion outside the Turkish Interior Ministry building that left one dead and two injured, the PKK reported PKK-affiliated Firat news agency reported.
The ministry said in a statement that two attackers murdered a civilian and stole his vehicle before the opening of parliament in Ankara. Two police officers reportedly suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
One attacker blew himself up and the other was “neutralized,” the ministry said.
At the crime scene, investigators found four different types of weapons, three hand grenades, a rocket launcher and C-4 explosives.
The ministry confirmed that at least one of the two attackers was a PKK member. The second attacker has not yet been identified, it said.
Ali Unal/AP
Turkish security forces cordon off an area after an explosion in Ankara on Sunday.
According to Minority Rights Group International, Kurds, who have no official homeland or country, are the largest minority in Turkey, making up between 15 and 20% of the population.
Parts of Kurdistan – a non-governmental region and one of the world’s largest stateless nations – are recognized by Iran, where Kordestan Province is located; and Iraq, site of the northern autonomous region known as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) or Iraqi Kurdistan.
Ankara says the PKK is training separatist fighters and launching attacks against Turkey from its bases in northern Iraq and Syria, where a PKK-linked Kurdish group controls large areas.
Terrorist attacks in Turkey became tragically common in the mid-to-late 2010s, as insecurity from war-torn Syria spread northward beyond the two countries’ shared border.
And in November last year, Ankara blamed the PKK for a bombing on a central pedestrian street in Istanbul that killed six people and injured dozens.
In recent years, Turkey has conducted a number of operations against the PKK domestically as well as cross-border operations in Syria.
In an address to lawmakers on Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed that Turkey would continue its fight against terrorism “until the last terrorist is eliminated at home and abroad.”
Sunday’s attack marked the “latest upsurge of terrorism” in the country, he added.