The attack occurred hours before Parliament was set to reopen after its three-month summer recess with an address by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There was swift retribution from Turkey on Sunday, with 20 airstrikes targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, after a group linked to it said it was behind a suicide bomb attack in Ankara, writes Euronews.
A suicide bomber detonated an explosive device in the heart of the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Sunday morning. A second assailant was killed in a shootout with police, the interior minister said.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party which is labelled a “terrorist” organisation by the EU and US and Turkey, has accepted responsibility, according to a new website close to the group. It has carried out an insurgency since 1984 demanding greater linguistic, cultural, and political rights for the Kurdish minority.
Two police officers were slightly injured during the attack near an entrance to the Ministry of Interior Affairs, Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The assailants arrived at the scene inside a light commercial vehicle.
“Our heroic police officers, through their intuition, resisted the terrorists as soon as they got out of the vehicle,” Yerlikaya later told reporters. “One of them blew himself up while the other one was shot in the head before he had a chance to blow himself up.”
“Our fight against terrorism, their collaborators, the (drug) dealers, gangs and organized crime organizations will continue with determination,” he said.
In a hard-hitting speech at the opening of parliament three hours after the attack, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, made a distinctly unilateral statement with a message for Turkey’s neighbours in Europe.
