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On October 4, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan that Kurdish forces’ facilities and infrastructure in Syria and Iraq are “legitimate targets” following a suicide bombing attack in Ankara, pledging an “extremely clear” retaliation.
“From now on, all infrastructure, superstructure and energy facilities of the PKK and YPG, especially in Iraq and Syria, are the legitimate targets of our security forces, armed forces and intelligence units,” Fidan said, using acronyms for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its Syrian offshoot the People’s Protection Units (YPG).
Fidan said Turkish authorities had established that the two gunmen who carried out the attack on Sunday were trained in Syria and had traveled to Turkey from there.
“I recommend from here that third parties stay away from the facilities and people belonging to the PKK and the YPG,” the minister said in an apparent reference to United States and Russian troops in Syria.
The bombing, which left the two gunmen dead and two police officers wounded, struck outside the General Directorate of Security headquarters on October 1 and was the first to be claimed by the PKK inside Ankara since 2016.
The Turkish military carried out airstrikes in northern Iraq and staged several raids across the country in the days following the attack, detaining dozens suspected of alleged links to the PKK.
Iraqi Defence Minister Thabet al-Abbasi would visit Ankara on October 5 to meet with Turkish counterpart Yasar Guler, after Iraq denounced Ankara’s attacks on its territory.
In Syria, Turkish media reported on October 4 the MIT intelligence agency had conducted an operation in northeastern Syria killing one of the suspected masterminds of an Istanbul bombing that claimed the lives of six people in November of last year.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that an “intelligence official” in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is backed by the U.S. and led by the YPG, was killed in a bombing on October 3.
In addition, a wave of Turkish airstrikes hit three different bases and facilities of the SDF in northeastern Syria on October 3 and 4.
Turkey is apparently using the bombing in Ankara as a pretext to expand operations against Kurdish forces in both Iraq and Syria.
Last year, Turkey threatened to launch another invasion into northeastern Syria on more than one occasion. However, opposition from both the U.S. and Russia forced Ankara to put its plans on halt. Now, the Turkish military could make such a move.
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turkey is desperately looking for excuses to meddle in syrian and iraqi internal adfairs. there is no way in hell that the ankara attack was carried out by pkk.
the pkk accepted it that they did it on all their websites.
stop the ottomans or they will attack everyone they are emboldened after their historic victory over arthsakh/ karabakh. the turks are so proud to have driven 100.000 people out of their homes and were not punished for it. so they want more.