The PKK terrorist group claimed responsibility Friday for an attack in Ankara that left five dead and 22 wounded, amid a tense political debate in Turkey over whether to start a new dialogue with the armed organisation’s leader, Abdullah Öcalan, to end the violence.
‘The act of sacrifice at the TAI campus in Ankara at around 15:30 on Wednesday was carried out by a group from the Immortal Battalion,’ the PKK said in a statement posted on Telegram and echoed by several media outlets in Turkey, adding that the attack had been planned months ago. The statement comes a day after Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya confirmed that the two terrorists who carried out the attack were PKK members, prompting the Turkish military to carry out intensive bombing raids – which were still continuing last night – against PKK/YPG bases in northern Iraq and Syria.
On his return from Russia, where he had attended the BRICS summit in Kazan, Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan chaired a high-security meeting on the premises of former Atatürk Airport in Istanbul, where security measures have been stepped up at the city’s two international airports.
The two attackers, who have been identified as Ali Örek (aka Rojger) and Mine Sevjin Alçiçek, arrived at the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI/TUSAŞ) facility in a stolen taxi after killing their driver, who was given military honours yesterday before his body was taken to his funeral.
Armed with assault rifles, they detonated an explosive device at the entrance to the facility and subsequently opened fire, killing four other people, including a security guard and a mechanical engineer.
Peace talks with Öcalan?
The attack came just a day after the chairman of Turkey’s nationalist MHP party, Devlet Bahçeli, made a controversial proposal by suggesting that PKK leader Abdüllah Öcalan, who has been serving a life sentence since 1999 on the island prison of İmralı, could be granted parole in exchange for renouncing violence and ordering the PKK to disband, going so far as to say that Öcalan could ‘come to the Turkish parliament and give a speech’ to announce that the group surrenders its weapons.
Hours before the attack, Öcalan himself had received in prison the first visit from a family member in years, saying ‘If the conditions are right, I have the theoretical and practical power to move this process from the level of conflict and violence to the political and legal level’, Öcalan was quoted as saying by Ömer Öcalan, nephew of the PKK leader and a member of the Kurdish nationalist DEM party.
The unusual proposal by Bahçeli, Erdoğan’s political ally and known precisely for his tough stance towards the PKK terrorist group and Kurdish separatism, was met with severe criticism from the opposition but not from Erdoğan himself, which according to some analysts suggested a possible change in the Turkish government’s policy towards the terrorist organisation and even the start of new peace negotiations. The last attempt in this direction ended in failure in 2015, after the PKK resumed its attacks in the midst of the negotiation process.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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