Turkey has scrambled fighter jets to attack Kurdish rebel targets, as security officials blamed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) for a car bombing that killed 37 people in Ankara on Sunday.
The military said 11 warplanes carried out airstrikes on 18 targets, including arms depots and PKK shelters in the mountainous Qandil and Gara regions in northern Iraq, where the PKK’s high command is based.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, vowed to defeat those responsible. “These attacks, which threaten our country’s integrity and our nation’s unity and solidarity, do not weaken our resolve in fighting terrorism but bolster our determination,” he said.
“Our people should not worry; the struggle against terrorism will for certain end in success and terrorism will be brought to its knees.”
The prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, said the investigation into the attack suggested PKK involvement.
“The source of the treacherous attack was found. The DNA testing is ongoing,” he said after a visit to hospitalised victims of Sunday’s bombing. “Eleven people have been taken into police custody, there are interesting links. There is very serious evidence that points to the separatist terror organisation.”
Officials told Reuters that evidence had been obtained suggesting that one of the bombers was a woman who joined the PKK in 2013. She was born in 1992 and was from the eastern Turkish city of Kars, they said. A security official later said that a male Turkish citizen with links to the militant group was a second suspect. There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.
Police said they had detained four people in the southern city of Şanlıurfa, near the Syrian border, after they established that the vehicle used in the attack had been bought from a car showroom there, according to the Anadolu news agency. They also carried out raids in several provinces, with 79 people taken into custody, 36 of them in the southern city of Adana, for suspected PKK membership.
Separately, 20,000 police officers and soldiers launched a large-scale security operation against Kurdish militants in the city of Yüksekova, close to the Iranian and Iraqi borders. A blanket curfew had earlier been issued for Yüksekova and Nusaybin, another city in the south-east. Large numbers of tanks and armoured vehicles were deployed to both tcities. Many residents have already fled their homes.
Another such curfew was set to start last night, at 11pm local time, in the town of Șırnak.
Human rights organisations have raised serious concerns over violations owing to the massive security operations, and said that scores of civilians had died in the crossfire. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the ongoing violence.
The renewed conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK has laid waste to entire towns and neighbourhoods in the south-east since the breakdown of a ceasefire last year.
The suicide bomb attack was the third such assault in the Turkish capital in five months. Last month a similar blast killed 29 people when a suicide bomber targeted military personnel, blocks away from the scene of Sunday’s attack. The militant group Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) claimed responsibility.
TAK was once linked to the PKK, Turkish officials as well as some security analysts say TAK still acts as a militant front of the PKK. Both TAK and the PKK say the relationship has been severed. The two groups are considered terrorist organisations by Turkey, the US and the EU.
The Turkish health minister, Mehmet Müezzinoğlu, said 71 people were in hospital following Sunday’s attack, 15 of whom were in a serious condition. The body of an attacker had been found at the scene, he added.
Reuters contributed to this report
