Head of Grand National Assembly of Turkey Numan Kurtulmus (4th L), Leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Ozgur Ozel (2R) and relatives offer prayers next to the coffin of Cengiz Coskun during his funeral the day after they was killed in a bomb attack to the state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) building, in Ankara on October 24, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Outlawed Kurdish PKK militants on Friday (October 25, 2024) claimed the attack on a Turkish defence firm that killed five, with officials saying the perpetrators infiltrated from Syria and carried out a shooting and suicide attack.

The Turkish government said it had proof the PKK was behind Wednesday’s attack at a top defence firm near Ankara and hours later its warplanes bombed militant targets in Iraq and Syria.

The attack on state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) “was carried out by a team from the (PKK’s) Immortals Battalion,” the group said on Telegram.

It said the attack by a two PKK militants, a man and a woman, had been “planned for a long time”, denying any link to recent developments, a reference to the Turkish authorities apparent softening towards a negotiated solution to the decades-long conflict.

The PKK, which has waged an on-off insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, is designated as a terror group by Turkey and its Western allies.

In 2011 President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave his blessing to several backchannel peace efforts in a bid to resolve the so-called Kurdish problem but the fragile truce collapsed in 2015 in a fresh round of violence.

Since then, Erdogan’s AKP government along with its junior partner, the far-right MHP, has kept up military pressure on the Kurdish rebels.

On Tuesday (October 22, 2024), MHP’s leader sparked shockwaves by offering an olive branch to jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, suggesting he come to parliament to renounce terror and dissolve his movement.

A day later, Ocalan, who has been held in solitary confinement on a Turkish prison island since 1999 — received his first family visit since 2020.

His nephew, Omer Ocalan, a lawmaker for the main pro-Kurdish DEM party, confirmed the visit on X, saying the family had last seen him “on March 3, 2020”.

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And DEM party officials reportedly suggest Ocalan may tell the PKK to lay down its arms, as he did in a letter in 2013.

But the visit had only just ended when the Ankara attack began.

‘Heavy price’

Mr. Erdogan vowed there would be no let-up in the fight against the PKK, saying the overnight bombing campaign had made “the terrorists pay a very heavy price”, in comments quoted by state-run TRT television and other media.

He said the attackers came “through an infiltration from Syria”, and that one of them “blew herself up”, his remarks confirming media reports that what began as a shooting attack also included a suicide bombing.

A Syria war monitor said on Friday (0ctober 25, 2024) that Turkish drone strikes had killed 27 civilians in Syria in a 24-hour military escalation following the deadly attack.

Turkish forces had “dramatically escalated their aerial and ground attacks in north and east Syria”, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It said it documented 45 drone strikes and four by fighter jets targeting infrastructure including water and power networks and gas stations.

The Turkish army rejects claims it hits civilian targets.

Mr. Erdogan chaired a security meeting in Istanbul on Thursday (October 24, 2024) soon after he landed from Russia where he joined the BRICS summit of major emerging economy nations.