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Turkish forces said they killed 59 militants across dozens of air raids in Iraq and Syria after they blamed a Kurdish separatist group for this week’s attack on a state aerospace company in the country’s capital.
The strikes followed a deadly assault on a Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) campus on the outskirts of Ankara on Wednesday, security officials said. Five people were killed and 22 injured in the incident, with two assailants also “neutralised”, according to interior minister Ali Yerlikaya.
Yerlikaya said on Thursday that the attackers — one man and one woman — were members of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a separatist group that has fought a four-decade-long insurgency in Turkey. State media said they had used guns and explosives in their assault.
“We are determined to scrape the treacherous terrorist organisation, which takes aim at the unity, solidarity and peace of our country, from our lands,” Yerlikaya said.
Turkish forces hit 47 targets in northern Iraq and northern Syria in raids that started on Wednesday evening, the defence ministry said, adding that two of the militants killed were high-level operatives. Security officials said they hit “strategic locations” including military, intelligence, infrastructure facilities and ammunition depots across several operations.
Turkey’s strikes targeted the PKK, which is based in a mountainous region in northern Iraq and is considered by the US, EU and UK to be a terrorist organisation. While the PKK has not claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack, it has been behind several high-profile incidents, including a suicide bombing at a government building in Ankara just over a year ago.
Ankara’s overnight raids on Wednesday also hit facilities controlled by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syria-based Kurdish movement with close ties to the PKK, Turkish security officials said.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish force dominated by the YPG, said Turkey’s raids in Syria had killed 12 civilians, including two children, and injured more than two dozen people. The SDF is backed by the US to help fight Isis in Syria.
Wednesday’s attack in Ankara followed surprise comments on Tuesday by Devlet Bahçeli, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ultranationalist ally, that jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan could potentially be given a chance at parole if he disbanded the group and ends its insurgency. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in related violence since the early 1980s.
Authorities also allowed Öcalan’s nephew to visit him at an Istanbul island prison on Wednesday, in what was described as his first family visit in “many years”.
These interventions had prompted speculation that Erdoğan and his allies could push for fresh peace talks with the PKK after a previous process failed in 2015. It was not immediately clear how Wednesday’s incident would affect the apparent overture from Bahçeli, who has typically been one of Turkey’s harshest critics of Öcalan and the PKK.
“If the TAI strike is deemed a lone-wolf attack by a PKK offshoot that was not condoned by the leadership or is linked to another organisation, a renewed peace push would still be possible,” said Emre Peker, Europe director at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
Additional reporting by Funja Güler in Ankara