Tensions high in Turkey after Ankara bombing blamed on Syrian Kurds

SYRIAN GOVERNMENT: Ties between Ankara and Damascus – marked by a personal friendship between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar Assad – soured following Syria’s anti-opposition crackdown in 2011. The United States has said it is not in a position to confirm or deny Turkey’s charge.

Tensions were high in Turkey on Thursday as the government blamed Kurdish militant groups at home and in neighbouring Syria for a deadly suicide bombing in Ankara, vowing strong retaliation. The United States has also given military protection to the Kurds, in Iraq since the First Gulf War in 1991 and more recently in Syria.

Turkey, which has insisted the YPG was behind the attack, has so far arrested 20 people in connection with the bombing.

He added that his country “reserves the right to take any measure against the Syrian regime” after Turkish warplanes hit buildings used by the YPG and its political wing, the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) overnight. Ankara has allowed the US military and others to launch airstrikes against the militants from Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. Turkey has also reinforced its 900-km long border with Syria with concrete fencing.

Tareq Abu Zeid, a rebel spokesman fighting with the SDF in northern Aleppo said the allied forces had “all the possible options to respond to the Turkish shelling of their positions in Syria”, in an interview with Syria Direct this past Saturday.

The Security Council is to hold an emergency meeting at 2000 GMT at Moscow’s request, to address Turkey’s proposal for ground forces to be deployed in Syria, the Russian foreign ministry said in Moscow.

Turkish officials say the TAK is a front for PKK attacks on civilian targets, but the PKK claims TAK is a splinter group over which it has no control. Pentagon officials said at the time one had fallen into the hands of Islamic State.

Both the TAK and the PKK are classified as terrorist groups by Turkey and the US.

“It has with certainty been revealed that this attack was carried out by members of the terrorist organisation in Turkey in cooperation with a YPG member who infiltrated from Syria”, Davutoglu told reporters.

The TAK’s claim of the bomber’s identity is in contradiction to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu who said the bomber was a Syrian national YPG operative.

Two soldiers and a police officer were killed on Friday in a PKK attack in the Sur district of the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, parts of which have been under round-the-clock curfew since December, the armed forces said.