Turkey insists Syrian Kurdish militia behind Ankara attack

But the Turkish government insists that the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia were behind the attack, in a joint operation with the PKK.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier accused the United States of making conflicting statements about the Syrian Kurdish militia.

Ongoing US support for the YPG has recently strained relations with Turkey.

Davutoglu said the bomber was a Syrian national who according to press reports slipped into Turkey along with refugees from Syria’s civil war.

PYD co-chairman Salih Muslim Muhammad denied his group’s involvement with the incident while “completely refuting” Turkey’s claim, and PKK leader Cemil Bayık reportedly said that “We don’t know who carried out this act”, although he suggested independent Kurdish militants may have planned the attack.

Since the 1980s, the Turkish state and Kurdish guerrilla fighters from the PKK have been locked in a bloody conflict, which saw up to 40,000 killed over three decades. Davutoglu said the artillery fire would continue and promised that those responsible for the Ankara attack would “pay the price”.

A roadside bomb detonated Thursday in Diyarbakir Province struck a military convoy, killing six people and seriously injuring one. “All necessary measures will be taken against them”, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a televised speech.

Also on Saturday, Erdoğan’s spokesperson İbrahim Kalın said the U.S. administration can not see the whole picture on Syria.

Turkish president and his American counterpart spoke over the phone for over an hour to discuss a host of issues, including Wednesday’s Ankara bombing and the ongoing Syrian crisis, Turkish and US official sources said Friday night. A spokesman for the State Department said on Thursday that Washington was not in a position to confirm or deny Turkey’s charge that the YPG was behind the Ankara bombing. But a Turkey-based Kurdish splinter group has claimed responsibility for the bombing and threatened more attacks. But Davutoglu stated that YPG might be involved in the attack as it has repeatedly called TAK a “proxy” that claimed the responsibility for the bombing to protect the reputation of the Syrian Kurdish militia.

The SDF has become the most effective force fighting the Islamic State group. “Will [the United States] shift their view on YPG?”

Turkey has in the last months waged an all-out assault on the PKK, which launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, fighting for greater autonomy and rights for the country’s largest ethnic minority.