Turkey presses ahead with cross-border shelling

The president of the UN General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, on Thursday strongly condemned Wednesday’s deadly terrorist bomb attack in Ankara, the capital of Turkey.

Erdogan said he was saddened by the West’s refusal to call the PYD and YPG a terrorist group and would explain to Obama by phone how weapons provided by the United States had aided them.

A Kurdish militant group has claimed the auto bomb attack in Ankara which killed 28 people and threatened new attacks targeting tourist areas.

At least 102 people were killed in a bombing in Ankara on October 10 previous year that was carried out under orders from Islamic State in Syria, according to the prosecutor’s office at the time. Turkish leaders said they have identified the perpetrator of the attack as a Syrian national. “The region has seen fierce fighting between the army and Kurdish militants from the PKK”.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which killed military personnel and civilians, although suspicion had immediately fallen on the PKK or the Islamic State group.

The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, despite severing its ties with the PKK, has also been labeled a terrorist organization by the US and Turkey.

However, it now appears that TAK’s claim of responsibility has debunked Turkey’s prior assumptions.

In recent weeks, Syrian government forces captured dozens of villages and towns in different parts of Syria while the predominantly Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces evicted opposition fighters and militants from areas near the border with Turkey in Aleppo province.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has called on Turkey and Kurdish YPG forces to show “reciporcal restraint” in northern Syria. He continues the bombing of the Kurdish population, as the Kurds could pose a serious threat to him, as he believes.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia and certain Western European countries want troops deployed on the ground in Syria, as Russian-backed advances have exacerbated tensions on the Turkey-Syria border.

But Erdogan refused to be drawn into a debate with Kirby, who has angered Turkey by repeatedly defending United States support of the YPG in the last days.

“The PYD has deployed just two kilometers from Azaz since Tuesday and today they have started to carry out their attack to seize the city”, the rebel commander reportedly said. The district became the venue of bloody fighting after a ceasefire between the Turkish government and PKK disintegrated in July 2015.