Turkey: Syrian man behind deadly Ankara car bomb attack

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party militant group, or PKK, supported the attack, Davutoglu said. The YPG has emerged as one of the more effective militias fighting in Syria, raising concerns in Turkey that it might pose a long-term threat to its territory.

The attack happened while a high-level security meeting, hosted by Turkey’s President, was taking place at the Presidential Palace.

The co-chief of the PKK umbrella group, Cemil Bayik, stated he didn’t know who was accountable however the assault might be a response to “massacres in Kurdistan”, referring to the Kurdish area masking elements of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

The statement said YPG is not engaged in any military activity against neighboring states or other forces. Separate security sources in the southeast, however, said they believed Islamic State militants may have been behind it.

Commenting on the attack, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said it killed 28 and injured 61. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Edrogan vowed to retaliate.

Turkish artillery shelled positions of Kurdish fighters in Syria for the fifth day in a row on Wednesday.

Concerns over Turkey’s shelling of the YPG over the weekend prompted the United States and France to urge restraint, and Syria to call on the U.N. Security Council it to intervene. Following the attack, Turkish intelligence prohibited spreading information related to the blast and to Salih Necar on social networks, which it also did after the terror attack near the Sultan Ahmed in January. At the same time, it ended a truce with the PKK and resumed attacks against the group, opening a second front.

Authorities have detained nine people in connection with the attack, he added.

Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party leader Saleh Muslim on Thursday denied Turkish allegations that the group was involved in the Ankara bombing.

The vehicle bomb detonated when a convoy of military buses carrying dozens of soldiers stopped at traffic lights in central Ankara, sparking panic and chaos.

Turkey is alarmed that the YPG now controls much of the Syrian border with Turkey and is essentially creating a state within a state. Syrian government forces are working in tandem with the Syrian Kurds to flush out Islamic State and rebels from the country’s north, he said in an interview.

The banned ultra-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) has also staged a string of usually small-scale attacks in Istanbul over the last few months. But Ankara’s priorities are fighting the Kurds and defending against terrorism.

The Syrian war itself is raging along Turkey’s southern border.

“This game of terror can come back and hit them like a boomerang”, he said.

The YPG militia, regarded by Ankara as a hostile insurgent force deeply linked to the PKK, has taken advantage in recent weeks of a major Syrian army offensive around the northern city of Aleppo, backed by Russian air strikes, to seize ground from Syrian rebels near the Turkish border.