Turkish military shells Syrian Kurdish YPG positions

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) assisted with the attack, he said.

“This information will be given to all countries, primarily the five permanent members [of the United Nations Security Council]”, Mr Davutoglu said, once more underlining Turkey’s opposition to the YPG’s participation at UN-brokered Syria peace talks in Geneva.

“The government of Chad is very touched by this barbaric act… that hit the capital of this friendly country without any justification”, Communications Minister Moustapha Ali Alifey said.

A auto bomb exploded on Wednesday in Ankara, Turkey’s capital city, during rush hour at a busy intersection, near vehicles carrying military personnel. Northern Iraq is home to the majority of that country’s Kurdish population.

While these military proposals are ostensibly to go after IS and protect refugees, Turkey’s real motive is to check the Kurds.

A top PKK leader, Cemil Bayik, said his organization did not know who carried out the bombing. But the attack, he said, could be an answer to “massacres in Kurdistan”, referring to the Kurdish region spanning parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. “Those who conducted the attack will probably announce why soon”. Instead, Davutoglu attended a security meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other officials.

A handmade bomb detonated by remote control is believed to have been used in an attack on a Turkish military convoy in the mainly Kurdish southeast.

Turkish military is continuing to shell PYD positions in Syria’s Azaz district located in the northern countryside of Aleppo, Turkish security sources confirmed to Anadolu Agency Thursday. The vehicles were stopped at a traffic light, the military said.

Erdogan said that 20 of those killed were military personnel. Ambassadors to Germany and the Netherlands, as well as the head of the European Union delegation, also were invited. “Turkey reserves the right to take any measure against the Syrian regime”. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist organisation, causing friction with NATO ally Washington, which backs the group in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.

No group has claimed responsibility for the vehicle bomb, which comes amid a string of attacks in Turkey by Daesh, PKK and YPG terrorists. The US recognizes the PKK as a terrorist organization but not the PYD/YPG.

“We deny any involvement in this attack”, Saleh Muslim said. “All necessary measures will be taken against them”, Davutoglu said in a televised speech. It has been bombarding YPG positions in an effort to stop them taking the town of Azaz, the last stronghold of Turkish-backed Syrian rebels north of Aleppo before the Turkish frontier. Although they are also mostly Sunni Muslims, the Syrian Kurds are relatively secular-minded and their main militia, the YPG or People’s Defense Units, is on the far left, urging women’s equality and a socialist economy.

Turkish armed forces appear to have been the target of two attacks in as many days. A ceasefire in 2013 ended last July when Turkey launched air strikes against PKK camps in northern Iraq. The blast was the second deadly bombing in Ankara in four months. Its organizers and masterminds have to pay for what they’ve done.

“I guess that the detentions will not be limited to 14”, he added, “This process will conduce our friends in the global community to understand how tight the PYD and YPG’s [Peoples Protection Units] connection to the PKK is”.