Kurdish militant group PKK claim deadly Ankara attack

PKK claims attack on Turkish defense firm, sparking military response and renewed conflict in Syria and Iraq

Outlawed Kurdish PKK militants on Friday (October 25, 2024) claimed the attack on a Turkish defence firm that killed five, with officials saying the perpetrators infiltrated from Syria and carried out a shooting and suicide attack.

The Turkish government said it had proof the PKK was behind Wednesday's attack at a top defence firm near Ankara and hours later its warplanes bombed militant targets in Iraq and Syria.

The attack on state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) "was carried out by a team from the (PKK's) Immortals Battalion," the group said on Telegram.

It said the attack by a two PKK militants, a man and a woman, had been "planned for a long time", denying any link to recent developments, a reference to the Turkish authorities apparent softening towards a negotiated solution to the decades-long conflict.

The PKK, which has waged an on-off insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, is designated as a terror group by Turkey and its Western allies.

In 2011 President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave his blessing to several backchannel peace efforts in a bid to resolve the so-called Kurdish problem but the fragile truce collapsed in 2015 in a fresh round of violence.

Since then, Erdogan's AKP government along with its junior partner, the far-right MHP, has kept up military pressure on the Kurdish rebels.