Category Archives: PKK

A sense of instability settles over Turkey as conflict with Kurds flares

The New York Times reports: Nationalist and pro-government throngs filled the streets of Istanbul and Ankara for two nights last week, chanting “God is great” as they stormed a prominent newspaper and set fire to the offices of a Kurdish political party.

Turkey’s economy, long an emerging market darling, has cooled, and the value of the Turkish lira slips by the day. Cruise ships have stopped docking in Istanbul, and many residents avoid the subway because of bomb threats.

A sense of unease is spreading in Turkey as the decades-old conflict flares between Kurdish militants and Turkish security forces in the volatile southeast. Fears are growing that the country could return to the dark days of the 1990s, when the conflict was at its height.

The upheaval in major cities has prompted Turks, especially Kurds, to share pictures on social media comparing their own cities to ravaged areas in Syria.

In recent years, Turkey has sought to influence and shape the Middle East, portraying itself as everything the region is not: democratic, prosperous and safe. But economic and political instability are deepening before the interim government holds a snap election in November — the country’s third national poll in a little over a year. [Continue reading…]

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Can Turkey pull back from brink of civil conflict?

Amberin Zaman writes: “Turkey is on the brink of a civil war.” This is how Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish bloc in the Turkish parliament, the Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP), chillingly described the spiraling violence that has engulfed Turkey after a two-year cease-fire between rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish army ended in July.

While both sides continue to blame the other for the demise of what promised to be the most hopeful attempt yet at ending the 31-year conflict, the news coming out of Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeastern region suggests that Demirtas’ rhetoric may not be entirely overblown. Eric S. Edelman, the former US ambassador to Turkey, went as far as to predict in an interview with Al-Monitor that Turkey might even “be sucked into the vortex swirling around Iraq and Syria,” unless the prevailing political dynamics are reversed.

In the southeastern town of Cizre, a city of around 120,000 where Kurdish nationalism pulses forcefully, the Interior Ministry said that 30 people have died in clashes with the security forces since the army moved in over a week ago with tanks and heavy artillery to flush out the PKK’s radical youth wing known as the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDGH). [Continue reading…]

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In shadow of Erdogan, Turkey’s AKP re-elects Davutoglu leader

Reuters reports: Turkey’s ruling AK Party re-elected Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as its chairman at a congress on Saturday where the longest shadow was cast by a politician who, officially at least, is no longer a member: President Tayyip Erdogan.

Although Erdogan did not appear in person – as president he is supposed to refrain from party politics – many of his loyalists were named to executive committees, something Davutoglu had hoped to avoid, according to some party officials.

Turkey’s most popular and divisive politician in recent memory, Erdogan faces budding discontent from inside the movement he founded, officials say. His drive to secure an absolute majority for the AKP has pushed it toward a November snap election that could again leave the party in stalemate. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey hits 64 PKK targets in new Iraq air strikes

AFP reports: Turkish warplanes struck 64 outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in overnight raids on northern Iraq, dropping 80 bombs, according to reports on Sept. 11.

At least 60 PKK militants were killed in the strikes, carried out by 21 Turkish F-16 and F-4 warplanes, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported, quoting security sources.

The toll could not be verified independently. The strikes, which ran from late Sept. 10 to dawn Sept. 11, are the latest in a relentless air campaign aimed at crippling the PKK, which has staged a string of attacks in Turkey in recent weeks. [Continue reading…]

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Kurdish militants promise Erdogan ‘payback in blood’

The National reports: As the sun drops in this town on Turkey’s border with Syria, young Kurdish men pull black balaclavas over their faces, load their Kalashnikovs with a click and leave the courtyards and homes they were resting in for the streets.

At the entrances of residential neighbourhoods here, roads are cut with sandbagged barricades and trenches filled with dirty, stagnant water. Sheets, blankets and tarps are strung up overhead to protect against Turkish government snipers.

On quiet days, children play on the barricades with simple toy guns fashioned out of plastic pipes. But at night, these barriers become the domain of the young fighters of the YDG-H, a local militia affiliated with Turkey’s main Kurdish nationalist guerrilla group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Towns like Cizre, Silopi and Sirnak in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority south-east are in open revolt today, with militants fighting against a government they say has oppressed the country’s Kurds for too long. [Continue reading…]

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The implications of PKK-Turkish state violence

Aaron Stein writes: Members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) executed two police officers in Urfa on July 22, purportedly in retaliation for an Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) inspired suicide bombing of a leftist meeting in the border town of Suruç. In response, Turkey struck PKK bases in Iraqi Kurdistan and southeastern Turkey. This prompted a sharp increase in PKK-Turkish state violence, which has resulted in at least 113 Turkish security personnel deaths and hundreds of PKK fighters killed since July 20. The conflict has escalated in the past week, with the PKK killing thirty-nine Turkish soldiers and police and Ankara sanctioning a cross-border raid into Iraqi Kurdistan.

This violence marks the end of a two-year ceasefire between the PKK and Turkey, prompting both sides to use violence to force the other to return to peace talks. The PKK says it will return to the talks only after the government meets its demands to formalize the negotiations, including political autonomy inside Turkey and freedom for the group’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan. Ankara has said that it will continue striking PKK targets until the group withdraws from Turkish territory.

These events resemble PKK-Turkish clashes between 2009 and 2012, when the breakdown of peace talks resulted in at least 920 casualties, according to the International Crisis Group. However, the spillover from the Syrian conflict has altered the political dynamics that previously pushed the two parties to begin peace negotiations. [Continue reading…]

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The bell tolls for Turkey and the PKK

Aaron Stein and Noah Blaser write: Nearly two months after renewed fighting between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Turkish security forces dashed hopes for an historic ceasefire, a deadly cycle of violence gripped Turkey’s Kurdish southeast, recalling the darkest days of the three-decade-long conflict.

But two deadly attacks by the PKK have recently seen the government pledge to escalate the conflict further, raising alarm before scheduled national elections on November 1.

On Sunday, 16 Turkish soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack – the deadliest strike yet in tit-for-tat violence that has killed 113 security officers and scores of civilians since July. That attack was followed by the death of at least 10 police officers in an improvised explosive device attack near the small town of Igdir on Tuesday.

Riding a wave of national anger that saw attacks on Kurdish businesses and political parties this week, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced the government’s intent to “wipe out” the PKK fighters.

Already, there is fighting inside many Kurdish-majority cities in Turkey’s southeast. On Sunday, Turkey’s pro-government media reported that Turkey’s military would respond to the attacks by deploying 5,000 police and military personnel to each of Turkey’s 20 most restive, pro-PKK towns and cities. [Continue reading…]

AFP reports: An angry crowd on Tuesday attacked the Ankara headquarters of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party, in a night of nationalist-tinged violence across the country, reports and officials said.

Dozens of nationalist protesters marched on the the headquarters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Ankara, throwing stones and ripping down the sign outside, pictures broadcast by the CNN-Turk channel showed. [Continue reading…]

Today’s Zaman reports: Cutting short a trip to a number of European Union countries after the news broke that 16 Turkish soldiers had been killed in an attack by the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Dağlıca area of Hakkari province on Sunday afternoon, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş called on Turks and Kurds to join forces to bring an end to the violence in Turkey and said that “peace will win at the end” after arriving at İstanbul Atatürk Airport on Monday.

Speaking to journalists upon his arrival, Demirtaş said the death of the 16 soldiers had saddened millions of people in Turkey and that the country mourns the deaths of all members of the security forces who are killed. Demirtaş also called on all Turkish nationals not to break their brotherhood, saying that peace was the best option for everyone. [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, The Independent reports: Growing numbers of young Iraqi Kurds are joining the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), despite the breakdown of the rebel group’s ceasefire with the Turkish government, which has unleashed repeated air strikes against its bases in northern Iraq.

The PKK is considered a terrorist group by the US and the EU as well as by Turkey, but young Kurds say they want to join its fighters in the battle against Isis – partly out of frustration at the perceived failings of their own government in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. Young Kurds appear to be undeterred by the risk of attack by Turkish forces – which sent ground troops into northern Iraq without Kurdish permission for the first time since 2011, in what was described as a “short-term” operation to hunt down Kurdish rebels.

Two battalions from Turkey’s special forces were said by officials to be in “hot pursuit” of those involved in a roadside bomb attack that killed 16 soldiers on Sunday. A further roadside bomb blamed on the PKK killed 14 police officers in eastern Turkey on Tuesday. [Continue reading…]

Burak Kadercan writes: Put simply, ethnic tensions are rising and [Turkey’s President] Erdogan plays an important role in their escalation (or, could have done more to keep a lid on them), but he is not the sole driver of the crisis. We are looking at a multi-player game of chicken where different actors are speeding toward each other with no intention to step on the brakes. Erdogan is driving the largest vehicle, but it takes more than one driver to cause a pileup.

Turkey’s Kurdish question is no longer a domestic affair. In fact, thanks to the rise of the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia and an organic affiliate of PKK, what happens in Syria will have direct implications for the future of the Kurdish question in Turkey. Universally championed as a capable and willing fighting force against ISIL, the YPG is gaining ground not only in Syria, but also in the hearts of many in the international community. [Continue reading…]

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Is Turkey’s president dragging his country to war for votes?

The Daily Beast reports: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is betting that increased pressure on Kurdish rebels in southeast Anatolia will be a vote-getter in snap elections less than two months away.

But a flare-up of Kurdish rebel attacks that have inflicted the heaviest losses on Turkish soldiers in years has Turks wondering whether Erdogan is dragging the country to war to suit his own political needs.

So devastating was the shock of the latest attack by rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) near the Turkish border with Iraq on Sunday that the government and the military waited more than 24 hours before revealing that 16 soldiers had died. It was the highest death toll for the Turkish army in a single combat event since 2011.

Fighters from the PKK, a rebel group designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and Europe, attacked a military convoy in the town of Daglica and blew up a number of military vehicles with roadside bombs. The well-connected security analyst Metin Gurcan said on Twitter that 500 to 600 rebels attacked the soldiers, while bad weather prevented Turkish attack helicopters from helping the encircled troops. The PKK said at least 31 soldiers were killed. [Continue reading…]

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Even as it worked for peace, the PKK prepared for war with Turkey

Aliza Marcus writes: In February, Kurdish politicians held a joint press conference with Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan to announce a new plan for the rebel group to renounce its armed struggle while the government made democratic reforms. Erdogan quickly disavowed any deal.

“The cease-fire didn’t end in July; Turkey ended it long before,” [Cemil] Bayik [the de facto commander of PKK forces] said. “We are in favor of negotiations, but until that happens, we will continue the war if that’s what Turkey wants.”

Bayik’s reputation wasn’t built in combat — in the past, he was primarily responsible for running the group’s training academy in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and then its rearguard bases in northern Iraq — but he has a reputation for having a keen grasp of what it takes to maintain the group’s unity and focus on its twin goals of freedom for [PKK leader, Abdullah] Ocalan and self-rule for the Kurds. As his armed guards patrolled just out of sight, he laid out PKK demands for resuming the cease-fire.

“A cease-fire needs to be agreed on by both sides, and we need a public statement from Turkey that they are ready for dialogue,” added Bayik.

In other words, there won’t be any more unilateral cease-fires — even with de facto government agreement, as was the case in 2013. The PKK also wants a monitoring committee to ensure both sides are doing what they need to under any new cease-fire plan, and the group wants to be able to meet with Ocalan, who is held on Imrali island prison, in the Sea of Marmara, with access tightly controlled by the state.

Bayik, who wore a small pin with Ocalan’s image on his shirt, insisted that the PKK leader’s imprisonment shouldn’t be a barrier to direct talks with senior PKK officials. “These are technical issues,” Bayik said, “let them first accept that Ocalan can meet with the PKK’s leadership and then we can work out how.”

Bayik has reason to be confident. The PKK spent the past two years preparing for war, even as it was working for peace.The PKK spent the past two years preparing for war, even as it was working for peace. The group’s planned withdrawal from Turkey, which was promised by Ocalan as part of the 2013 cease-fire, was halted when rebels saw that Turkish soldiers were taking over the abandoned positions and building new, heavily fortified mountain outposts. The PKK sent its forces and weapons back in, and worked to expand its political dominance over the region through local, pro-PKK institutions. A quasi-civilian youth militia was organized and armed.

The PKK’s situation has also improved internationally, despite being labeled by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization. Its Syrian affiliate, known as the YPG, is working closely with the U.S. military in the battle against the so-called Islamic State in northern Syria. In northern Iraq, Kurdistan government officials say they want the PKK to leave their mountain camps, but rebels were key in helping Iraqi Kurds push back the jihadi assaults last year in Makhmour and around Mount Sinjar. In some areas, like Kirkuk, PKK rebels are still stationed in case of attacks by the Islamic State. [Continue reading…]

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Erdogan’s war backfires

Kadri Gursel writes: Turkey is heading to snap elections Nov. 1 after a coalition or minority government could not be formed in the wake of the June 7 elections that ended the parliamentary majority of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Under constitutional rules, a cross-party interim government, which is yet to be formed, will rule the country until the elections.

The pre-election environment this time is distinctly different from earlier ones. For the first time in 13 years of AKP rule, Turkish elections will be held against the backdrop of violent confrontations between government forces and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The era of nonhostility since fall 2012 ended July 24 with massive Turkish air raids on PKK targets in the Qandil region of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Reports indicate close to 60 members of the security forces were killed in PKK attacks from that date until Aug. 22. On the other side, the official Anatolia News Agency reported Aug. 22 that 812 PKK militants had been killed since July 22 in both Turkey and Iraq. [Continue reading…]

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As Turkey targets militants, war grips Kurdish lands once again

The New York Times reports: Across the Kurdish lands of southeast Turkey, a bitter war that had long been stilled by a truce has suddenly come roaring back, threatening to undo a hard-won economic turnaround here and adding a new battlefield to a region already consumed by chaos.

Cafes in this city that usually stay open until midnight now close at dusk. Jails are filling, once again, with Kurdish activists and officials accused of supporting terrorism. Residents say they are stocking up on weapons, just in case.

In the mountains, Kurdish guerrillas hastily set up vehicle checkpoints and then dissolve into the rugged terrain in a game of cat and mouse with Turkish soldiers. In the countryside, burned and mangled vehicles blight a landscape blackened by forest fires set by the Turkish Army — a tactic that destroys militant hide-outs but also apple and cherry orchards and stocks of feed for villagers’ cows and goats.

“It shouldn’t be like this,” said Kudbettin Ersoy, 66, who sells watermelons here from a wooden cart. “I was hopeful that peace would come and the blood would stop flowing. We are all citizens of this country.” [Continue reading…]

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Turkey jails five mayors in Kurdish southeast over ‘self-rule’ claims

AFP reports: Turkish courts on Sunday remanded in custody five mayors from the Kurdish-dominated southeast on charges of seeking to destroy national unity by allegedly supporting calls for regional self-rule, reports said.

The investigation comes as Turkey carries out its biggest operation in years against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants who have responded by tearing up a 2013 ceasefire and staging daily attacks against the security forces.

A court in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir placed under arrest the co-mayors of the city’s central Sur district, Seyid Narin and Fatma Sik Barut, the official Anatolia news agency reported. [Continue reading…]

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Kurds fighting ISIS enraged at Turkey over brutal killing of female fighter

Vice News reports: As photos of the naked and bloodied corpse of a female Kurdish militant recently trended on Twitter, women’s rights groups in Turkey reeled at an act of sexualized torture allegedly committed by Turkish police, who also allegedly leaked the images.

The pro-Kurdish group Save Kobane identified the body as Kevser Elturk, known by her nom de guerre Ekin Van. Elturk was a commander in the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), an organization that has fought an armed campaign for a independent Kurdish state since 1984 in the area where Turkey, Syria, and Iraq meet, and which has recently been instrumental in repelling advances in the region by Islamic State (IS) militants. Turkey, NATO, and the United States have classified the PKK a terrorist organization.

Elturk was killed in clashes with Turkish security forces near the town of Varto in eastern Mus Province on August 10. The images of her remains and a description provided by those who later prepared her body for burial indicate that she was stripped of her uniform, dragged by the neck with a rope through town, and abandoned in the town square. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey and the Kurdish corridor: Why ISIS survives

Joseph V. Micallef writes: On July 21, 2014 IS militants announced that all Kurdish inhabitants had to leave Tal Abyad or they would be killed. Thousands of the town’s inhabitants, including Turkmen and Sunni Arab families, promptly fled. Islamic State militants systematically looted the abandoned homes and resettled displaced Arab refugees from the surrounding region.

A year later, on June 15, 2015, the town was recaptured by a combination of YPG, Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces and a variety of Arab militias operating under the umbrella of the Burkan al-Furat (The Euphrates Volcano), the YPG-FSA “joint operations room”, supported by air power from the U.S. and its coalition partners. Following the battle, U.S. officials praised YPG troops as being the most reliable of the ground forces working with the U.S. to roll back the Islamic State. The victory was seen as striking proof of how the combination of overwhelming American air power and effective and reliable boots on the ground could decisively defeat Islamic State forces.

The capture of Tal Abyad had another consequence. By combining Kurdish control of the Kobani and Jazeera cantons it created a “Kurdish corridor” extending from Iraqi Kurdistan all the way to the city of Kobani in north-central Syria. It thus linked up two of the three current autonomous Kurdish zones in Syria, in the process forming the nucleus of, what the Turkish government of President Recep Erdogan fears, will, potentially, be a Kurdish controlled zone that could someday serve as the core of an autonomous Kurdish state. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. shelves its $500M Syrian rebel army — sees Syrian Kurds as a more reliable fighting partner

The Daily Beast reports: The Obama administration is still publicly counting on a $500 million rebel army to beat ISIS in Syria. But privately, the Pentagon brass long ago moved past its own proxy force, The Daily Beast has learned. They’ve found another group to fight the self-proclaimed Islamic State instead.

In recent weeks, the handful of fighters in the administration-backed rebel army — the so-called “New Syrian Force” — have been killed, kidnapped, or fallen off the proverbial radar. But the Pentagon maintained a brave face, even after these 54 fighters (out of what was supposed to be a total of 15,000) were decimated by Islamist attacks. “We continue to see volunteers want to be a part of this program,” Air Force Colonel Pat Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, told reporters Friday.

It’s a public stance that has left many in the administration and in the defense establishment scratching their heads.

“I don’t understand why we are still training, other than to inoculate criticism. … [The administration] cannot admit it is a complete disaster,” said one senior defense adviser familiar with the U.S. approach. Even after the U.S.-trained fighters vanished, “there was no receptivity to new ideas.”

But what Ryder didn’t say is that, in the eyes of the administration, a better force had emerged — already trained, competent, organized — that posed little risk of abandoning the fight or worse yet, switching sides. They are the Syrian Kurdish militia — the Popular Protection Units or YPG, by their Kurdish initials. And they have successfully wrestled Syrian territory out of ISIS’s hands.

“We knew it would be a challenge but we didn’t expect them to confront the fight they did,” said a second senior defense official, referring to the New Syrian Force. On the other hand, “the YPG is the most effective fighting force in Syria.”

According to one group, the YPG has so far reclaimed at least 11 villages from ISIS, including in the Syrian city of Kobani, one of the biggest victories in the year-long campaign. And in June, the YPG regained control of the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad, cutting off a key ISIS conduit to weapons and supplies. Like the New Syrian Force, the YPG can call in coalition airstrikes as needed.

Along with hoping nascent Arab fighters can take on ISIS, the U.S. is now keen to work alongside as many as 50,000 proven Kurdish fighters. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey is waging a two-front war. Some worry it’s only making things worse

The New York Times reports: The Turkish deal with the United States sets up an “ISIS-free” bombardment zone along a 60-mile strip of the border region [of Syria] that features another exclusion: At Turkey’s request, it is also explicitly a zone free of the Kurdish militia, even though the Kurds had begun advancing toward the area to start battling the Islamic State there.

Despite cooperating with American forces for months, the Syrian Kurds are now starting to worry that their success might not outweigh Turkey’s importance to the United States.

“There is only one group that has consistently and effectively battled ISIS in Syria, and that is the Y.P.G.,” said Redur Khalil, a spokesman for the militia who says it has grown to include 35,000 soldiers, about 11 years after its start as a self-defense force in a single town. “Opening another front in the region — as Turkey has by attacking the P.K.K. — will make the forces fighting ISIS weaker,” Mr. Khalil said. “Which in turn makes ISIS stronger.”

Cale Salih, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and the author of numerous articles on Kurdish affairs, summed up the unease over the deal with Turkey this way: “If it comes at the price of the relationship with one of the few effective partners on the ground in Syria, it doesn’t seem to make sense.” [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: Turkey’s decision to move against the Kurds is likely to do more to destabilize the region, some analysts say.

The police dragnet has fostered resentment against authorities in places such as Suruc, where Kurdish families have relatives living on both sides of the border. The United States has looked the other way as Turkey has hit the PKK in Iraq. The U.S. silence on the Turkish operations may hurt its burgeoning alliance with the YPG, whose fighters have proved to be the most effective ground force battling the Islamic State.

“It’s not smart for Turkey to do this,” Aaron Stein, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, said of Turkey’s twin military campaigns.

“Opening a two-front air war against insurgents you can’t defeat by air power alone is not smart strategically,” he said. Indeed, the U.S. military says it has launched more than 5,600 strikes on the Islamic State since last August, but the raids have not dislodged the group from its major strongholds. [Continue reading…]

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Ocalan calls on PKK and Ankara to end fighting

Rudaw reports: The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has called on the PKK and Turkish government to end ongoing clashes and resume negotiations, which were planned to lead to permanent peace in the country.

The Civil Peace Department, a government-backed organization which supervises the peace process between Ankara and the PKK, published a letter written by Ocalan in which the jailed leader slammed the negotiating partners for the “bloodshed.”

“Our (PKK) fighters, leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the Turkish government’s officials failed to administer and commit themselves to the peace negotiations,” Ocalan wrote from his prison on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, calling for an immediate ceasefire. [Continue reading…]

Rudaw reports: Recent Turkish airstrikes against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party in northern Iraq have killed 390 PKK members and injured 400, Turkey’s official Anadolu Agency on Sunday quoted unidentified security sources as saying.

“Turkish security sources are claiming to have killed a total of 390 militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in a series of recent air strikes against rebel targets in northern Iraq,” the agency said.

“An anonymous security force source also told Anadolu Agency that 400 PKK insurgents were injured in the attacks,” the agency added. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Two women shot at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul on Monday and at least eight people were killed in a wave of separate attacks on Turkish security forces, weeks after Ankara launched a crackdown on Islamic State, Kurdish and far-left militants.

The NATO member has been in a heightened state of alert since starting its “synchronized war on terror” last month, including air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq. It has also rounded up hundreds of suspected militants at home.

A far-left group that killed a Turkish security guard in a 2013 suicide bombing of the U.S. embassy in Ankara claimed it was involved in Monday’s attack.

The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C), considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, said one of its members was involved in the attack, and called Washington the “arch enemy” of the people of the Middle East and the world. [Continue reading…]

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