Ankara aerospace facility attackers belong to PKK: Turkey

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey’s interior ministry said on Thursday that it has confirmed that both assailants killed during an attack on an aerospace facility in Ankara the day before are members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said in posts on X that “Ali Orek, codename Rojger, a member of the PKK terrorist organization” was identified as the male attacker, while “Mine Sevjin Alcicek” was the female attacker and belonged to the same organization.

The Turkish Aerospace Industries Inc. (TAI) facilities in Ankara’s northern Kahramankazan district were attacked on Wednesday. Turkish authorities said two attackers were “neutralized” and an investigation was being launched.

“It became clear that both terrorists who attacked TAI were members of the PKK,” Yerlikaya added, saying that Ankara is determined to “eradicate from our lands the treacherous terrorist organization that threatens the unity, solidarity and peace of our country.”

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. The attack occurred as efforts have been discussed for a resumption of stalled peace talks to end decades of conflict in Turkey.

On Tuesday, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli proposed allowing the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been imprisoned since 1997, to address the Turkish parliament and declare that the PKK has been eradicated and dissolved.

Bahceli, whose ultranationalist party is an ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), added that Ocalan should benefit from the “right to hope” principle that provides the possibility of conditional release for prisoners, taking their behavior into account.

Turkey’s largest opposition party leader Ozgur Ozel later in the day expressed support for Bahceli’s comments and “any efforts to end terrorism.”

“If no more soldiers will die, if no more blood will be shed, if mothers’ tears will no longer flow, and if guns will no longer be pointed at soldiers, then every word said to achieve this is valuable to us as CHP,” Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) leader Ozel said to his parliamentary group.

On Wednesday, the PKK leader’s nephew, Omer Ocalan, a pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) lawmaker, met with him at Turkey’s Imrali Island prison, face-to-face for the first time since March 2020.

“The isolation continues,” Abdullah Ocalan said through a post on X by his nephew. “If the conditions are right, I have the theoretical and practical power to pull this process from the ground of conflict and violence to the ground of law and politics.”

In 2013, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government entered into peace talks with the PKK, paving the way for an unprecedented opening towards Kurds in the country. Kurdish politicians were able to speak freely about their rights, a topic that was previously taboo. 

The peace talks, mediated by the DEM Party predecessor - the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) - collapsed in 2015 and were followed by intense urban fighting in the country’s southwestern Kurdish areas

Turkey quickly retaliated for Wednesday’s attack in Ankara by striking alleged PKK positions in Iraq and Syria. It claimed that 32 “targets belonging to terrorists were neutralized” and that measures were undertaken to ensure civilians and the environment were not harmed. Turkey uses the term “neutralize” to denote adversaries captured, wounded, or killed.

In a statement on Thursday, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the partnered local ground forces in Syria of the US-led international anti-Islamic State (ISIS) coalition, said that Turkey’s airstrikes killed 12 civilians, including two children, and injured 25 others. 

Ankara considers the Kurdish-led SDF and other groups in northeastern Syria (Rojava) to be offshoots of the PKK.