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From the scene of the Interior Ministry bombing in the Turkish capital, Ankara
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The Kurdistan Workers’ Party claimed responsibility for the suicide attack that occurred in Ankara on Sunday, through a statement published by a news agency close to it.
The attack targeted the police headquarters and the Ministry of the Interior, located in the same complex in the center of the capital, near the parliament building, which is preparing to vote on Sweden’s accession to NATO.
This is the first attack claimed by the party since September 2022, when it killed a policeman in Mersin (southern Turkey).
The bombing is added to a series of operations carried out by the Turkish and Kurdish sides over forty years of armed conflict that crossed the borders into both Syria and Iraq.
The conflict between the two sides reached its peak in the 1990s, as the party has been considered a nightmare for successive Turkish governments since its inception in the 1970s.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was founded in 1978 with a Marxist-Leninist background, with the aim of establishing a Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. Its primary demand then became the independence of the Kurdish regions within Turkey, and the Turkish Kurds’ accession to self-rule.
More than 40,000 people have died since the outbreak of the conflict between the two parties, and thousands of Kurdish villages have been destroyed in southeastern and eastern Turkey, forcing hundreds of thousands of Kurds to flee to other parts of Turkey.
Turkey arrested the party’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999, and he has been imprisoned since then.
The party demands more cultural and social rights for Turkey’s Kurds, who number an estimated 15 million people, in addition to the release of Workers’ Party members languishing in Turkish prisons.
Kurds have faced suppression of their ethnic identity and culture in Turkey over the years, and the European Court of Human Rights has convicted Turkey with rulings relating to mass executions of Kurdish civilians, torture, forced displacement, and the destruction of villages.
While several countries classify the Kurdistan Workers’ Party as a terrorist organization, due to its targeting of thousands of civilians and carrying out suicide attacks.
Below is a review of the most prominent attacks claimed by the Kurdistan Action Party in Turkey, or attributed to it.
The PKK began carrying out military operations against the army and police in Turkey, targeting police stations in the Siirt region, killing soldiers and civilians, and causing other injuries among their ranks.
He also carried out an ambush in which eight soldiers were killed in Hakkari province. These attacks marked the beginning of clashes that continued until 1991.
Party members set up an ambush between the cities of Elazig and Bingöl, in which 33 soldiers were killed and 22 captured for a short period.
The party carried out an attack on a spice market on the bank of the Golden Horn in Istanbul, killing seven people and wounding 121 others.
13 people were killed in a Molotov cocktail attack on a market in the Kadikoy area.
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Kurdistan Workers’ Party fighters near Erbil, northern Iraq
6 people were killed, and more than 100 were injured in a party attack in Anavartalar Market in Ankara.
A bomb in a trash bin placed by the party in the Gunguran district of Istanbul, killing 17 people and wounding 154 others.
15 police officers and 17 civilians were injured in a suicide attack targeting the riot police station in Taksim Square in Istanbul on October 31, 2010.
Carrying out attacks during the Turkish Republic Day, killing three people and wounding 21 others in the state of Bingöl, eastern Turkey.
An explosion also occurred on Korular Street in the capital, Ankara, killing 3 people and wounding 34 others.
That year, a two-and-a-half-year ceasefire between the PKK and Turkey collapsed.
The party announced the assassination of two police officers in southeastern Turkey, in “retaliation” for a suicide bombing blamed on ISIS, which killed 32 people, most of them students.
The Kurds then accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of secretly supporting ISIS against Kurdish fighters in Syria.
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A Kurdish man carries bread during clashes between Turkish security forces and Kurdish activists in Diyarbakir
A car bomb attack occurred while military vehicles were passing through Ankara, killing 29 people and wounding 61 others.
The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons organization announced the operation.
In the same city, 36 people were killed, and 125 others were injured, in a car bomb attack on the Guven Park bus station in Kizilay Square.
Another car bomb targeted a police bus in Diyarbakir province, and this attack resulted in the death of 7 police officers.
In another operation in Diyarbakir, 16 civilians were killed, and 23 others were injured.
In Istanbul, a police bus was targeted in the Vüncilar area, killing 12 people and wounding 36.
An explosion occurred on Istiklal Street in central Istanbul, killing 6 people and wounding more than 80 others.
While Türkiye accused the PKK of responsibility for the operation, the latter denied this.
“Freedom Falcons” operations
In 2012, a group calling itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons carried out an attack on a Turkish army bus, killing two soldiers and wounding 12 others.
While the group has been linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, she says it split from the PKK.
The group also claimed responsibility for a car bombing in Ankara in 2011, which killed 3 people.
In 2010, the same group claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on an army bus that resulted in five deaths and a suicide attack that wounded 32 people in Istanbul.
The organization claimed responsibility for targeting Sabiha Gokcen Airport, the second largest airport in Istanbul, with mortar shells, killing one person, in 2015.
In 2016, the group announced that it had carried out a suicide bombing in the city of Bursa in the northwest of the country.
The organization was carried out in the tourist resort of Kusadasi, western Turkey, in 2005, leading to the death of five people.
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2023-10-02 18:54:11
