Last week, attackers linked to U.S.-designated terror organization the
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) detonated a bomb outside the Turkish Interior
Ministry buildings in Ankara, leaving one dead and two others wounded.





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CEP Resources On PKK: Bombing In Turkish Capital Sparks Retaliatory Response
Against Terror Group Strongholds In Iraq


(New York, N.Y.) — Last week, attackers linked to U.S.-designated terror
organization theKurdistan Workers’ Party
<[link removed]> (PKK)
detonated
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a bomb outside the Turkish Interior Ministry buildings in Ankara, leaving one
dead and two others wounded. This was the first direct attack on the Turkish
capital since 2016 and prompted a flurry of strikes on PKK strongholds in Iraq
fromTurkish Security Forces
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Following the attack, the pro-PKK Firat News Agency (ANF) published
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a statement from the terror group’s central command confirming that “a unit of
our ‘Brigade of Immortals’ carried out a sacrificial action in front of the
Turkish Ministry of Interior.” The statement went on to frame the attack as a
warning, and noted the attackers “could have achieved a very different result
with only a small change in their timing if they had wanted to”—alluding to the
possibility of larger, higher-casualty targets.



Within hours of the Ankara attack, Turkey conducted 20 airstrikes
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on key PKK infrastructure and housing units in the northern Iraq regions of
Metina, Kandil, Gara, and Hakurk. Turkey’s rapid response sorties, according to
Turkish authorities, fall under Article 51 of the United Nations charter,
authorizing partner nations to defend their borders. Turkey’s Foreign Minister
Hakan Fidan furtherannounced
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that all facilities and infrastructure belonging to the PKK and its Syrian
offshoot the People’s Protection Units (YPG) are now “legitimate targets” of
Turkey’s security forces and intelligence units.



The PKK <[link removed]>,
a Kurdish transnational militant group founded by political activist Abdullah
Öcalan in Turkey in 1978, calls for an independent Kurdish state. Funded by
taxing the operations of cross-border smugglers, the PKK employs car bombs,
suicide bombings, abductions, and assassinations against civilians, foreign
tourists, and politicians to advance its political ambitions while actively
destroying or subsuming other Kurdish nationalist movements that deviate from
the PKK’s specific ideology.



To read CEP’s full report on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), please click
here <[link removed]>.



To read CEP’s full report, Turkey: Extremism and Terrorism, please click here
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.



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