Kurdish fighters claim responsibility for deadly attack on Turkish arms company

BAGHDAD – A banned Kurdish militant group on Friday claimed responsibility for an attack on the headquarters of a key defense company in Ankara that killed at least five people.

A statement from the military wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, said Wednesday’s attack on the headquarters of aerospace and defense company TUSAS was carried out by two members of its so-called “Immortality Battalion” in response to Turkish “massacres.” and other activities in Kurdish regions.

A man and a woman stormed the TUSAS headquarters on the outskirts of Ankara, planting explosives and opening fire. Four TUSAS employees died there. The attackers arrived at the scene in a taxi, which they commandeered, killing its driver.

The attackers were also killed in the subsequent battle with security teams, and more than 20 people were injured in the attack.

Turkey blamed the attack on the PKK and immediately launched a series of airstrikes against places and facilities suspected of being used by the militant group in northern Iraq or its affiliates in northern Syria.

The attack on TUSAS came as signs grew of a possible new attempt at dialogue to end the more than four-decade conflict between the PKK and Turkey’s military.

Earlier this week, the leader of a Turkish far-right nationalist party allied with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised the possibility that Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned PKK leader, could be granted parole if he renounced violence and disbanded his organization.

Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a prison island near Istanbul, said Thursday in a message from his nephew that he is ready to work for peace.

However, the PKK’s military wing, the People’s Defense Center, said the attack was unrelated to the latest “political agenda”, saying it had been planned well in advance.

It said TUSAS was targeted because weapons produced there “have killed thousands of civilians, including children and women, in Kurdistan.”

TUSAS designs, manufactures and assembles civil and military aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and other defense and space industry systems. Its defense systems were considered key to Turkey gaining an advantage in the fight against Kurdish fighters.

On Friday, an Iraqi security official said Turkish warplanes had intensified airstrikes on facilities belonging to the PKK and other loyal forces in the Sinjar district of northern Iraq. Intense bombing targeted tunnels, headquarters and military posts of the PKK and Sinjar Protection Units in the Sinjar Mountain area.

A local official and a security official said five Yazidis were killed in the attacks. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The Turkish Defense Ministry reported that as a result of the night air operation, 34 alleged PKK targets, including caves, shelters, depots and other facilities, were hit. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said drones operated by the country’s intelligence agency had hit 120 suspected locations since Wednesday’s attack.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said on Thursday that Turkish warplanes and drones struck bakeries, a power plant, oil facilities and local police checkpoints. At least 12 civilians were killed and 25 others injured.

A statement from the People’s Defense Center said there were no casualties among PKK fighters in the airstrikes.

After returning from a trip to Russia, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a group of journalists late Thursday that the two TUSAS attackers had crossed from Syria, but did not provide details.

Speaking at a defense industry fair in Istanbul on Friday, he said Turkey was determined to crack down on the militant group.

“Although our pain is great for our martyrs, our determination to fight the bastards is much greater,” Erdogan said. “We will continue to crush those who think they can force us to withdraw with such a betrayal.”

The Ministry of Interior reported that on Friday, Turkish police detained 176 suspected PKK members during an operation in Turkey.

Police also detained a man who threw stones at the entrance to the headquarters of the Turkish pro-Kurdish People’s Party for Equality and Democracy (DEM), Anadolu reported. DEM party spokeswoman Aysegul Dogan told media platform X that the attack broke the entrance door and windows.

The PKK is fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people since the 1980s. Türkiye and its Western allies consider it a terrorist group.