Türkiye strikes targets of Kurdish fighters in Syria and Ireland…

ANKARA, Türkiye (AP) – Türkiye attacked suspected Kurdish militant targets in Syria and Iraq for a second day Thursday attack on the headquarters of a key defense company resulting in the death of at least five people, the state news agency reported.

Anadolu Agency reported that the National Intelligence Organization targeted numerous “strategic locations” used by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK or Syrian Kurdish militias affiliated with the militants. According to the report, the targets included military, intelligence, energy and infrastructure facilities as well as ammunition depots. A security official said armed drones were used in Thursday’s attacks.

The Turkish Air Force carried out airstrikes on similar targets in northern Syria and northern Iraq on Wednesday, hours after government officials blamed the PKK for a deadly attack on the headquarters of aerospace and defense company TUSAS.

Defense Minister Yasar Guler said on Thursday that Wednesday’s airstrikes destroyed 47 alleged PKK targets – 29 in Iraq and 18 in Syria.

“Our noble nation should be assured that we will continue with ever greater determination our fight to eliminate the forces of evil that threaten the security and peace of our country and nation until the last terrorist disappears from this geographical area,” Guler said.

According to reports, the attackers – a man and a woman – arrived at the TUSAS headquarters on the outskirts of Ankara in a taxi, which they commandeered after killing the driver. Armed with assault rifles, they detonated explosives and opened fire, killing four people in TUSAS, including security personnel and a mechanical engineer.

According to the interior minister, security teams were deployed immediately after the attack began, around 3:30 p.m. Two attackers were also killed and over 20 people were injured in the attack.

The PKK made no immediate statement on the attack or the Turkish airstrikes.

In Syria, the main U.S.-backed forces reported that 12 civilians were killed and 25 wounded in Turkish attacks in the north of the country.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said Turkish warplanes and drones struck bakeries, power plants, oil facilities and local police checkpoints.

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.

The attack came a day after the leader of a Turkish far-right nationalist party allied with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised the possibility that the PKK the imprisoned leader could be admitted parole if he renounces violence and disbands his organization.

Abdullah Ocalan, captured in 1999, is serving a life sentence on a prison island near Istanbul.

As a result, his nephew Omer Ocalan announced on the social media platform X that family members were able to visit him on Wednesday for the first time since March 2020.

Omer Ocalan, an MP from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Equality and Democracy Party, also relayed a message from Abdullah Ocalan saying he was being held in isolation and offering to work to end the conflict “if the conditions are right.”

“I have the theoretical and practical power to (transform) this process from one based on conflict and violence to one based on law and politics,” Omer Ocalan quoted his uncle as saying.

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.

__

Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue contributed from Beirut.