“Brigade of the Immortals”
PKK claims responsibility for attack on ministry
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In the morning, a man blows himself up in front of the Turkish parliament. The police officers present kill another attacker. Now there is a letter of responsibility: the PKK is said to be behind it.
The banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has claimed responsibility for the attack near the Turkish parliament in which two police officers were slightly injured. “A sacrificial operation was carried out against the Turkish Interior Ministry by a team subordinate to our Brigade of the Immortals,” the PKK told the Kurdish news agency ANF.
A suicide bomber blew himself up in the center of the Turkish capital Ankara this morning. According to media reports, the explosion occurred not far from an entrance to the Turkish parliament. One of the two attackers blew himself up, according to the Interior Ministry. Police officers killed the second person involved with a shot in the head. According to Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya, two police officers were slightly injured.
The attackers failed in their attempt to gain access to the ministry. The action went exactly according to plan and was a reaction to Turkey's actions in Kurdish areas, ANF quoted from a suspected letter of responsibility from the HPG, the military wing of the PKK.
The attack took place a few hours before the start of the new session of the Turkish parliament, at the opening of which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech. “Villains” threaten the peace and security of citizens, the Turkish head of state said. But the “terrorists” would “never achieve their goals.”
Thousands of people have been killed in the decades-long conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state. Ankara regularly carries out military operations against the PKK in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. This in turn repeatedly carries out attacks, especially on Turkish security forces. But civilians also die. Turkey accuses the PKK of endangering national security and unity through terror. The PKK argues that it is fighting, among other things, for the “rights of the Kurds” and against oppression. In 2015, a peace process between Türkiye and the PKK failed.
