Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed a Syrian Kurdish militia fighter operating with Kurdish militants within Turkey for a suicide car bombing that killed twenty eight individuals within the capital Ankara, and he vowed revenge in both Syria and Irak.
A car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses as they waited at traffic lights close to Turkey's armed forces' headquarters, parliament and government buildings within the administrative heart of capital of Turkey late on Wednesday.
Davutoglu said the attack was clear proof that the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia that has been supported by the u. s. within the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria, was a terrorist group and that Turkey, a NATO member, expected cooperation from its allies in combating the group.
Within hours, Turkish warplanes bombed bases in northern Irak of the Kurdistan employees Party (PKK), that has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and that Davutoglu accused of collaborating within the car bombing.
Turkey's soldiers would continue their barrage of recent days of YPG positions in northern Syria, Davutoglu said, promising that those responsible would "pay the price".
"Yesterday's attack was directly targeting Turkey and the perpetrator is the YPG and the divisive foreign terrorist organization PKK. All necessary measures are taken against them," Davutoglu said during a televised speech.
President Tayyip Erdogan also said initial findings instructed the Syrian Kurdish militia and the PKK were behind the bombing and said that fourteen individuals had been detained.
The political arm of the YPG, denied involvement in the bombing, while a senior member of the PKK said he failed to know who was responsible.
The attack was the latest during a series of bombings within the past year mostly blamed on Islamic State militants.
Turkey is getting dragged ever deeper into the war in neighboring Syria and is attempting to contain a number of the fiercest violence in decades in its predominantly Kurdish southeast.
The YPG militia, regarded by Ankara as a hostile insurgent force deeply connected to the PKK, has taken advantage in recent weeks of a significant Syrian army offensive around the northern town of Aleppo, backed by Russian air strikes, to seize ground from Syrian rebels close to the Turkish border.
That has alarmed Turkey, that fears the advances will stoke Kurdish separatist ambitions at home. it's been bombarding YPG positions in an attempt to prevent them taking the city of Azaz, the last defensive structure of Turkish-backed Syrian rebels north of Aleppo before the Turkish frontier.
Hundreds of Syrian rebels with weapons and vehicles have re-entered Syria from Turkey over the last week to strengthen insurgents fending off the Kurdish-led assault on Azaz, rebel sources said on Thursday.
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