ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—It took three days for the almost unheard-of Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) to claim responsibility for one of the deadliest attacks in recent years on the Turkish military targets inside the cities.
Twenty-eight soldiers were killed along with 61 people wounded in Ankara’s Dewlet Street, some in critical condition, according to official announcements.
Although the Turkish army and police forces are frequently targeted in what is often described as retaliatory actions carried out by guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)-- the targets, however, are usually picked in the country’s Kurdish southeast where the past bloody clashes have often taken place.
PKK’s strongman, Cemil Bayik, swiftly rejected Turkish accusations directed at his group and categorically renounced involvement. Bayek did not rule out, nonetheless, the possibility of a link between the bombing and the Turkish army’s ongoing operation in the Kurdish cities.
Less than a day after the attack, the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutuglu announced that the security forces had identified the perpetrator who accordingly was from the Syrian Kurdish city of Amuda by the name of Salih Muhammad Najar.
Davutuglu said there was little doubt in his mind that the YPG—the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, were involved in the attack.
The bombing would then be in retaliation for the Turkish shelling of the YPG forces trying to capture the Syrian region of Azaz, which Ankara has declared as the “red line” that the Kurdish forces better not to cross.
The PKK has maintained that TAK is a radical breakaway group, which does not operate under any of their units.
The PKK however could not deny what both YPG and TAK have in common with the guerrillas and also with the lawmakers of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), that is their undisputed recognition of and allegiance to the leadership of Apo (nickname for the jailed PKK leader Abdulla Ocalan), whom they all see as their ultimate symbol, and perhaps even as a cause in itself.
After all, even the charismatic Selahettin Demirtash, the HDP co-leader, publically addresses Apo as seroke min or my leader while the YPG has renamed the newly captured airbase in Menagh after the same leader.
However, despite Bayik’s dismissal of involvement, the TAK statement in which it claimed responsibility was first published at the Furat website which operates more or less as the PKK’s news agency.
So, it is increasingly difficult for the PKK to explain to its newly found Western allies in Syria, how an Apo-loving group could kill 28 NATO soldiers in bright daylight in Ankara, without PKK’s blessing? After all, the Turkish army is not clashing with TAK, it clashes with the PKK.
Turkey however would have none of this. The government makes no difference between the PKK, the YPG, TAK or HDP for that matter.
Turkish official media has in the past accused both Cemil Bayek and another PKK commander, Duran Kalkan, as the architects behind TAK which they see as PKK’s “intercity attack group” that could not move without their authorization.
Since its informal establishment sometime in 2003, TAK has claimed responsibility for a number of spectacular bombings with multiple casualties. It started in July 2005 by bombing a public transportation bus and continued through the years with its attacks on various targets including last year’s bombing of Istanbul’s Sabiha Cokcen Airport in December.
As the Kurdish question remains a central topic for the Turkish state to address, it also remains to be seen which of the two breakaway parties will take the lead for the Kurds; the TAK or the HDP.
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