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Turkey late on Wednesday launched air strikes against Kurdish targets in northern Iraq and Syria, hours after Ankara said a terrorist attack on a state aerospace company killed five people and wounded nearly two dozen.
Turkish air forces struck 32 targets associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a separatist group that has fought a decades-long insurgency in Turkey, along with “other terrorist elements”, the defence ministry said.
The military operations came after an attack on a sprawling Turkish Aerospace Industries’ industrial campus on the outskirts of Ankara, Turkey’s capital.
Interior minister Ali Yerlikaya said it was “very likely” that the PKK, which is recognised as a terrorist group by the US, EU and others, carried out the assault. Assailants had struck the TAI site with bombs and gunfire, according to Turkey’s state Anadolu news service.
Yerlikaya said special operations units, police and gendarmerie responded at the scene. Two terrorists had also been “neutralised” following their strike on the facility, he added.
“I condemn this heinous terrorist attack and pray to God for mercy on our martyrs,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said from Kazan, Russia, where he was attending the Brics summit.
Turkish forces hit PKK military and intelligence facilities, as well as ammunition depots, according to security officials. Strategic sites associated with the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syria-based Kurdish militia with close ties to the PKK, were also targeted.
Turkey has been battling the PKK for the past four decades. Ankara regularly carries out air and special forces operations on the group’s hideaways in a mountainous region in northern Iraq, while also striking affiliated groups operating in northern Syria.
Wednesday’s incident comes just over a year after suicide bombers struck a government building in Ankara, an incident orchestrated by the PKK.
Devlet Bahçeli, Erdoğan’s ultranationalist ally, had on Tuesday this week invited jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan to address parliament if he would agree to disband the group and halt its operations — remarks that were carried widely across Turkish media.
Isis and far-left militants have also staged bombings in Turkey in the past.
The last major round of terror attacks in the country took place from 2015 to 2017 and included several bombings in the capital. Ankara was also one of the battlegrounds in the failed 2016 military coup attempt, in which the parliament building was damaged.
TAI is a national champion, playing a central role in Turkey’s blossoming defence sector.
The group designs and produces everything from aircraft and helicopters to drones and satellites at the 4mn sq metres Kahramankazan facility, which was targeted in Wednesday’s attack.
No group immediately claimed responsibility but Ankara’s chief public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation, according to justice minister Yılmaz Tunç. The country’s radio and television regulator also instituted broadcasting bans related to imagery from the attack, warning that those who failed to comply would be “severely punished”.
Turkey’s internet censors also clamped down on access to major platforms, including X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and messaging app Telegram, said Yaman Akdeniz, co-founder of the Turkish Freedom of Expression Association.
He described the curbs, which authorities have often implemented around terror attacks and elections, as “a clear violation of communication rights of millions of people in Turkey”.
Several international leaders condemned Wednesday’s attack. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences while sitting across from Erdoğan at a meeting on the sidelines of the Brics summit.
Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte also said on X that he had spoken with Erdoğan: “My message was clear: Nato stands with Turkey.”
