Kurdish militants claim responsibility for deadly attack on Turkish defense firm

BAGHDAD —  A banned Kurdish militant group on Friday claimed responsibility for an attack on the headquarters of a key defense company in Ankara, Turkey, that killed at least five people.

A statement from the military wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, said Wednesday’s attack on the aerospace and defense company TUSAS was carried out by two members of its “Immortal Battalion” in response to Turkish “massacres” and other actions in Kurdish regions.

A man and a woman stormed TUSAS’ premises on the outskirts of Ankara, Turkey’s capital, setting off explosives and opening fire. Four TUSAS employees were killed. The assailants arrived on the scene in a taxi that they had commandeered by killing its driver. More than 20 people were injured.

A female assailant took her own life by detonating an explosive device after being injured in an exchange of fire at the entrance of the complex, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said. A male attacker hurled hand grenades at approaching security forces, then also blew himself up in the restroom of a nearby building, “realizing there was no way out,” the minister said.

Turkey blamed the attack on the PKK and immediately launched a series of aerial strikes on locations and facilities suspected to be used by the militant group in northern Iraq or by its affiliates in northern Syria.

The attack on TUSAS came at a time of growing signs of a possible new attempt at dialogue to end the more than four-decade-old conflict between the PKK and Turkey’s military.

Earlier this week, the leader of Turkey’s far-right nationalist party that is allied with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised the possibility that Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s imprisoned leader, could be granted parole if he renounces violence and disbands his organization.

Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a prison island off Istanbul, said in a message conveyed by his nephew Thursday that he was ready to work for peace.

The PKK’s military wing, the People’s Defense Center, said, however, that Wednesday’s attack was not related to the latest “political agenda,” insisting it was planned long before.

It said TUSAS was chosen as a target because weapons produced there “killed thousands of civilians, including children and women, in Kurdistan.”

TUSAS designs, manufactures and assembles civilian and military aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and other defense industry and space systems. Its products have been credited as key to Turkey gaining an upper hand in its fight against Kurdish militants.

On Friday, an Iraqi security official said Turkish warplanes intensified their strikes on sites controlled by the PKK and other loyal forces in northern Iraq’s Sinjar district. The intensive bombing targeted tunnels, headquarters and military points of the PKK and the Sinjar Protection Units inside the Sinjar Mountain area.

A local official and a security official said the bombings killed five Yazidis. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

On Friday, Turkish police detained 176 suspected PKK members in operations across Turkey, the Interior Ministry said.

Police also detained a man who hurled rocks at the entrance of the headquarters of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy party, or DEM, Anadolu reported. DEM spokeswoman Aysegul Dogan said on the media platform X that the entrance door and windows were broken in the attack.

The PKK has been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people since the 1980s. It is considered a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.

Abdul-Zahra writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.