News / Turkey

Turkey detains five suspects over Ankara bombing

Saturday, 19 March 2016 1:59 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 19 March 2016 6:04 PM ]

Police, firefighters and members of emergency services work at the site of a blast in Ankara, Turkey, March 13, 2016. (AFP photo)

Security forces in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, arrested five people during the early hours of Saturday on suspicion of having links to a recent bombing in the city that killed over three dozen people.

According to an Ankara court, which ordered the detentions, the suspects stand accused of "an attack on Turkish unity and on the Turkish people," the Anatolia news agency reported.

On March 13, a car bomb went off in Ankara’s central neighborhood of Kizilay. Dozens of people were also injured in the attack, which came three weeks after a bombing on a Turkish military convoy in Ankara killed 29 people, most of them soldiers.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, also known as TAK, which is a Kurdish militant group with ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), claimed responsibility for both bombings.

Bomb rocks Istanbul market

Major cities across Turkey have experienced a surge in violence, including deadly bombings in recent weeks.

Earlier on Saturday, a bomb attack in a busy shopping street in Istanbul killed at least five people including the assailant. The attack was carried out on Istiklal street in the heart of Istanbul.

Police cordon off the site of a bombing in Istanbul, Turkey, March 19, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Officials said the attacker planned to hit a more crowded location at a different time but he was deterred from the original target by police and detonated the bomb out of fear. Initial findings, officials said, indicate the PKK or an affiliated group is behind the attack.

Security across Turkey has become fragile as a result of the country’s direct confrontation with Kurds inside and outside of the country. The Turkish military has been involved in operations against suspected PKK members southeast of the country while airstrikes have also been launched against alleged positions of the PKK in Iraq and Syria.

The campaign began in response to a deadly July 2015 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc. More than 30 people died in the attack, which the Turkish government blamed on the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

After the bombing, the PKK militants, who accuse the government in Ankara of supporting Daesh, carried out a number of attacks against Turkish police and security forces, prompting the Turkish military operations.

The PKK militants have had ambitions for an autonomous Kurdish region in Turkey’s southeast since the 1980s.

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