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Turkish media identifies Mine Sevjin Alcicek as the Ankara attacker. Meanwhile, Turkish drone strikes in Syria escalate
Mine Sevjin Alcicek, the woman responsible for the recent attack in Ankara, previously held a political position within the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
The woman responsible for the recent attack in Turkey’s Ankara has been identified as a former member of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
Mine Sevjin Alcicek, who worked for HDP’s local branch in Hakkari in 2015, was identified a day after an attack on the premises of a key defence company left five dead. On Wednesday, the two assailants – a man and a woman – arrived at the TUSAS premises on the outskirts of Ankara in a taxi they commandeered after killing its driver.
Armed with assault rifles, they set off explosives and opened fire. The two assailants were also killed, and more than 20 people were injured in the attack. Turkey’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya later named the assailants as Mine Sevjin Alcicek and Ali Orek and identified them as Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members.
The Story Behind PKK
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. The group, which was formed in the late 1970s targeted the Turkish government in 1984, calling for an independent Kurdish state within Turkey.
The conflict reached a peak in the mid-1990s when thousands of villages were destroyed in the largely Kurdish southeast and east of Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled to cities in other parts of the country. Kurds inhabit the mountainous regions of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Armenia. Some 30 million Kurds are living in the Middle East, primarily in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Read More: Why Is Turkey Fighting Against Armed Kurdish Groups Blamed For Defence Firm Attack?
‘Dramatically escalated’
Following a deadly attack on a defence company near Ankara, Turkish forces had “dramatically escalated their aerial and ground attacks in north and east Syria” since Thursday. A Syria war monitor said Friday that Turkish drone strikes had killed 27 civilians in Syria in a 24-hour military escalation.
The monitor added that it documented 45 drone strikes and four by fighter jets targeting infrastructure, including water, power and gas stations. Turkey launched air strikes on Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria on Wednesday, blaming them for an attack that claimed five lives at a defence firm near the Turkish capital. A further 22 people were wounded in the attack, which the government said was “very likely” carried out by the outlawed PKK.
‘Terrorists Targets Destroyed’
Hours later, “an air operation was carried out against terrorist targets in the north of Iraq and Syria,” the defence ministry said in a statement. “A total of 32 targets belonging to the terrorists were successfully destroyed.” The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said in a statement Thursday that Turkish air strikes killed 12 civilians in northeastern Syria and wounded 25 others.
“In addition to populated areas, Turkish warplanes and UAVs (drones) targeted bakeries, power stations, oil facilities and (Kurdish) Internal Security Force checkpoints,” the SDF added, also reporting Turkish shelling. The US-backed SDF spearheaded the campaign that dislodged Islamic State group jihadists from their last scraps of Syrian territory in 2019.
Turkey sees the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which dominate the SDF, as an offshoot of the PKK. Turkish troops and allied rebel factions control swaths of northern Syria following successive cross-border offensives since 2016, most of them targeting the SDF.
(With agency inputs)