ANKARA: Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday said online investigations suggested ISIS and the Kurdish group, PKK, were the most likely groups to have been involved in the deadly blasts in Turkey’s capital.
Saturday’s two explosions hit a lunchtime peace rally in Ankara killed ninety-seven people and about 246 were injured.
‘As the investigation on the attack deepens, through the results on Twitter accounts and IP addresses, we see the high probability that both Daesh (ISIS) and the PKK are organizations that may have had an active role,’ Davutoglu said, according to the semiofficial Anadolu news agency.
The PKK is a militant group that has fought a long, bitter separatist campaign against the Turkish state for more than 30 years. Hostilities between the two sides resumed after the collapse of a ceasefire in July.
Among those taking part in the targeted peace rally were members of the pro-Kurdish HDP, or Peoples’ Democratic Party. The HDP has accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Davutoglu’s government of escalating the violence to try to push the party below the 10% electoral threshold to win seats in Turkey’s parliament.
The attack came three weeks ahead of a repeat parliamentary election and as Turkey deals with the ISIS threat simmering on its southern border.
The Turkish government recently changed its stance to allow the United States to launch strikes on ISIS positions from Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. Meantime Kurdish forces have been battling ISIS across a swath of northern Iraq and Syria.
