Kurdish attack in Ankara could derail prospects for peace talks, analysts say

A Kurdish militant group on Friday claimed responsibility for an attack on a major state defense company in the Turkish capital, an action that analysts said could complicate prospects for resuming peace talks between the Turkish government and the minority Kurdish of the country.

Two attackers set off explosives and opened fire on the TUSAS aerospace and defense company in Ankara on Wednesday, killing five people and injuring 22 others, the Turkish Interior Ministry said.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, said in a statement Friday that the attack on the defense company was due to its role in producing weapons used in attacks on Kurdish civilians.

The PKK has been designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. The Kurdish militant group has been engaged in an armed conflict with the Turkish government for four decades over greater rights for Kurds in Türkiye.

The unmanned aerial vehicles, designed and assembled by TUSAS, have been instrumental in Turkey's fight against Kurdish militants.

Wednesday's attack came a day after Devlet Bahceli, head of Turkey's far-right nationalist party and close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suggested the possibility of granting parole to the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan, if the Kurdish group lays down its arms. .

The peace process between the two parties started in 2013 failed in 2015.

Yerevan Saeed, director of the Global Kurdish Peace Initiative at the American University of Washington, said the Ankara attack represented a significant strategic mistake for the PKK.

This incident highlights a worrying lack of strategic vision at this important time, he told VOA. Even though the Turkish government's initiative to restart peace talks can be seen as a tactical maneuver, the Kurdish armed group must avoid providing the state with any justification to abandon the dialogue, which could in turn diminish the international sympathy for the Kurdish cause.

Shortly after the Ankara attack, the Turkish military struck Kurdish militant targets in Iraq and Syria that Turkish officials said belonged to branches of the PKK. Turkey's official Anadolu agency said Friday that 120 targets had been hit in Iraq and Syria since Wednesday.

Erdogan, upon returning from the BRICS summit in Russia, told reporters on Friday that the perpetrators of the Ankara attack had infiltrated from Syria and he pledged to continue his efforts to fight terrorism.

In Kurdish-controlled Syria, some strikes hit power grids and water pumping stations, causing water and electricity cuts in several towns in northeastern Syria. VOA Kurdish journalists from the region visited several sites damaged by the strikes.

Sinan Ciddi, a Turkey expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, said Turkish citizens would demand “a strong military response” from the government to the Ankara attack.

He told VOA that the terrorist attack also reduces the chances of resuming negotiations between Erdogan and the PKK for a peace process.

“No military solution”

Amy Austin Holmes, a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, said that in every peace process there are troublemakers who want to sabotage it.

There is no military solution to what is an inherently political and social issue of equality of citizens. Both President Erdogan and the Kurdish movement recognize this, she told VOA. So that the dialogue process is not derailed by the PKK attack in Ankara and Turkey's bombing of northern Syria and Iraq, more composure is needed.

Henri Barkey, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, said the attack claimed by the PKK made no sense.

The only thing I can think of is that operations like this take months to prepare, so these guys had orders and it was never canceled because maybe they were submissive to a general order of communication, he said.

This is bad for the PKK since a process is supposed to start and they cannot stop it from happening, he added. The other half of the explanation is that there may be divisions within the organization and the group in charge has chosen not to end them.

But other analysts, like Hosheng Ose, a Brussels-based researcher on Kurdish affairs, say that regardless of the Ankara attack and the strikes in Iraq and Syria, there appears to be a decision within the Turkish political establishment to reach a settlement with the country's Kurds.

There are elements within the Turkish state and the PKK who oppose any prospect of peace, but I don't think it will have any effect on the Turkish government's goals, he told VOA.

“Turkey is very concerned about recent developments in the Middle East and wants to ensure that no Kurdish group plays a role that could threaten Turkey's long-term goals,” Ose said.

This story originated in VOA's Kurdish service.