Turkey warns neighbours and NATO partner after Ankara attack

Both Istanbul and Ankara targeted over the past year

Until November 2022, benches along a major street in this cosmopolitan city on the Golden Horn allowed the elderly, the infirm and anyone who simply wanted to sit in the sun and watch the world go by do so.

A bag containing explosives left by a woman under one in an attack on 13 November 2022, that left six people dead and scores of others injured in Istanbul led to the benches being removed and heightened suspicion of Syrians who had fled their war-torn nation.

The interior minister at the time of the November 2022 attack, Suleyman Soylu, said in a statement in the immediate hours afterwards that "our assessment is that the order for the deadly terror attack came from Ayn al-Arab (also known as Kobane) in northern Syria, where the PKK/YPG has its Syrian headquarters".

The core and leadership of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria is dominated by a group known as the People's Protection Units (YPG).

The SDF is led by a man known by his nom de guerre, Mazloum Abdi, who is wanted by the Turkish authorities and spent decades within the upper echelons of the PKK leadership.

Read more: Mazloum Abdi: Syria, Iran, and Turkey 'incited' Arab tribes to attack the SDF

Though the November 2022 attack on Istanbul's main pedestrian street was never claimed by the PKK or the YPG, the closely linked groups were widely assumed to have been behind it.

Both the PKK and the YPG-led SDF have at times acknowledged using subterfuge as part of their modus operandi for "security reasons".

For example, after a drone attack near the Sulaymaniyah airport in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in April, the SDF initially denied Abdi was even in the country. Only later did they admit he had been there and said he had likely been the target of the drone attack.

Kurdish residents of Istanbul told this Al Majalla correspondent, who was near the site of the November 2022 attack in Istanbul at the time of the explosion that they assumed the PKK had conducted the attack and were afraid that this would lead to greater suspicion of people from the Kurdish-majority southeastern part of the country.

Sitting on the major pedestrian street is no longer allowed due to security concerns, while anti-foreigner sentiment played a worrisomely large role in the May 2023 elections.

On 4 October, Turkish state broadcaster TRT reported that "Mazlum Afrin, codenamed Nabo Kele Hayri, who orchestrated the devastating bombing on Istanbul's Istiklal Avenue on November 13, 2022, resulting in six deaths and 81 injuries, has been neutralised."

"After the elimination of Halil Menci, a collaborator with PYD/YPG who aided and guided the perpetrators of the Istiklal bombing, Ahlam Albashir Saleh and Bilal Hassan, and facilitated Bilal Hassan's escape abroad in February 2023 in Syria, MIT continued its operations," it added. "Following the latest operation, all three individuals responsible for the attack were neutralised," it added.

Turkey's Anadolu news agency quoted anonymous sources as saying that Hayri had been targeted in the Hasakah province of northeastern Syria, which is under US-backed SDF control.

Claims limited to those attacking police?

While the PKK and an alphabet soup of alleged branches often take responsibility for attacks that kill or injure members of the Turkish security forces, attacks that kill civilians – such as the Istanbul attack in November 2022 – tend to go unclaimed.

Two policemen were injured in the 1 October attack in Ankara, while both suicide bombers were killed. The PKK claimed the attack shortly after it occurred.

Less than two months before the Istanbul attack in November 2022, the People's Defence Forces (HPG), the armed wing of the PKK, said in a statement that two of its members had attacked the police in the Mersin province.

The statement claimed the attackers noted that both the attackers were women and said they had "fired at the enemy first with a pistol and then with automatic weapons (…) After the battle with the enemy forces, they lured the enemy to them and set off the prepared explosion".

One policeman was killed, and another was injured in the Mersin attack. However, the suicide attackers were prevented from entering a police guesthouse that had apparently been their main target.

Iraq-based Kurdish media outlet Rudaw reported at that time that the HPG had said one of the two female attackers had been born in Sirnak province in southeastern Turkey along the border with Iraq, while the other was a Syrian national from Qamishli.

The interior minister at that time had instead said in November 2022 that "both the perpetrator of the Istanbul terror attack and another terrorist, who carried out a separate attack on a police station in the southern Mersin province, had come from Manbij", according to Anadolu.

Manbij is a city in northeastern Syria under SDF control.

Turkey warns NATO partner

To many, the foreign minister's words following the 1 October attack in Ankara seemed to implicitly address the US and its forces in northeastern Syria that continue to support the SDF.

Both the US and Turkey are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

According to Article 5 of the Treaty, members "agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all".

Article 6 of the Treaty goes on to state that: "For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France, on the territory of Turkey or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer".

The PKK is officially considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US and the EU.

The PKK has been waging war on Turkey for decades, with many attacks allegedly having been prepared in its strongholds of the mountains of northern Iraq and, more recently, in northeastern areas of war-racked Syria.

Read more: Pipelines and PKK: Iraq and Turkey step up cooperation

For years, Turkey has been frustrated by the US and some European nations' seeming unwillingness to admit that groups that espouse the same ideology and whose ranks are filled with fighters that had been part of the PKK for years or decades are, for most practical purposes still part of – or at least closely linked to – the PKK.

The US continues to support the YPG-led SDF, which it considers a partner in its fight against the Islamic State (IS) international terrorist group.

Former US-led international coalition spokesman and retired US Army Col. Myles B. Caggins III noted to Al Majalla on 5 October that "Turkey has in recent days intensified its bombing campaign against targets in Syria and northern Iraq's Kurdistan Region."

"These campaigns are taking out leaders of the PKK and also some leaders in the Syrian Democratic Forces. The Syrian Democratic Forces are America's partner against the Islamic State (IS)  in Syria. US troops have trained and advised and lived side by side with Syrian Democratic Forces soldiers in several bases in north and east Syria," he added.

Caggins, who is also a senior non-resident fellow at the US-based New Lines Institute for Strategy, told Al Majalla that "it's likely that Washington will make statements to call on all sides to resolve their differences in peaceful manners and come to a negotiating table."

"But, due to America's strong alliance with Turkey through NATO and other economic ties that are long term, it is unlikely that we will see a strong voice from Washington DC doing anything like condemning Turkey for these strikes – even though there is evidence that Turkey's strikes are attacking civilian infrastructure," he claimed.

The Turkish foreign ministry website states that the PKK has "offshoots and affiliates in Iran, Syria and Iraq" and that the "PYD/YPG was set up under the control of PKK terrorist organisation in 2003. They share the same leadership cadres, organisational structure, strategies and tactics, military structure, propaganda tools, financial resources and training camps."

Ethnic-based struggle or terrorism?

Meanwhile, Western governments and media outlets have often been criticised for referring to the PKK and its various branches as "the Kurds", considered either an uninformed oversimplification or deliberate and dangerous obfuscation.

Kurds are an ethnic group spanning several countries. Kurds hold many different political allegiances. Some rival Kurdish groups have fought each other, such as during the 1990s in what is sometimes referred to as the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War.

The PKK has attacked and killed members of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq's Peshmerga in recent years.

Foreign Minister Fidan's father is Kurdish and hails from the southeastern part of Turkey where the PKK originated. Fidan had been head of the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) since 2010 prior to being appointed to his current role in June following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's re-election.

Several others high-level officials in the Turkish government are Kurdish and have roots in the southern part of the country, such as Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca and Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek.

Simsek previously held the post of deputy prime minister between 2015 and 2018.