Four people were killed, and 14 more wounded, in an apparent terrorist attack on Wednesday against Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), a leading state-owned defense firm headquartered near the capital city of Ankara.
Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said two attackers, a “woman and a man,” have been “neutralized.” He did not indicate if there were any other suspects in the plot.
The attack occurred in Kahramankazan, a small municipality located northwest of Ankara. Eyewitnesses reported hearing an explosion and gunshots near the TAI facility. Local media ran video of billowing clouds of smoke rising from a fire near the building until Turkey’s censorship board ordered a total blackout of footage from the scene. Outside observers say major Internet blocks were implemented after the attack as well.
One Turkish television station reported there was a “hostage situation” in progress at the TAI facility, but this had not been confirmed by other sources as of Wednesday afternoon.
Another television broadcast displayed CCTV footage from the attack showing a man and a woman wearing civilian clothes and carrying rifles. Al Jazeera News reviewed the images and said it believes there were at least three attackers.
“Apparently, the attackers had information about the building, about the entrances. Many of the experts now suggest that this was a strategically planned terrorist attack,” said Al Jazeera reporter Sinem Koseoglu.
TAI, also known by its Turkish acronym TUSAS, is one of Turkey’s largest defense contractors and aviation countries. One of its products is the TF-X Kaan, Turkey’s first indigenously-produced modern combat aircraft, intended as a replacement for the U.S.-produced F-16.
The terrorist attack in Kahramankazan may have been timed to coincide with two significant events: a major defense and aerospace trade fair under way in Istanbul, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Russia for a meeting with Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.
Erdogan ostensibly flew to Russia to discuss power plant construction and gas hubs with Putin, but Erdogan also wants to join the China-dominated BRICS economic bloc while retaining Turkey’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). BRICS, which started expanding beyond its core five members last year, began seeming more attractive to Erdogan as his efforts to join the European Union (EU) stalled out.
“I condemn this heinous attack on facilities of the Turkish Aerospace Industries. We have four martyrs, 14 injured,” Erdogan said from Russia on Wednesday.
Erdogan’s vice president, Cevdet Yilmaz, called the attack “heinous,” while his foreign minister Hakan Fidan vowed to continue fighting “all terrorist elements, both inside and outside the country, and the powers that support them.”
“In the upcoming period, we will keep strengthening our national defense capabilities and never allow those targeting Türkiye, along with their proxies, to achieve their ambitions over our country,” Fidan said.
These and other comments from Turkish officials hint they believe the Kurdish separatist group PKK was involved in the attack. On Tuesday, an Erdogan ally named Devlet Bahceli, head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), suggested that imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan might be paroled if he would “unilaterally declare that terrorism is over and that his organization has been dissolved.”
Ocalan has been held in an isolated prison cell on an island near Istanbul since 1999. The surprising offer of parole from Bahceli, who usually takes a hard stance against the PKK, appears to be part of a maneuver by Erdogan to curry support from the powerful pro-Kurdish People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) for constitutional changes that would allow Erdogan to run for another term in the next election.
This outreach may not have gone over well with hardcore elements of the PKK, giving them the motivation for a high-profile terrorist attack that could make it politically impossible for Erdogan to offer Ocalan a pardon deal.
Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler openly suggested the PKK might have carried out the attack at a press conference on Wednesday.
“We punish the dishonorable PKK members as they deserve over and over again, but they never seem to learn,” he mused.
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