Turkey targeted Kurdish militants in northern Syria and Iraq in a series of air strikes on Sunday, days after a bombing killed six people in Istanbul.
Military bases of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and the Syrian People’s Protection Units, or YPG, were hit in the attacks, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said in a statement.
“Shelters, bunkers, caves, tunnels and warehouses belonging to terrorists have been destroyed with great success,” Akar said. “The so-called headquarters of the terrorist organization was also hit and destroyed with direct hits.”
A view shows the aftermath of the air strikes, which the Turkish Defense Ministry says it carried out, in Derik, Syria, on November 20, 2022.
(North Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS)
People inspect a site damaged by Turkish airstrikes that hit a power station in Taql Baql village, Hasakeh province, Syria on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022.
(AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad)
Turkish officials have blamed the PKK and YPG for the Istanbul bombing, which killed six people and injured dozens more on Sunday. Both groups have denied involvement.
ERDOGAN IN TURKEY ACCUSES SWEDEN AND FINLAND OF SUPPORTING TERRORISM, POTENTIALLY THINKING NATO ASPIRATIONS
Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted that “it’s time for reckoning for Istiklal,” a reference to the avenue where the bombing took place.
Bulgarian prosecutors have arrested five people involved in the bombing: three men of Moldovan origin, as well as a man and a woman of Syrian Kurdish origin, according to Reuters.
People leave the area after an explosion on Istanbul’s popular Istiklal pedestrian boulevard on Sunday, Istanbul, Sunday November 13, 2022.
(Ismail Coskun/IHA via AP)
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The PKK, which has been fighting an insurgency in Turkey since 1984, is considered a terrorist group by both Turkey and the United States, although the United States has allied itself with the YPG in the fight against ISIS in Syria.
“We are determined, determined and able to save our country and nation from the scourge of terror that has plagued our country and nation for 40 years,” Akar said on Sunday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
