Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday condemned the deadly attack in Turkey’s southeastern city of Diyarbakir and said it showed “terrorism’s ugly face again.”
At least seven police officers died and 27 people were wounded on Thusday’s attack when a parked car laden with explosives was detonated by remote control as a minibus carrying the police officers turned a corner on a busy street. Sources said that civilians were also among the wounded.
Erdogan speaking at the Brookings Institute said that “the determination of our security forces will, God willing, put an end” to terrorism.
President Erdogan, who is on a visit to Washington for a nuclear security summit, also added that the PKK terrorist organisation which has fought DAESH in Syria and Iraq, was serving its own purpose.
“YPG is a gang of terrorists. Another group is fighting against DAESH so they are ‘good terrorists’?” he asserted. “This is unacceptable to us. These are the organisations that are auxiliaries of the PKK.”
PKK is recognised as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the EU, the US, and NATO.
During his speech, President Erdogan also criticised Belgium for the lack of attention they paid to Turkey’s warnings and not acting on the information Ankara had provided about one of the bombers in last week’s attacks in Brussels, Ibrahim El Bakraoui.
Turkey arrested the Belgian national near the Syrian border last June and deported him to the Netherlands.
Bakrouai managed to make it back to Brussels, where he carried out a suicide bomb attack at the airport during the March 22 attacks. His brother Khalid blew himself up at a Brussels metro station.
Similarly, “a terrorist who killed one of our leading businessmen, is walking freely around Brussels. It has been 10 years since we have asked for them to hand over Fehriye Erdal but they still have not done so,” asserted Erdogan.
On Tuesday, Dutch Justice Minister Ard van der Steur said the Netherlands had notified Belgium a week before the Brussels attacks of an FBI report on the Bakraoui brothers’ radical backgrounds.
Ibrahim El Bakraoui had been on a US terror watch list since September 25, 2015, said Steur.
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