TAK Kurdistan Freedom Falcons - a NATO Counter-gang?

[TonyGosling]

Kurdish militants claim Ankara bombing, warn foreign tourists
AFP By Stuart Williams
3 hours ago
http://news.yahoo.com/militant-kurdish-group-linked-pkk-claims-ankara- attack-172406280.html

Family members mourn during a funeral for the victims of the February 17 car bombing, at Kocatepe Mosque in Ankara on February 19, 2016

Istanbul (AFP) - A Kurdish militant group on Friday claimed the suicide car bomb attack on a military convoy in the Turkish capital Ankara that killed 28 people, threatening new attacks targeting the crucial tourism sector.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), who have been linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), said the attack was revenge for operations by the Turkish military in the southeast of the country and warned foreign tourists not to visit Turkey.

"On February 17 in the evening a suicide attack was carried out by a sacrifice warrior on a military convoy of the fascist Turkish Republic in Ankara... The attack was realised by the Immortal Battalion of the TAK," the TAK said in a statement on their website.

Wednesday's attack struck at the heart of Ankara in an area where institutions including the army headquarters and parliament are concentrated. It was one of the deadliest attacks on the Turkish military in recent years.

Ankara has insisted that the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and Democratic Union Party (PYD) were behind the attack, although its claims have met with scepticism from chief NATO ally the United States.

The YPG and PYD deny accusations from Ankara that they are branches of the PKK and have rejected having any involvement in the attack.

The TAK named the suicide bomber as Zinar Raperin born in 1989 in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated eastern region of Van, who had been involved with the Kurdish "freedom struggle" and since 2011 with the TAK.

The TAK's claim of the bomber's identity is in contradiction to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu who said the bomber was a Syrian national YPG operative.

- 'Stay away from Turkey' -

In an additional English-language statement the TAK warned it aims to "destroy" tourism in Turkey.

"We warn the foreign and native tourists not go to the touristic areas in Turkey. We are not responsible for who will die in the attacks targeting those areas," it said.

The TAK is a little-known group which has nonetheless risen to prominence in recent months after it claimed firing mortar shells on Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen airport on December 23.

The firing left one airport cleaner dead and also damaged several planes.

Turkish officials say the TAK is a front for PKK attacks on civilian targets, but the PKK claims TAK is a splinter group over which it has no control.

In an interview published by pro-PKK media on Wednesday, PKK commander Cemil Bayik said he did not know who carried out the Ankara attack but said it could have been "revenge for the massacres" in Kurdish areas.

- 'No doubt' -

Keeping up the insistence that the YPG was to blame, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday warned the United States against backing the YPG, saying there was "no doubt" they were behind the Ankara attack.

Erdogan said Turkey was "saddened" by the stubbornness of the West in not linking the YPG to the PKK which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and is recognised as a terror group by the United States and EU.

In a phone call later to US President Barack Obama, Erdogan emphasised "the importance of solidarity between allies in the fight against terrorism", the Turkish president said in a statement.

Obama called for "the immediate halt" in territorial gains by the YPG and the Syrian regime in northern Syria, which he said "cause tension" and "affect the fight" against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, the Turkish statement said.

The United States works with the YPG as the sole truly effective force on the ground in the fight against IS and has shown no sign of changing its stance on the group.

US State Department spokesman John Kirby said Thursday it was still an "open question" who had carried out the Ankara attack.

Ankara prosecutors said Friday that six more suspects had been detained in the investigation, bringing the total to 20.

In Ankara meanwhile, eight fatalities in the attack were laid to rest following a funeral ceremony at the city's vast Kocatepe Mosque.

Six of those buried were civilian employees of the military and two were soldiers. In all, 20 soldiers of varying ranks were killed in the attack, seven civilian employees and a young female journalist.

[TonyGosling]

How free are the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons?
By Rudaw 24/2/2016
A police officer in the aftermath of the Ankara bombing, Feb. 2016. Photo: AFP
http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/turkey/24022016

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—It took three days for the almost unheard-of Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) to claim responsibility for one of the deadliest attacks in recent years on the Turkish military targets inside the cities.

Twenty-eight soldiers were killed along with 61 people wounded in Ankara’s Dewlet Street, some in critical condition, according to official announcements.

Although the Turkish army and police forces are frequently targeted in what is often described as retaliatory actions carried out by guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)-- the targets, however, are usually picked in the country’s Kurdish southeast where the past bloody clashes have often taken place.

PKK’s strongman, Cemil Bayik, swiftly rejected Turkish accusations directed at his group and categorically renounced involvement. Bayek did not rule out, nonetheless, the possibility of a link between the bombing and the Turkish army’s ongoing operation in the Kurdish cities.

Less than a day after the attack, the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutuglu announced that the security forces had identified the perpetrator who accordingly was from the Syrian Kurdish city of Amuda by the name of Salih Muhammad Najar.

Davutuglu said there was little doubt in his mind that the YPG—the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, were involved in the attack.

The bombing would then be in retaliation for the Turkish shelling of the YPG forces trying to capture the Syrian region of Azaz, which Ankara has declared as the “red line” that the Kurdish forces better not to cross.

The PKK has maintained that TAK is a radical breakaway group, which does not operate under any of their units.

The PKK however could not deny what both YPG and TAK have in common with the guerrillas and also with the lawmakers of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), that is their undisputed recognition of and allegiance to the leadership of Apo (nickname for the jailed PKK leader Abdulla Ocalan), whom they all see as their ultimate symbol, and perhaps even as a cause in itself.

After all, even the charismatic Selahettin Demirtash, the HDP co-leader, publically addresses Apo as seroke min or my leader while the YPG has renamed the newly captured airbase in Menagh after the same leader.

However, despite Bayik’s dismissal of involvement, the TAK statement in which it claimed responsibility was first published at the Furat website which operates more or less as the PKK’s news agency.

So, it is increasingly difficult for the PKK to explain to its newly found Western allies in Syria, how an Apo-loving group could kill 28 NATO soldiers in bright daylight in Ankara, without PKK’s blessing? After all, the Turkish army is not clashing with TAK, it clashes with the PKK.

Turkey however would have none of this. The government makes no difference between the PKK, the YPG, TAK or HDP for that matter.

Turkish official media has in the past accused both Cemil Bayek and another PKK commander, Duran Kalkan, as the architects behind TAK which they see as PKK’s “intercity attack group” that could not move without their authorization.

Since its informal establishment sometime in 2003, TAK has claimed responsibility for a number of spectacular bombings with multiple casualties. It started in July 2005 by bombing a public transportation bus and continued through the years with its attacks on various targets including last year’s bombing of Istanbul’s Sabiha Cokcen Airport in December.

As the Kurdish question remains a central topic for the Turkish state to address, it also remains to be seen which of the two breakaway parties will take the lead for the Kurds; the TAK or the HDP.