A man and a woman wielding automatic weapons opened fire on staff at the headquarters of a Turkish aerospace company on Wednesday in a deadly terror attack.
Two attackers drove a beaten-up yellow taxi to the entrance of Turkish Aerospace Industries (Tusas) in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, before launching their assault.
CCTV footage showed at least two attackers shooting at people fleeing in the company’s car park.
Five people were killed and around a dozen more were injured in the attack, which occurred at around 3.30pm local time in the Kahramankazan district.
One assailant reportedly detonated a bomb at the entrance of Tusas’s HQ before a gunman dressed in black was filmed jumping over entry turnstiles and firing through automatic doors from inside the building.
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One of the attackers, a woman, carried out the attack with a Kalashnikov rifle, according to reports, while the man wielded a PK machine gun.
Ali Yerlikaya, Turkey’s interior minister, confirmed that she and another assailant were “neutralised”.
Investigations into the identity of the perpetrators are ongoing. In the past, Kurdish militants, ISIS and leftist extremists have carried out terror attacks in Turkey.
Mr Yerlikaya said it was “most likely” carried out by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist terror organisation.
The PKK is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, Britain, the US and the European Union. It has been fighting a separatist insurgency since 1984, with more than 40,000 people killed in the conflict.
In September, Turkey said it destroyed 20 PKK “targets” in a series of air strikes in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
The PKK has been noted for its use of female fighters as around 40 per cent of the PKK’s troops were reported to be women in 2014.
It is not yet clear how many people were involved in the attack and whether there were other suspects still at large.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, said he condemned the “heinous terrorist attack” as he attended the Brics summit in the Russian city of Kazan, where he thanked Vladimir Putin for his condolences.
Mr Erdoğan later said in a statement: “Our nation should know that dirty hands reaching out to Turkey will definitely be broken; no structure, no terrorist organisation, no evil focused on our security will be able to achieve their goals.”
Tusas’s headquarters in Kahramankazan is believed to house around 15,000 employees.
Local media first reported that a huge explosion was followed by gunfire, before claiming that hostages had been taken in a suspected suicide bomb attack.
Security forces stormed the site as ambulances and firefighters were dispatched to the site, NTV television reported. Employees at the company were taken to a safe area.
Tusas is considered to be one of Turkey’s most important defence and aviation companies.
The company manufactures the advanced Kaan fighter jet along with other planes, helicopters and drones for the Turkish defence industry.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The last terror attack in Turkey was claimed by Isis. Two gunmen opened fire inside a Catholic church in Istanbul, killing one, in January of this year.
Wednesday’s attack came after Devlet Bahçeli, Mr Erdoğan’s coalition partner and leader of the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), suggested PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan could be granted parole if he renounced violence and disbanded the organisation.
Ocalan has been serving a life sentence on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara since February 1999 for founding and leading a terrorist organisation.
Mr Erdoğan is reportedly seeking support from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) to push for constitutional changes.
Rumours have grown in recent weeks of a possible resumption of talks between Turkey and the PKK as part of fresh efforts to end a conflict that began 40 years ago.
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Mr Bahceli’s speech was extraordinary given his usual vitriolic rhetoric towards Ocalan, the PKK and DEM politicians.
The DEM party questioned the timing of the attack in parliament on Wednesday and referred to it as a “provocation”.
A member of Mr Erdoğan’s ruling party, Ozlen Zengin, also said: “I find the timing very significant… Why today? Why Tusas?”
Turkish politicians and international politicians were quick to condemn Wednesday’s attack. “We stand with Turkey. We strongly condemn all forms of terrorism,” Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of Nato, posted on X.
Turkey throttled social media following the attack and applied a broadcast ban, citing the sharing of unconfirmed images.
