Difficult questions on the Ankara attack

A bomb blast rocked central Ankara at rush hour on the evening of Feb. 17, killing 28 and wounding 61. Government sources stated that a suicide bomber pulled the trigger on 30 kilos of explosives next to two buses stopped at a red traffic light carrying military and civilian personnel back home from military offices.

After paying a condolence visit to Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar on Feb. 18, Turkish President Tayyip Erdo?an said 20 of the 28 killed were ranking military officers. He and Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu - who had also earlier visited Akar - identified the attacker as Syrian national Salih Neccar, born in the northern town of Amuda in 1992. They said Neccar had links with the People's Protection Units (YPG), the military wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the Syrian affiliate of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). 

Recalling the recent words of Bashar Jaafari, the Syrian regime's representative at the U.N., who said the Bashar al-Assad regime now supported the PYD and the YPG, Davuto?lu said Ankara held the Syria regime responsible for the attack and reserved its right to retaliate. 

Meanwhile, President Erdo?an said Turkey's friends and allies would now be able to understand the link of terrorism between the PKK and the PYD/YPG. The latter is trusted by the U.S. as a partner in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and Erdo?an called on Washington twice in the last week to "choose" between the "terrorist" PYD and NATO ally Turkey. 

In response, Washington stressed that Turkey was an ally, but it did not regard the PYD/YPG as a terrorist organization. The U.S. has been outsourcing ground operations in Syria to the PYD/YPG and supporting it with air...

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