A suicide bombing struck a government building in the Turkish capital Ankara on Sunday, the day the country’s parliament was set to reconvene from a summer recess.
Two suspects attacked Turkey’s interior ministry on Sunday morning, according to interior minister Ali Yerlikaya. One attacker died after blowing himself up and the other was killed by police, Yerlikaya said.
“At around 09.30, two terrorists who came with a light commercial vehicle [to] the entrance gate of the General Directorate of Security of our Ministry of Internal Affairs, carried out a bomb attack,” Yerlikaya said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Videos posted on Turkish news websites showed armed police, fire trucks and ambulances in the area of the attack.
The bombing came on the same day Turkey’s parliament begins its new legislative year with a ceremony led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
One of the highest-profile issues MPs will consider is whether to ratify Sweden’s accession to Nato. Vice-president Cevdet Yılmaz told the Financial Times earlier this week that Sweden must do more to fight extremist groups that Turkey blames for attacks within its borders to clinch parliament’s support for the Nordic country’s entry into the military alliance.
Sunday’s attack comes less than a year after a bombing in a busy commercial district in Istanbul that killed six people and injured dozens. Turkey says the Istanbul attack was ordered by Kurdish separatist groups affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which has carried out a decades-long insurgency in Turkey.
There have been no official statements on who is suspected of carrying out Sunday’s attack. Other groups that have staged bombings in Turkey in the past include Isis and far-left militants.
Security was one of the biggest issues in May’s presidential elections, with Erdoğan frequently featuring his government’s fight against the PKK, Isis and a religious network Turkey blames for a 2016 coup attempt in fiery campaign rallies.
Yerlikaya said two police officers were injured in a firefight following Sunday’s bombing. Ankara police carried out controlled explosions of “suspicious packages” near the interior ministry building and a park in the busy Kızılay neighbourhood.
The interior ministry said a bomb had been removed from one of the attackers, who was shot dead, and security forces planned to disable it through a controlled explosion.
The Turkish government put reporting restrictions on local media. “We kindly request our citizens to be sensitive to disinformation activities and to respect the information given from official sources in this process,” Turkey’s communications directorate said in a statement on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter.
Turkey’s allies issued messages of support following Sunday’s bombing. European Council president Charles Michel said he strongly condemned “this cowardly attempt to inflict injury and death upon the Turkish people”. British ambassador to Ankara Jill Morris said: “We condemn all forms of terrorism and stand firmly in support of our friend and ally Türkiye in its fight against it.”
