Kurdish Militants Claim Responsibility for Friday's Car Bomb Attack in Turkey

ISTANBUL—Kurdish militants claimed responsibility on Sunday for a deadly car bomb attack that hit a Turkish police station last Friday as the country's top Kurdish lawmakers suspended participation in parliament, setting the stage for more violence in response to an expansive government crackdown on dissent.

A splinter Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, known as the TAK, said that it carried out last week's attack, which killed at least 11 people near a police compound in Diyarbakir, the de facto Kurdish capital in southeastern Turkey.

The claim of responsibility came as Turkey's second-largest opposition party said that it was halting work in parliament to protest the arrest of its leaders for alleged links to Kurdish militants.

The Peoples' Democratic Party, known by its initials HDP, the pro-Kurdish group that has opposed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's bid for more political power, said its lawmakers won't take part in legislative sessions while its leaders consider withdrawing from parliament entirely.

Turkey has drawn widespread criticism for last Friday's arrest of Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, leaders of the HDP, who have been accused of links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, the militant group that has spent more than three decades fighting Turkey for more autonomy and greater rights. The elected lawmakers have rejected the allegations and worked to give the country's Kurdish minority a greater political voice in Ankara.

On Friday, hours after several HDP leaders were detained, a car bomb killed 11 people and wounded scores of others outside a security headquarters in Diyarbakir, the nation's largest Kurdish-majority city, where Mr. Demirtas lives and was detained. Turkish officials immediately blamed the PKK, the group classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey and the U.S. The PKK has carried out similar attacks across Turkey over the past year, but the fact that several Kurdish politicians were in the building hit by the blast raised questions about who was behind the attack.

The first claim of responsibility came from Amaq News Agency, a website linked to Islamic State. Amaq cited a source who claimed that the attack was planned by Islamic State.

On Sunday, a pro-Kurdish website, Firat News Agency, carried a statement from the TAK, which identified the bomber and said it was behind the blast. The TAK said that it didn't know Kurdish leaders were in the building when they carried out the attack.

Turkish officials stood by their conclusion Sunday that the bombing was the work of the PKK, which threatened to step up its fight against Turkey after the political leaders were arrested.

The roundup of Kurdish leaders, combined with the prospect that their elected leaders are being sidelined, appears likely to lead to an escalation of violence in Turkey.

Turkey has carried out a sweeping crackdown on dissent since July, when a faction of the military unsuccessfully tried to topple Mr. Erdogan's government. Mr. Erdogan, who declared a State of Emergency that curtailed opposition, has jailed hundreds of generals, teachers, journalists and other critics.

Since a two-year-old cease-fire between Ankara and the PKK broke down last fall, fighting has escalated. The PKK has carried out a series of car bomb attacks across the country, while Turkey has sent its military into Kurdish cities and towns to battle separatists in urban street battles that have turned neighborhoods into rubble.

Turkey has also been battered over the past year by a series of attacks carried out by suspected Islamic State members, including a deadly strike at Istanbul's Atatü rk International Airport in June that killed more than 45 people.

Efforts in Turkey to organize protests over the arrest of the Kurdish leaders were hobbled when the government blocked access to Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media sites. Turkey even blocked access to virtual private network services that allow people to circumvent the government restrictions.

Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 06, 2016 20:45 ET (01:45 GMT)

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