Ankara — Four people were killed and 14 others wounded in an attack on the headquarters of a top Turkish defense firm near Ankara, Turkish officials said Wednesday. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was holding talks in Russia with Vladimir Putin at the time, confirmed the toll, and condemned what he said was a “heinous terrorist attack” at state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI).
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said three of the injured were in critical condition and that two attackers, “a woman and a man, have been neutralized.”
He said work was under way to determine their identities but did not say whether there were any other attackers still at large.
Local media broadcast video showing clouds of smoke and a large fire raging at the site in Kahramankazan, a small town about 25 miles north of Ankara.
Ismail Kaplan/Anadolu/Getty
The incident happened as Erdogan was meeting Vladimir Putin at a summit in Kazan, with the Russian leader expressing his condolences over the attack.
Media outlets which had been showing live video from the scene were forced to halt their broadcasts after Turkey’s media watchdog ordered a blackout of images from the site.
Haberturk TV said there was an ongoing “hostage situation,” without giving further details, while the private NTV television spoke of gunshots after an initial explosion at about 4 p.m. local time (8 a.m. Eastern).
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Turkey has battled Kurdish insurgents based in the south of the country for decades. Turkish forces have conducted numerous cross-border offensives against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its allied group, the YPG, in northern Iraq and Syria in recent years.
The PKK is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union, and its battle against the Turkish government has left tens of thousands of people dead since the mid 1980s.
The attack near Ankara on Wednesday came as a major trade fair for the defense and aerospace industries was taking place in Istanbul, which was visited this week by Ukraine’s top diplomat.
Turkey’s defence sector, which is widely known for its Bayraktar drones, accounts for nearly 80% of the nation’s export revenues with revenues expected to top 10.2 billion dollars in 2023. The drones are not manufactured by TAI.
