Turkey’s Interior Minister blames the US for attack on police facility

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu accused the US of being involved in an attack against a police facility that killed an officer and wounded another saying the assault was “centered” in the US.

 Last week, two attackers assailed a police facility with long-barreled weapons and explosives in Turkey’s southern province of Mersin.

Armed wing of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) later assumed the attack, which it said was conducted “in response to massacres and oppression in prisons and in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons against our fighters."

Soylu claimed that “the attackers flew with paramotors from Manbij for 12 hours” to reach a city nearby. Then they drove to Mersin to carry out the attack. 

Soylu said during his six years in tenure as the interior minister, he saw the first time a request from the US: 

“They wanted the serial numbers of the guns… Why did they ask that? Our friends gave them a very good answer: 'First you send us the serial numbers of the weapons you sent to the PKK, then we will send you what you want.’” 

The PKK, which has been waging war against Turkey since 1984, is designated as a terrorist organization by both the US and the EU. But Kurdish militant group YPG (People’s Protective Units) in Syria was heavily backed by the US during the battle against ISIS. 

Turkey sees YPG’s links with the PKK as a threat to its southern borders and strongly criticizes the US for arming the Kurdish group.