A heretofore mostly unknown Kurdish faction calling itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TaK) is claiming credit for the Wednesday bombing in the Turkish capital of Ankara, saying it was revenge for Turkish attacks on the Kurdish city of Cizre.
Not much is known about the TaK at this point, but it is described as a splinter group from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the primary Turkish Kurdish faction against which the Turkish government is waging a war that spans most of the nation’s southeast.
The only previous TaK incident to get any sort of public attention was in December, when the group claimed credit for a mortar attack against the Istanbul airport, a strike which killed a single civilian employee.
Turkey, however, blamed the Ankara bombing on the Syrian Kurdish faction the YPG, and used it as a pretext for further attacks against northern Syria, along with a new round of demands that its allies sever all ties with Syria’s Kurds.