Scene of car bombing in southeastern Turkey
Scene of car bombing in southeastern TurkeyReuters

Turkey's ruling AK (Justice and Development) Party has accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of “heaving heavy weapons” for Kurdish PKK terrorists in northern Syria.

A senior party official was quoted by the Todays Zaman daily newspaper as saying that 'Ankara has reliable intelligence that the Syrian military intentionally left heavy weapons for the PKK when it abandoned areas in northern Syria.'

“Bashar al-Assad is acting on the idea that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend.' It is crystal clear that he is taking the PKK under his wing and using it against Turkey,” AK Party deputy chairman Huseyin Celik said Wednesday.

Turkish officials said the Syrian government has been aiding the PKK for months, in response to Turkey's criticism of the brutal crackdown on protesters that led to the current civil war. 

The PKK has been carrying out attacks in southeast Turkey since 1984. The group is listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States as well as Turkey. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict between the Turkish government and the Kurdish separatist terror organization. 

On Monday, firefighters raced to the scene of an explosion in the southeastern Turkish town of Gaziantep to extinguish flames from a car bomb believed to have been planted by Kurdish separatists. The bomb exploded close to a police station in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep, killing at least seven people and wounding dozens more, security sources said.

Television footage broadcast over a national Turkish network showed a bus and the surrounding area ablaze with smoke billowing into the sky as firefighters battled the blaze. Ambulances ferried casualties to hospital, but initially, no group took responsibility for the conflagration. Ankara claimed the PKK was responsible for the attack.