Turkish police detain two suspected PKK members over Ankara attacks

ANKARA

Police have detained two suspected members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who allegedly predicted on social media that a terrorist attack would take place in Ankara before the Oct. 10 double-suicide bombings in the capital that killed at least 97 people.

Anonymous Turkish police sources, speaking to the state-run Anadolu Agency, said on Oct. 14 that two people identified as members of the PKK were detained in relation to a fake Twitter account.

A message saying “A bomb will explode in Ankara” was posted from the fake account named “@DrBereday,” the same sources said.

The particular message was posted nine hours before the attack, www.hurriyet.com.tr reported. According to Hürriyet, other messages posted from the same account read “If ISIL [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] exploded [a bomb] in Ankara,” “In the demonstration that will be held in Ankara, there may be an intervention under the name of ISIL. The way to prevent this is a direct intervention of leftist organizations. The PKK is not in this affair.”
 
The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, in charge of the investigation, earlier appealed to the Telecommunication and Communications Directorate and asked for information on the identities of certain accounts. Twitter’s headquarters in the U.S. later reportedly shared all the information requested by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.