Bugün’s Gültekin Avcı thinks that regardless of whether or not the Syrian intelligence organization was involved in the attack, the PKK certainly had a hand in it. It is a known fact that many terrorist attacks conducted by the PKK in Turkey are ordered by foreign actors desiring to dominate Turkish politics, and the truth is that as long as there is an organization happy to take such orders against Turkey there will always be those ordering attacks. Thus, he argues, what is important here is to destroy the organization to which foreign actors can deliver orders.

Star’s Fehmi Koru argues that we are going through a phase in which the PKK has already realized that it is going to lose in the end, and that’s why it designs its plans to cause maximum losses to others as well. Turkey has been politically and economically so bright until recently. But the abrupt deterioration of our relations with Syria, Iran and Iraq, as well as our apparently having given up taking steps to seek greater freedoms and rights for Kurds in our country, have tarnished Turkey’s image, offering a rare opportunity for the PKK to take advantage of the situation. And now we are at a point where the PKK has adopted a “lose-lose” policy, aiming to sink the ship to drown the captain. The government should watch out not to fall into this trap, Koru warns.

In response to some claims that we cannot solve this issue by blaming only the PKK and by calling them terrorists, Star’s Sedat Laçiner says that it is true that a group can be regarded as “warriors of freedom” by some and as “terrorists” by others, just as we call those opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “dissidents” while Assad calls them “terrorists.” And it is true that terrorism is often used as a tool in struggles for independence. But movements seeking independence do not carry out terrorist acts, and they take their strength and legitimacy from the group they represent. Those who don’t break their ties with terrorism are bound to remain “terrorists,” which is precisely the case with the PKK, which has insisted on maintaining its ties with terrorism for the last 30 years, despite calls from the Kurds to do otherwise. In this sense, calling the PKK a terrorist organization does not stem from our political differences with the organization. We call those who blow people up without caring whether they are innocent, or whether they are women or children, terrorists, no matter what, Laçiner maintains.