PKK members on Kastamonu attack: AK Party our only target

The recordings, made by intelligence units, found their way to the Turkish media on Friday. According to the recordings, the group that carried out the attack in Kastamonu contacted the PKK administration in the Kandil Mountains of northern Iraq via radio communication, saying: “Our friends carried out the attack in Kastamonu. … Our only target from now on is the AK Party.” “It was a very good attack,” another PKK member is heard saying in the recording.

According to intelligence units, the order to carry out the attack came from Kandil. Six PKK members reportedly took part in the attack.

The recordings confirm earlier comments by observers who said the attack aimed to raise tension ahead of parliamentary elections, slated for June 12. AK Party officials also said earlier that the attack directly targeted the ruling party and that it is a plot against the government ahead of elections.

One police officer was shot dead and another injured by assailants on Wednesday in the northern province of Kastamonu, where Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had been speaking in an election rally earlier in the day. The prime minister left Kastamonu for Amasya in a helicopter shortly before the attack took place.

Kastamonu Governor Erdoğan Bektaş on Thursday announced that a group linked to the PKK had claimed responsibility for Wednesday's deadly armed attack on Erdoğan's police escort.

He said the group claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the PKK. Although the radio communication between PKK members suggested that the attack had targeted the AK Party, the governor said it seems the group was targeting the police rather than the prime minister.

Meanwhile, Erdoğan on Friday paid a visit to the policeman injured in the attack. Speaking to reporters in front of the hospital where the police officer is receiving treatment, Erdoğan said the police are still working to capture the assailants and called on the nation to stand united against terrorism.

Pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Co-chairman Selahattin Demirtaş commented on the attack for the first time on Friday. “This loss [the death of the policeman] is a shared suffering of all citizens of the Turkish Republic. The responsibility for stopping these deaths falls on the government,” he said.

He also dismissed claims that the PKK aimed to get more support for the BDP in the elections with the attack, noting that if this incident brings him even a single vote, he does not want it.