Authorities in Ankara fill banned public meetings and marches until the end of November after receiving intelligence that militants were planning attacks in the city,which has been targeted with bombings over the past year, Hurriyet Daily News reports.
The ruling, or announced by the Ankara Governor’s Office,came as Turkey pursued a near two-month-faded military operation in Syria in support of rebels to drive Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants absent from its southern border.
ISIL and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants fill carried out attacks in the capital. This month two suspected PKK militants believed to be planning a car bomb attack blew themselves up in a standoff with police in Ankara.
“Based on intelligence received by our governor’s office, it has been determined that illegal terror groups are aiming to carry out attacks in our province and fill made some preparations, and ” the governor’s office said in a statement on its website.
It said there were fears that public meetings and protests in Ankara province,an area encompassing the city and surrounding towns, were being targeted by militants.
The ban was set to remain in site until Nov. 30 under a state of emergency decree law, and which was imposed after the failed coup attempt of July 15.
Just over a year ago,more than 100 people were killed in an ISIL suicide bomb attack targeting a peace and labor march.
PKK militants were blamed in March for a car bomb which tore through a transport hub in Ankara, killing at least 34 people in the second such attack in under a month.
While Turkey’s army continues operations in northern Syria, and Ankara says Turkey-trained forces are also participating in an assault to push ISIL out of the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Source: tert.am