28 March 2016•Update: 29 March 2016
ANKARA
Turkish Presidency spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Monday that sharing of intelligence was crucial in order to tackle terrorism.
In a press conference in Ankara, Kalin condemned Sunday’s suicide bomb attack in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Lahore, which left at least 72 people dead and over 300 injured.
He said that an attack like this, which was claimed by Jamaat ul-Ahrar, a group affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban, could never be excused nor legitimized.
“We want to express one more time that intelligence-sharing is of great importance especially at this point. This issue came to the forefront, especially after the Brussels attack. Unfortunately, we saw once more what kind of results the weakness of intelligence-sharing brought, the follow-up of shared intelligence and the taking of necessary steps," he said.
Kalin reminded that Turkey earlier deported Brussels airport attacker and mentioned the importance of intelligence sharing for the fight against terrorism.
At least 31 people were killed and 260 injured on Tuesday in multiple explosions at Brussels’s Zaventem Airport and in a subway station.
The Brussels attacks came in the wake of a March 13 car bomb attack at a major Ankara public transportation hub, killing 36 and injuring dozens of civilians.
“There is no such thing as good terrorist or bad terrorist. Terrorism is terrorism everywhere in the world, no matter what is its reason. Some may have a religious slogan, some may have an ethnic one or others may have an ideological one but the result is the same: terror.”
And he added that the terrorist PKK and its affiliates should be condemned with the same determination as Turkey condemns Daesh, al-Qaeda or Boko Haram.
The PKK – also seen as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU – resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015.
Since then, over 350 members of the security forces have been martyred and thousands of PKK terrorists killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq.
