After an explosion injured two police officers outside the Ankara parliament building earlier in the day, Turkish jets launched airstrikes inside Iraqi Kurdistan late on Sunday.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had already pledged that “terrorists” would never succeed in their objectives in the hours after the bombing.
The explosion was blamed on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey and its Western allies have designated as a terrorist organization. For forty years, it has engaged in a violent insurgency against Ankara.
The Turkish parliament, which resumed as scheduled in the afternoon with an address from Erdogan, is located in the district that was the target of the explosion, along with numerous other ministries.
“The villains who threaten the peace and security of citizens have not achieved their objectives and will never achieve them,” Erdogan said.
The interior ministry said two attackers had arrived in a commercial vehicle around 9:30 am (0630 GMT) in front of “the entrance gate of the General Directorate of Security of our Ministry of the Interior, and carried out a bomb attack.”
“One of the terrorists blew himself up,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya told journalists outside the ministry. “The other was killed by a bullet to the head before he had a chance to blow himself up.”
Although two police officers were slightly hurt during the gunfire exchange, their lives were not in danger, he continued.
The prosecutor’s office in Ankara announced that it had started an inquiry and restricted access to the area. It was requested that local media stop showing footage from the attack.
