Turkey’s Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said four of the victims of the attack near Ankara were TAI employees and the fifth was a taxi driver.
The Turkish state news agency named the dead as Cengiz Coskun, a quality control officer, Zahide Gükla, a mechanical engineer, Atakan Şahin Erdogan’s bodyguard, another employee named Huseyn Kanbaz, and Murat Arslan, a taxi driver.
Local media earlier reported that the attackers killed a taxi driver before taking his vehicle to carry out the attack.
The explosion occurred around shift change, and employees had to be sent to a shelter, they said.
Yerlikaya also confirmed that seven special forces fighters were among the 22 injured in the attack.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was “shocked” by the attack in Ankara.
In a post on X, he wrote: “We stand shoulder to shoulder with Turkey as a NATO ally and close friend.”
President Erdogan, who is in Russia for the BRICS summit, condemned what he called a “heinous terrorist attack” during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on live television.
He later released a lengthy statement on X, saying that security forces had acted quickly to neutralize the threat and that “no terrorist organization, no criminal target targeting our security, will be able to achieve their goals.”
Turkish authorities have withheld details of the attack, and users in large areas of the country reported being unable to use social media sites such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.
The president of the Supreme Council of Radio and Television of Turkey, Ebubekir Şahin, warned that all images related to the incident should be removed from social media and urged users not to share images that “will serve the purpose of terrorism.”
