Four people were killed and 14 injured. Surveillance footage showed two attackers, a man and a woman, with backpacks and rifles and a body lying on the pavement outside.
Gunmen armed with explosives and rifles assaulted the headquarters of Turkey’s state-run aerospace company near the capital, Ankara, on Wednesday in what Turkish officials called a “terrorist attack.”
Speaking publicly during a visit to Russia, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that four people had been killed and 14 injured.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya confirmed the attack on Turkish Aerospace Industries and told reporters that the authorities were trying to identify the assailants to determine their affiliations. Two of them, a man and a woman, had been killed, he said.
Selim Cirpanoglu, the mayor of the district where the attack took place, told the Turkish news media that hostages had been taken in a cafeteria inside the company compound. It was not clear whether they were still being held.
Anil Sahin, a defense industry reporter, told Haberturk, a Turkish news network, that two militants had come to company’s headquarters in a taxi. One blew himself up while the other fired at the complex’s security guards.
A reporter on the scene for the same network, Serkan Simsek, said he had heard three explosions and saw lots of smoke.
The Demiroren news agency published footage of a half dozen heavily equipped special forces officers rushing toward the compound.
Police blocked access to the large, industrial compound next to a military base in a suburb northwest of Ankara and ambulances were seen rushing to the site.
A video from the scene, which aired on Turkish television networks, showed gray smoke from what appeared to be an explosion and a man who appeared to be an attacker running with an assault rifle. Images from surveillance cameras inside a building showed two attackers, a man and a woman, with backpacks and rifles near the entrance and a body lying on the pavement outside.
Netblocks, a group that tracks internet outages, said that major social media platforms including X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok had been restricted in Turkey.
Turkish Aerospace Industries was founded to decrease Turkey’s dependence on foreign defense companies and is a major employer that produces parts for airplanes, helicopters, drones and other technologies.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Turkey has faced similar attacks in recent years from Kurdish separatists, radical leftists and jihadists from the Islamic State.
The attack came a day after one of Mr. Erdogan’s closest political allies said during a televised address to parliament that Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned head of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., could be released if he announced the end of his group’s insurgency against the state.
The surprising offer suggested the possibility of new movement in long-dormant peace talks between Turkey and the P.K.K.
Mr. Ocalan is serving an aggravated life sentence in an island prison near Istanbul. His group has been seeking Kurdish autonomy through a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has killed tens of thousands of people. Turkey and its Western allies consider the P.K.K. a terrorist organization.
Ben Hubbard is the Istanbul bureau chief, covering Turkey and the surrounding region. More about Ben Hubbard
Şafak Timur covers Turkey and is based in Istanbul. More about Safak Timur
