An explosion was heard Sunday morning in the Turkish capital. (Credit: AFP/Adem Altan)
Turkey's interior ministry is calling an explosion near Turkey's parliament in Ankara Sunday, leaving two police officers injured, "terrorist attack."
Turkey's Kurdish PKK claimed responsibility for the Ankara attack.
The ministry said two attackers arrived in a commercial vehicle around 9:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) "in front of the entrance gate of the general directorate of security of our interior ministry, and carried out a bomb attack."
"One of the terrorists blew himself up and the other was neutralized," the ministry added on social media, saying two officers had sustained "minor injuries."
The targeted district is home to several ministries as well as the parliament building, which Turkish media said was due to reopen today with an address from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
TV channel NTV reported gunfire in the cordoned-off district, where emergency services had taken up positions.
The Ankara prosecutor's office said it was opening an investigation and banned access to the area.
Nobody immediately claimed the attack.
Erdogan slams EU
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday that "terrorists" will never achieve their aims.
Speaking before parliament, Erdogan stated that the "villains who threaten the peace and security of citizens have not achieved their objectives and will never achieve them."
Turkey, he said, "no longer expects anything from the European Union, which has kept us waiting at its door for 40 years."
"We have kept all the promises we have made to the EU but they have kept almost none of theirs," he added, saying that he would not "tolerate any new demands or conditions" for his country to join the bloc.
Ankara attacks
Erdogan was set to speak during the opening of this parliamentary session, which must validate Sweden's entry into the NATO alliance.
Hungary and Turkey lifted their vetoes against Sweden's entry into the Atlantic alliance in July, but have been slow to ratify its membership.
Erdogan said in July that the Turkish parliament's ratification would not take place before October, but it is expected to be approved during this parliamentary year.
For months, Erdogan has pressured Sweden to take action against Quran burnings, which have strained the two countries' relations.
In the midst of the war in Ukraine, Finland became NATO's 31st member country in April, after three decades of military non-alignment.
Ankara has been the scene of several attacks, particularly in 2015 and 2016 — many claimed by the outlawed separatist group the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), or the so-called Islamic State group.
The PKK has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and Ankara and its Western allies have blacklisted it is as a terror group. PKK-affiliated Kurdish militants control most of northeastern Syria.
Islamic State claimed an October 2015 attack that killed 109 people in front of Ankara's central station.
The most recent bomb attack in Turkey was on a Sunday afternoon in November 2022, in the popular shopping street of Istiklal Street, leaving six killed and 81 injured.
There was no claim of responsibility, but Turkey accused the PKK, saying it had detained 46 people including a Syrian woman suspected of planting the device.