Turkiska källor: 150 kilo tung bomb desarmerades

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (Kurdish: Teyrêbazên Azadiya Kurdistan‎, TAK), Turkish: Kürdistan Özgürlük Şahinleri), also known as the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, the Kurdish Vengeance Brigade, or the Kurdistan Liberation Hawks, is a militant Kurdish nationalist group in Turkey seeking an independent Kurdish state in eastern and southeastern Turkey. The group presents itself as a break-away faction of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in open dissent with the PKK's readiness to compromise with the Turkish state. The group first appeared in August 2004, just weeks after the PKK called off the 1999 truce, assuming responsibility for two hotel bombings in Istanbul which claimed two victims. Since then, TAK has followed a strategy of escalation, committing numerous violent bomb attacks throughout Turkey, with a focus on western and central Turkey, including tourist areas in Istanbul, Ankara, and southern Mediterranean resorts. TAK also claimed responsibility for the February 2016 Ankara bombing, which killed at least 28 people and the March 2016 terrorist attack in the same city that took 37 lives. The group has been considered a rival to the PKK that since 2006 repeatedly damaged the PKK's efforts to negotiate cease-fires in a way that has been compared to the Real IRA in the Northern Ireland conflict. Its origins however remain controversial. Some Turkish security analysts alleged that Bahoz Erdal may be the leader of TAK. Other analysts believe that the group was initially formed by PKK leaders in 2003, when it engaged in illegal demonstrations, roadblocks and occasional Molotov cocktails, before separating from the PKK and criticizing its passivity. Since then, the PKK claimed none of TAK's actions and the group repeatedly declared its independence from the PKK, most recently in December 2015, when they criticized the PKK's "humanist character" as inept in the face of "the methods used by the existing Turkish state fascism." However, according to the Guardian, "Turkish officials as well as some security analysts say TAK still acts as a militant front of the PKK". While the Turkish state refuses to distinguish between the TAK and the PKK, the U.S. government designated TAK a terrorist organization in 2008.