On Feb. 17, Ankara witnessed its first suicide attack carried out with a moving vehicle. The attack targeted a military shuttle bus, killing 29 people, mostly military personnel. In a column I wrote after that attack, I asked if that was just the beginning.

Twenty-five days later, about a kilometer (half a mile) from the scene of the Feb. 17 bombing, there was another suicide bombing, again with a moving vehicle. However, this attack, at the central square of the city, was against civilians. The March 13 attack killed 37 people, wounded 125 and shook the country to its core.

That was the third suicide attack in Ankara, following the Oct. 10 Islamic State (IS) attack near the central train station and the Feb. 17 explosion.

As I emphasized in a Dec. 30 column titled “Are clashes spreading to western Turkey?” the government is engrossed in long-term sieges of towns such as Yuksekova, Sirnak and Nusaybin to disrupt the logistics lines of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its newly established youth wing, the Civil Defense Units. Ankara is bent on undermining the Kurdish resistance by combat.