Turkey’s Prime Minister has visited the main train station in the country’s capital, where suicide bombings killed at least 97 people on Saturday.
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Turkish mourners gather around the coffin of Fatma Esen, a victim of Saturday’s Ankara bombing attacks, during a funeral in I…
The investigation into the suicide blasts, which occurred near a railway station in the heart of Ankara, is centered on the radical Islamic State, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Monday in a television interview.
When the scene of the bombings was reopened to the public, Ankara’s residents left red carnations at the site.
Turks all over the world are expressing outrage at the attacks, though a few are pointing fingers at the government for not doing enough to protect Kurds. Soon after, Turkish authorities began rounding up suspected jihadis at home and even carrying out a few airstrikes against the caliphate in Syria.
“Bombings have struck rallies involving Kurdish groups in Turkey three times this year”, notes CNN.
The deputy prime minister said the attacks aimed to sow discord and create “deep fissures” within Turkey, and called for unity and solidary.
There have been 120 coordinated attacks on the party’s offices around the country, while protesters have attacked newspapers accused of misquoting Erdogan. “We’re eager for the election, whereas the dictator in the palace is fleeing the election”, said its honorary president Ertugrul Kurkcu.
The blasts rocked crowds at a lunchtime peace rally calling for an end to the renewed conflict between the PKK and Turkish government helmed by Erdogan.
The possibility that a group known to the authorities carried out Saturday’s attack has heaped pressure on the government, already under fire from opponents for failing to give more transparent information on its investigations into the Diyarbakir and Suruc attacks.
“Both President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and PM Davutoglu should immediately demonstrate the necessary will to reconstruct national security”, Bahceli said, according to Hurriyet.
“Several families appealed to the authorities… saying their sons are missing and they suspect they went to Syria and joined Islamic State [Daesh]”, Suzen told Reuters. “We wish mercy of God on those who lost their lives in the attack and patience to their relatives and a speedy recovery to the injured”, Kavazovic said in a letter.
“The event exposes huge flaws in the Turkish security apparatus that has been cracking down on the PKK for months, but neglected an equally serious and even more unpredictable threat such as ISIS”, Cristian Maggio, head of Emerging Markets Research at TD Securities in London, said, using an alternative name for Islamic State.
Ankara fears ultimately the creation of an independent Kurdish state occupying contiguous territories now belonging to Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
ISIS has been linked to July’s bombing in Suruc that killed 33 pro-Kurdish activists.
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Selahattin Demirtas, the HDP co-leader, said in the aftermath of the deadly incident, “There is nobody who has been designated as “responsible” around”. The reaction from Kurds was to blame the government for what they see as either negligence or complicity, for this blast and many other security actions recently taken against Kurds and their politicians.
