The Islamic State is the “primary focus” of Turkish investigators after the worst terrorist attack in the country’s history, Turkey’s prime minister said Monday, even as protests swelled over security measures before the deadly blasts.
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With the forthcoming elections that due to take place on 1 November, Mr Davutoglu believed that the bombings were an attempt to influence the election after a vote in June left no party able to form a government. DNA tests are being conducted.
“We are close to identifying one of the bombers”, he told NTV television, adding that this would help name the organization behind the attacks.
A source said the attack had striking similarities to a suicide bombing in July in Suruc near the Syrian border.
The rally on Saturday was organised by Turkish and Kurdish activists to call for increased democracy and an end to the renewed fighting between Turkey’s security forces and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in the southeast that has killed hundreds since July. Speaking on top of a bus at the rally in Ankara on Sunday, Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the Kurdish-dominated Peoples’ Democratic Party, said that 128 people had been killed. “Each time there are people dead, I also die a little”, said Zahide, who like many others carried a pink carnation flower to commemorate the victims.
“The main message is to create an insecure atmosphere by targeting so many people because you don’t know the perpetrator”, she said in a live TV interview on CNN Turk.
Kurdish forces have been battling ISIS jihadists across a swath of northern Iraq and Turkey and the Turkish government recently changed its stance to allow the U.S.to launch strikes on the militant group’s positions from Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey.
President Erdogan called the elections in the hope they will restore the AK party, which he founded, to an overall parliamentary majority.
Kurtulmus reiterated that the way the attack was carried out showed “a resemblance to the Suruc bombing”, and said that “a large number of people have been detained in relation to the attack”, without giving an exact number of suspects in custody.
October: Turkey says 17 suspected PKK rebels are killed after security officers enforce a military lockdown in the mainly Kurdish southeastern town of Silvan.
No one has yet claimed responsibility.
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The soldiers were killed during clashes with PKK militants in the Senkaya district of Erzurum province, the Dogan news agency said on Sunday, citing the local governor’s office.
