A auto bomb attack hit a police station in the southeastern Turkish province of Mardin on Wednesday, wounding many people, security sources said, a day after 11 people were killed in a bombing in Istanbul.
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In Istanbul, two suicide bombing attacks killed 12 Germans and four foreigners respectively in January and March.
Turkish police detained four people in a hunt for the perpetrators of a auto bombing in central Istanbul on Tuesday that killed seven police and four civilians, state media said.
NATO-member Turkey is also a member of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group which controls large swathes of territory in neighbouring Syria and Iraq.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, visited some of the wounded at Haseki hospital.
Hours after the explosion, police detained four suspects reported to have hired the auto used in the bombing.
The vehicle bomb explosion in Mardin province comes in the wake of a major blast in Turkey’s Istanbul. “We will fight them both in urban centers and rural areas with determination”, he vowed.
State-run Anatolia news agency blamed “terrorists” in a reference to militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). A total of 51 people, among them 23 civilians, were wounded in the attack in the town of Midyat, it reported.
It also shattered windows at a 16th-century Ottoman mosque, Sehzadebasi, and forced the cancellation of exams at the nearby Istanbul University.
Turkish and European Union officials pushed each other towards stronger anti-terrorism cooperation at a special one-day summit in the EU capital on Wednesday, amid two deadly vehicle bomb attacks this week in Turkey, one on the day of the summit.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was behind the attack, Yildirim added.
Turkey’s Kurds, who make up between 15 and 20 percent of Turkey’s 75 million people, have faced oppression and enforced cultural assimilation policies for decades. The Kurdish militants have in turn threatened more attacks. It also marked the steepest decline in 17 years.
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Vezneciler is a busy district and a tourist destination in Turkey.
