Ankara is concerned about the growing power of USA -backed Syrian Kurdish forces, who it says are linked to Kurdish groups waging an insurgency in southeastern Turkey.
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The bombing follows a suspected IS attack in June on Istanbul’s main airport that killed 44 people; a double suicide bombing blamed on IS at a peace rally in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, in October killed 103 people.
In his remarks on Sunday, Erdogan said early signs point to the Islamic State, or ISIS, as responsible for the attack. The group has targeted Kurdish gatherings in an apparent effort to further inflame ethnic tensions strained by a long Kurdish insurgency.
The wave of bombings in Turkey could intensify as the country becomes ever more embroiled in the Syrian war, the media reported.
Security expert Metin Gurcan, a former Turkish military officer and columnist for the online newspaper Al-Monitor, said that IS who view the attack as “hitting two birds with one stone” – as retaliation for Syrian Kurdish advances on their forces in Syria, and for Turkey’s attacks on IS targets. An official said the strikes were created to “open a corridor for moderate rebels”. Reuters TV footage showed around 10 Turkish tanks deployed at a village around 4 km (2.5 miles) from the border gate immediately across from Jarablus.
“Kurdish fighters with the US-led coalition drove them out of a stronghold, Manbij”.
Turkish authorities have suggested that Islamic State was behind the massacre.
The attack comes with Turkey still shaken just a month after the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on US -based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen. Gulen denies any involvement.
Investigators are looking into the possibility that militants could have put explosives on a child without his or her knowledge and detonated them remotely, or even used a child with learning disabilities.
Syrian activists have said that hundreds of Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters have gathered in the Turkish border area of Karkamis in preparation for an attack on Jarablus.
Early reports of a child suicide bomber were highly unusual for Turkey, Peter says.
Some in Turkey, particularly in the Kurdish southeast, feel the government has not done enough to protect its citizens from Islamic State.
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People carry a victim’s coffin as they attend funeral services for dozens of people killed in last night’s bomb attack targeting an outdoor wedding party in Gaziantep, southeastern Turkey, Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. The bride and groom – a couple from the strongly Kurdish region of Siirt to the southeast – were rushed to hospital but not seriously wounded.
