“One possible explanation is that ISIS is upset about Kurdish military victories in northern Syria because it’s the Kurdish fighters who are really leading the charge there against the ISIS fighters”, he says.
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Cavusoglu said Turkey, a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the USA -led coalition against Islamic State, had become the “number one target” for the militants because of its work to stop recruits travelling through Turkey across its over 800 km (500 mile) border into Syria to join the Sunni hardline group. Precisely, the reported killing, which has been recorded as the bloodiest ever this year in Turkey, was not a random one and the IS had the intention to inflict maximum casualty on the supporters of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) who were there on the marriage.
Prosecutors said a search was also under way for two people believed to have accompanied the suspected attacker to the wedding party but who left before the blast.
But Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Monday that authorities were still trying to identify the bomber and didn’t know whether attacker was “a child or a grown-up”. The attack on Saturday in Gaziantep is proof that while Syria bleeds profusely, the spillover into Turkey is very real and seems to be largely uncontainable.
“Our border must be completely cleansed from Daesh”, he said in televised remarks, using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.
The death toll from Saturday’s attack increased to 54 as three more victims died in hospitals, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
A senior rebel official said Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters were preparing to launch an attack to seize the Syrian town of Jarablus from ISIS on the border with Turkey, a move that would deny control to advancing Syrian Kurdish fighters.
Cavusoglu said Turkey had become a main IS target because of measures it has implemented to stop recruits from crossing into Syria to join the fighting, as well as hundreds of arrests of IS suspects in Turkey.
A family member of a victim of a suicide bombing at a wedding celebration mourn over his coffin during a funeral ceremony in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep, Turkey.
“[HDP] said in a statement that it was “quite significant” that the attack, which it also blamed on IS, came hours after the Kurdistan Communities Union, a militant organization that includes the PKK, announced plans to try to negotiate to end a three-decade conflict between Kurdish militants and the Turkish government”, the AP writes. When she looked down after the explosion, everyone below was hurt or dead, she said.
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Shops closed in respect for the victims on the main street which leads to the side street where the attack occurred. He lost five young cousins in the attack. “I am not myself since”. They were aged 13, 14.
