Turkey has been rocked by a wave of attacks in the past year that have either been claimed by Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party – known by its acronym PKK – or were blamed on IS.
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Police say the suicide bomber was between 12 and 14 years old.
The United States also condemned the bombing in Turkey, with National Security Council spokesman Ned Price saying “the perpetrators of this barbaric act cynically and cowardly targeted a wedding, killing dozens and leaving scores wounded”.
Both Erdogan and analysts said that attacks targeting Turkish Kurds serve to destabilize Turkey, which is part of the anti-Islamic State coalition, and thereby prove beneficial to the Islamic State.
The local governor’s office said in a statement that 50 people were killed in the bombing, and more wounded were still being treated in hospitals around the province. However, the groom’s uncle and sister are among the dead.
Saturday’s attack comes with Turkey still in shock just a month after the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on USA -based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen.
This is a developing story. “They will not yield”.
Multiple opposition parties denounced the attack, as did many foreign governments including the U.S., Germany, Austria, Russia, Egypt, Sweden, Greece, France, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan and global institutions including the United Nations, the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
Last June, several suicide bombers set off explosions at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport. Gulen denies the charge.
Media have reported that ISIL has been blamed for other attacks in Turkey targeting Kurdish gatherings in an effort “to inflame ethnic tensions”.
Last year, the armed wing of the PKK scrapped a three-year cease-fire with Ankara, after Turkish warplanes struck the group’s military training bases in northern Iraq while PKK fighters battled Islamic State militants.
Mahmut Togrul, a lawmaker with the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party who visited the scene of the attack Sunday, said the wedding had been a traditional Kurdish ceremony and had taken place in a predominantly Kurdish neighborhood.
Following the attack, police sealed off the site of the explosion and forensic teams moved in.
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Turkish authorities imposed a temporary blackout on coverage of the bombing inside the country, the AP said.
