Opponents of Turkey’s government vented anger at President Tayyip Erdogan at funerals, universities and courthouses yesterday as the country’s central authorities said Islamic State was the prime suspect in suicide bombings that killed at least 97 people in Ankara.
Opponents of Erdogan, who has led the country over 13 years, blame him for the attack, accusing the state at best of intelligence failings and at worst of complicity by stirring up nationalist, anti-Kurdish sentiment.
Hundreds chanting anti-government slogans yesterday marched on a mosque in an Istanbul suburb for the funeral of several of the victims, attended by Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the pro-Kurdish parliamentary opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which says it was the target of the bombings.
Riot police with water cannon and armoured vehicles stood by as the crowd, some chanting “Thief, Murderer Erdogan” and waving HDP flags, moved towards the mosque in the working class Umraniye neighbourhood of Istanbul.
Several labour unions also called protests. Hundreds of people, many wearing doctors’ uniforms and carrying Turkish Medical Association banners, gathered by the main train station in Ankara where the explosions happened to lay red carnations but were blocked by riot police, a Reuters witness said.
Lawyers at an Istanbul courthouse chanted “Murderer Erdogan will give account” as colleagues applauded, footage circulated on social media showed. Erdogan, accused by opponents of an increasingly authoritarian and divisive style, has overseen a purge in the judiciary of elements he believes to have been colluding with a US based cleric-rival planning a coup against him.
Turkey faces Kurdish conflict at home, spillover of war in Syria
The government, facing a growing Kurdish conflict at home and the spillover of war in Syria, vehemently denies such accusations. But the range of possible perpetrators – from Islamic State and Marxist radicals to militant nationalists and Kurdish armed factions – highlights fissures running through Turkish society. At stake is the stability of a Nato country seen by the West as a bulwark against Middle Eastern turmoil.
The bombs struck as hundreds gathered for a march organised by pro-Kurdish activists and civic groups to protest over a growing conflict between Turkish security forces and Kurdistan Workers Party militants in the southeast. The PKK is deemed a terrorist group by the US and the EU as well as Turkey.
The father of three men wounded in the blasts said one of his sons, Abdulselam, described seeing one of the bombers carrying a bag on his back and one in his hand. He called out “stop” suspecting an attacker.
“The bomber panicked. Selam got nervous and acted without thinking. Maybe he could have had the chance to get him arrested, but he shouted to the bomber,” the father, Mehmet Ali Altun, said outside the hospital where his sons were being treated yesterday. The son, who had been questioned by police, declined to speak to media.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Saturday’s attack, the worst of its kind on Turkish soil, was intended to influence the outcome of November polls Erdogan hopes will restore a majority the ruling AK party lost in June. Two bombs struck seconds apart, targeting a rally of pro-Kurdish activists and civic groups near Ankara’s main station.
“If you consider the way the attack happened and the general trend of it, we have identified Islamic State as the primary focus,” Davutoglu told Turkey’s NTV television. “It was definitely a suicide bombing... DNA tests are being conducted. It was determined how the suicide bombers got there. We’re close to a name, which points to one group.”
The Haberturk newspaper has cited police sources as saying the type of explosive and choice of target pointed to a group within Islamic State known as the ‘Adiyaman’, a reverence to Adiyaman province in southeastern Turkey.