Suicide blast targets wedding in Turkey
Aboy thought to be just 12 killed at least 51 people when he blew himself up at a Turkish wedding party in the deadliest of a series of terrorist atrocities to hit the country this year.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant for the attack on revellers in the southern city of Gaziantep late on Saturday night.
It comes amid ongoing struggles between the government and Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, and as the country is still reeling from the aftermath of last month’s failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers.
“Initial evidence suggests it was a Daesh attack,” said Erdogan during a visit to Gaziantep. Daesh is an Arabic term for ISIL.
Erdogan said at least 69 people were wounded, 17 of them “heavily.” A prosecutor said the remains of a suicide vest had been found at the scene.
The bomb exploded in the city’s predominantly Kurdish Akdere neighbourhood, where several hundred guests were dancing in the street at an outdoor pre-wedding celebration.
“The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing,” said 25-year-old Veli Can. “There were blood and body parts everywhere.”
YOUNG BOY BLOWS HIMSELF UP AT CELEBRATION IN KURDISH AREA, IN A SUICIDE BOMBING PRESIDENT HAS BLAMED ON ISIL
The bride and groom were among those hurt. Their injuries were not serious but the groom’s sister and uncle were among the dead, Turkish media reported.
Gulser Ate, who was wounded in the attack, said she had been talking to one of her neighbours when the bomb exploded.
“I don’t know what happened. The only thing I know is that my neighbour died on top of me,” she said.
“If she had not fallen on me, I would have died, too. Her body saved me.”
ISIL has carried out a string of bombings in major Turkish cities. Besides bombings at symbolic sites, it has previously sought out Kurdish targets — including its deadliest attack on Turkish soil at a predominantly Kurdish peace rally Ankara last October — in a bid to inflame tensions.
Saturday’s attack is the first since the failed July 15 coup attempt. The last attack was in June, when more than 40 people were killed in a triple suicide bombing at Istanbul’s main airport.
Naming ISIL as the “likely perpetrator,” Erdogan said the attackers were trying to “provoke people by abusing ethnic and sectarian sensitiveness.”
“Our country and nation only have a single message to those who attack us: you will not succeed.”
Security expert Metin Gurcan, a former Turkish military officer and columnist for the online newspaper Al-Monitor, said that ISIL views 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 ISIL targets.
Gurcan said ISIL has been trying to agitate or exploit ethnic and religious tensions in Turkey, and “we know very well to what extent wedding attacks can sow disorder in nation’s social fabric from the Afghanistan experience.”
Erdogan added that he saw no difference between ISIL and followers of Gulen, the cleric accused of orchestrating last month’s coup attempt, or the PKK, the Kurdish militant group which has also carried out attacks across Turkey in recent months.
Gurcan said, however, that it was a “grave mistake” to lump the three together.
“Putting these three organizations with different political objectives, tactics and techniques into the same basket ... causes the failure of tailoring specific counter strategies,” he said.
The pro-Kurdish political party HDP condemned the attack on the wedding, which it said was attended by many of its party members.
It said in a statement that it was “quite significant” that the attack, which it also blamed on ISIL, 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.
“This attack targets those determined and persistent in peace, resolution, and those struggling for democracy, equality, freedom and justice,” the HDP said. “The attack was planned to disable the spread of peace and success of possible negotiations.”
Gaziantep lies close to the Syrian border and ISIL has carried out attacks in the city before, including the assassinations of several Syrian opposition journalists reporting on the group’s atrocities.
The jihadist group has suffered a series of battlefield setbacks in Syria recently, culminating in the liberation the northern city of Manbij by the Americanbacked Syrian Defence Forces last week.