Bombing people

After bombing, Turkish leader urges unity.

From International Herald Tribune

By Sebnem Arsu Published: July 29, 2008

ISTANBUL: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, eight government ministers and thousands of mourners stood as burial prayers were said at a local mosque on Monday for 10 of the 17 victims of Sunday's double bombing. The coffins, like many houses in the area around the bombing site, were draped with Turkey's red-and-white flag.

On Monday, the country's highest court began considering a prosecutor's contention that Erdogan's party, Justice and Development, or AK, had brought Islamic practices into politics in violation of the founding principles of the Turkish republic.

If the party is found guilty, it could be banned and 71 senior members, including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan, could be barred from politics for five years. The court is expected to reach its verdict in two weeks.

Before the funeral, Erdogan visited the site of the attack, in the Gungoren neighborhood, alluding to the case as he called for calm and urged nationwide solidarity. "Our problem or issue right now is not the closure of AK Party, but the problem that Turkey struggles with," Erdogan said in a televised press briefing. "Our problem is to maintain unity and togetherness so that our nation can attain a better position."

As he spoke, local residents chanted slogans against a Kurdish separatist group that is suspected in the bombing.

The group, the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has been the target of an intense Turkish military campaign, denied responsibility in a statement on Monday to Firat, a pro-Kurdish news agency.

But the governor of Istanbul, Muammer Guler, told the Anatolian News Agency: "Of course there are links with the separatist organization. We hope to catch the assailants as soon as possible. Right now, we are thoroughly filtering the footage from shops' security cameras and the public surveillance camera network."

The bombs, which detonated as residents walked about in the cool of the evening in Gungoren, killed at least five children and wounded more than a hundred people, Turkish officials said Monday. A small explosive placed in a garbage bin went off first, drawing onlookers. About 10 minutes later, a second, much more powerful device exploded.

On Sunday, the Turkish military announced that fighter jets had hit 12 PKK targets inside northern Iraq, and there was speculation that the double bombing was retaliatory.

The PKK has denied attacks in the past, only to claim them later, including an attack in Diyarbakir, in the southeast, that killed five people early this year, and another in Ankara that killed six in 2007, said Sedat Laciner, a terrorism expert at the International Strategic Research Organization, based in Ankara. The Kurdish group's armed struggle for autonomy in southeastern Turkey has claimed more than 30,000 lives since the early 1980s.

There were similarities to attacks previously claimed by Kurdish rebels. The police have identified the device in the second blast as a fragmentation bomb, which, according to the Anka News Agency, used RDX, one of the explosive elements used in previous PKK attacks. The placement of explosives in garbage bins in residential areas has also been a PKK tactic.

Mustafa Civelek, 48, who runs a parking lot 150 yards from the scene, hung a Turkish flag in his window on Monday morning. "The flag stands for my country's unity and our solidarity," Civelek said. "My country's peace and stability are just too strong to be shattered by acts of a few marauders."

The attack was the most deadly in Istanbul in five years. In 2003, an obscure group linked to Al Qaeda carried out four suicide attacks in Istanbul against British and Jewish targets, killing more than 60 people and wounding hundreds. This month, gunmen opened fire outside the United States Consulate in Istanbul, and three police officers and three attackers were killed. The authorities said the attackers had ties to Al Qaeda.

Lynsey Addario contributed reporting from Istanbul and Graham Bowley from New York.

A BOMB ATTACK IS ALWAYS DISGUSTING. THIS ONE IS EVEN WORSE THAN THE OTHERS BECAUSE THE SECOND ENGINE EXPLODED WHEN PEOPLE WERE BACK TO THE PLACE OF THE FIRST BOMB. EVERYTHING HAPPENED IN A POPULAR AREA, NOT IN TAKSIM. LIKE IN OMAHA. SAME SONS OF A BITCH.