Vow of vengeance after Turk blasts
Print Edition
TURKEY vowed vengeance yesterday against Kurdish militants it said were strongly suspected to be behind twin bombings that killed 38 people and wounded 155 in what appeared to be a coordinated attack on police outside an Istanbul football stadium.
The blasts on Saturday night — a car bomb outside the Vodafone Arena, home to Istanbul’s Besiktas team, followed by a suicide bomb attack in an adjacent park less than a minute later — shook a nation still trying to recover from a series of deadly bombings this year in cities including Istanbul and Turkey’s capital Ankara.
There was no claim of responsibility, but Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said there was “almost no doubt” the attacks were the work of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has carried out a three-decade insurgency, mainly in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said 13 people had been detained.
“Sooner or later, we will have our vengeance. This blood will not be left on the ground, no matter what the price, what the cost,” Soylu said at a funeral at the Istanbul police headquarters for five of the officers killed. President Tayyip Erdogan attended but did not speak.
Soylu also warned those who would offer support to the attackers on social media or elsewhere, comments aimed at pro-Kurdish politicians the government accuses of having links to the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Europe and Turkey.
“To those trying to defend the perpetrators from podiums, over the media or internet, and trying to make up excuses. There is no excuse for this ... Know this: the blade of the state stretches far and wide.”
In recent months, thousands of Kurdish politicians have been detained including dozens of mayors and the leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), parliament’s second-biggest opposition party, which is accused of links to the PKK.
The crackdown against Kurdish politicians has coincided with widespread “purges” of state institutions following a failed coup in July that the government blames on followers of a US-based Muslim cleric.
Turkey says the measures are necessary to defend its security. Rights groups and some Western allies accuse it of ignoring the rule of law and trampling on freedoms.
The pro-Kurdish HDP condemned the attack and urged the government to end what it called the language and politics of “polarization, hostility and conflict.”
The interior minister said the first explosion, which came around two hours after the match between Besiktas and Bursaspor, was at an assembly point for riot police. The second came as police surrounded the suicide bomber in the nearby Macka park.
Thirty-eight people died, including 30 police and seven civilians, Soylu said. One person remained unidentified.
A total of 155 people were being treated in hospital, with 14 of them in intensive care and five in surgery, said Health Minister Recep Akdag.
Sunday was declared a day of national mourning. A march against terrorism has been called in Istanbul.
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