Divided Turkey plays blame game over Ankara suicide bombings

Reaction to blasts is what put the country in such dire straits to begin with, writes foreign correspondent Josh Wood

Turkish Labour Party activists at the demonstration in Ankara yesterday with images of party members who were victims of the terrorist attack. Adem Altan / AFP

BEIRUT // The twin blasts in Turkey have served to deepen already sharp divisions between the government and nationalist Kurds, with both sides trading accusations over who was responsible for the bloodshed.

The blame game started not long after Saturday’s attack which killed at least 95 people when two bombs detonated in front of Ankara’s train station. It happened just as a protest pushing for a peaceful resolution to the conflict between the Turkish government and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was getting under way.

The HDP, a pro-Kurdish political party that firmly opposes Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist AK Party, quickly cast blame on the government.

“This is an attack by our nation against our people,” said Selahattin Demirtas, co-head of the HDP.

The HDP said the party was the main target of the bombings, claiming that the explosives targeted its members as they marched by. While the rally was not an HDP event, the party and its affiliates were taking part.

The PKK charged that Mr Erdogan’s AKP was responsible for the bombing and was “engaged in [a] partnership with ISIL”, according to a statement by the group’s political wing.

On Saturday evening, Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu named ISIL, the PKK and two lesser-known Marxist-Leninist groups – the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party Front and the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party – as potentially being behind the attack.

Condemning the attacks, Mr Erdogan quickly drew comparisons between Saturday’s bombings and the attacks carried out by the PKK after their ceasefire with the Turkish government collapsed in late July.

“There is no difference between the previous terrorist attacks, carried out in different places on our soldiers, policemen, village guards, public officers and innocent civilians, and the terrorist attack that happened at Ankara train station targeting our civilian citizens,” he said.

On Sunday, Turkish officials told Reuters that initial findings suggested ISIL was responsible for the bombings.

Blame is how Turkey ended up in its current armed conflict between the government and Kurdish rebels.

On July 20, a suicide bomber struck a Kurdish cultural centre in the town of Suruc on Turkey's border with Syria, killing more than 30 people. While the bomber is believed to have had ties to ISIL, the PKK immediately blamed the Turkish government for having a role in the attack.

The PKK then began a campaign of retribution by assassinating police officers. The government responded by going to war with the PKK in eastern Turkey and northern Iraq, pounding rebel hideouts with its air force and fighting pitched battles with militants on the ground.

Since then, Kurdish militants have taken control of sizeable areas in some south-eastern towns, and have mounted raids and ambushes on members of Turkey’s security services.

The government claims it has killed more than 2,000 PKK militants since the conflict started.

On Saturday, the PKK announced that it had ordered its fighters to suspend attacks – unless attacked – ahead of Turkey’s snap general election on November 1.

Turkey’s conflict has been complicated by Mr Erdogan’s decision to call fresh elections after his AKP lost its parliamentary majority in June and failed to form a coalition government.

The HDP’s success in June’s election was seen as instrumental in denying the AKP a parliamentary majority.

Many in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority south-east charge that the government’s war against the PKK is meant to churn nationalistic fervour – and votes for the AKP.

With the election just weeks away, the AKP and HDP’s trading of barbs over the Ankara bombings has been seen as political jockeying.

The reactions to the attack “have fallen on very partisan lines where the HDP has blamed the state for either being complicit in the attack or negligent in providing security”, said Aaron Stein, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Centre for the Middle East.

“Then you have the AKP who has said that a lot of this has to do with the result of the inconclusive election and that had they won the seats they needed for a majority, this kind of event never would have happened.”

Reconciliation remains a distant prospect.

In the aftermath of the bombing, the behaviour of the Turkish government has only served to fuel Kurdish and opposition anger.

The HDP said riot police arrived at the scene 15 minutes after the explosions on Saturday, firing tear gas at people trying to assist victims.

The Turkish government also put a blackout order on local news outlets, barring them from showing images of the bomb blasts or their aftermath. There were also reports that access to social media websites was cut off after the bombings.