Turkey’s government said on Monday Islamic State was the prime suspect in suicide bombings that killed at least 97 people in Ankara, but opponents vented anger at President Tayyip Erdogan at funerals, universities and courthouses.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Saturday’s bombing, the worst of its kind on Turkish soil, was intended to influence the outcome of November polls Erdogan hopes will restore the AK party he founded to an overall parliamentary majority. There is no question of postponing the vote, officials have said.
“It was definitely a suicide bombing,” Davutoglu said in an interview broadcast live on Turkey’s NTV. “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.”
Merkel to visit Turkey
Germany’s Angela Merkel will visit Turkey Sunday to discuss terrorism, the war in Syria and the refugee crisis, her spokesman said.
The German chancellor would meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu for talks on “the joint battle against terrorism, the situation in Syria and managing the refugee crisis,” said Steffen Seibert on Monday.
Thousands rally against Erdogan
Opponents of Erdogan, who has led the country over 13 years, blame him for the attack on a rally organised by pro-Kurdish activists and civic groups, accusing the state at best of intelligence failings and at worst of complicity by stirring up nationalist, anti-Kurdish sentiment.
The government, facing a growing Kurdish conflict at home and the spillover of war in Syria, vehemently denies such accusations.
Hundreds chanting anti-government slogans 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.
Syria spillover
The HDP has put the death toll from the bombings at 128 and said it had identified all but eight of the bodies. Davutoglu’s office has said 97 people were killed.
The bombs struck seconds apart 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 (PKK) militants in the southeast.
Turkey is vulnerable to infiltration by Islamic State, which holds swathes of Syrian land abutting Turkey where some two million refugees live. But the group, not normally reticent about its attacks, made no claim to a similar bombing in the town of Suruc in July attributed to it; nor has it made any reference to the Ankara attack in internet postings.