Thousands of people yesterday took to the streets of Ankara to denounce the government and remember 95 people killed in twin suspected suicide bombings on a peace rally, as Turkey mourned its worst-ever attack.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu declared three days of national mourning, with flags flying at half-mast across the country, as questions grew over who might have planned the bombings.
Saturday’s attacks intensified tensions in Turkey ahead of snap elections on Nov. 1, as the military wages an offensive against Islamic State group extremists and Kurdish militants.
“A bomb into our hearts,” read a headline in the Hurriyet daily.
“The deeply outraged public is waiting to find out who is behind the incident,” it added.
Thousands of demonstrators filled Sihhiye Square in central Ankara, close to the site of the blasts, with some shouting anti-government slogans.
Several demonstrators blamed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the bombings, shouting “Erdogan murderer,” “government resign” and “the state will give account.”
Erdogan condemned the “heinous” attack in a statement and canceled a visit to Turkmenistan. However, he has yet to speak in public after the bombings.
The prime minister’s office said that 95 people were killed when the bombs exploded just after 10am as leftist and pro-Kurdish activists gathered for a peace rally outside Ankara’s train station.
It said that 508 people were wounded, with 160 still hospitalized and 65 in intensive care in 19 hospitals. A journalist said that the scene of the blast was littered with ball bearings, indicating the explosions were intended to cause maximum damage.
Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, one of the groups that called the peace rally, said on Twitter that the death toll was 128, but this figure was not confirmed by the government.
In an emotional address at the Ankara rally, its leader, Selahattin Demirtas, said that rather than seeking revenge, people should aim to end Erdogan’s rule, starting with the Nov. 1 legislative elections.
The death toll surpassed that of the May 2013 twin bombings in Reyhanli on the Syrian border that killed more than 50 people, making the attack the deadliest in the history of the Turkish Republic.
With international concern growing over instability in the key NATO member, US President Barack Obama offered his condolences to Erdogan and solidarity “in the fight against terrorism,” the White House said.
The attacks drove a knife through the heart of the normally placid Ankara, which became the capital following the founding of the modern Turkish Republic by former president Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
“This could well be Turkey’s 9/11,” Washington Institute Turkish Research Program director Soner Cagaptay said, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks by al-Qaeda in the US.
“It took place in the heart of the Turkish capital, across from the city’s central train station, a symbolic landmark of Ataturk’s Ankara, as well as killing so many people,” he told reporters.
Davutoglu said no group had claimed responsibility for the bombings and so far there have been no arrests by the authorities.
However, the prime minister said groups including Islamic State extremists, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the far-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front were capable of carrying out such an attack.
Davutoglu said there were “strong signs” the attack was carried out by two suicide bombers.
The attack came just less than three months after a suicide bombing blamed on the Islamic State group against peace activists in the border town of Suruc on the Syrian border killed 33 people.
The Hurriyet and Haberturk dailies reported that the elder brother of Abdurrahman Alagoz, who carried out the Suruc suicide bombing, could have been implicated in the Ankara blasts.
The Suruc bombing caused one of the most serious flare-ups in Turkey in recent times, as the PKK accused the government of collaborating with the Islamic State and resumed attacks on security forces after a more than two-year truce.
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