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Blasts in Ankara, Turkish Capital, Kill at Least 30 Blasts in Ankara, Turkey’s Capital, Kill at Least 86
(35 minutes later)
ISTANBUL — At least 30 people were killed Saturday when two explosions struck near a central train station in the Turkish capital, Ankara, the Turkish Interior Ministry said in a statement. ISTANBUL — Two devastating explosions struck Saturday morning in the heart of Ankara, the Turkish capital, killing more than 80 people who had gathered for a peace rally and heightening tensions just three weeks before snap parliamentary elections.
The blasts, which struck as people gathered for a planned peace demonstration to protest the conflict between Kurdish militants and the Turkish state in the southeast, wounded at least 126 people, the ministry said. The cause of the blasts was not immediately clear, but Turkish authorities are investigating claims that it was a terrorist attack carried out by a suicide bomber. The death toll seemed likely to rise. At least 86 people were killed and 186 were wounded, said the health minister, Mehmet Muezzinoglu.
An eyewitness, who watched the incident unfold from a distance, said two explosions took place seconds apart from one another. The blasts, which appeared to be the deadliest terrorist attack in modern Turkey’s history, occurred near Ankara’s main train station just as groups of Kurds and leftists planned to march to protest the recent resumption of armed conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish militants. It is a conflict that has been waged for nearly three decades, but in recent times the two sides seemed on the path to peace.
“After the first explosion I just ran,” the eyewitness, Oya Barlas, said by phone. “When I went back to help there were bodies on the floor and blood splattered everywhere.” “We were expecting an attack in Ankara before the election, but nothing to this extent,” said Sedat Kartal, an Ankara resident reached by phone, who rushed to the scene after hearing the first explosion from a distance. “There’s so much hate and polarization, nothing is surprising anymore.”
A video circulating on social media showed a group of young demonstrators holding hands and chanting “ This square, this bloody square,” before a big blast is seen in the background, sending the crowd running toward the train station. Turkey is facing a number of destabilizing forces: violence, political instability, economic uncertainty and a growing flow of refugees from the civil war in Syria. All together, the currents buffeting Turkey have evoked the memories of the 1990s, when the country was also gripped by violence and political uncertainty, shattering Turks’ image of their country as a haven of stability and prosperity next to a Middle East upended by wars and chaos.
The scene was reminiscent of a suicide bombing at a cultural center in southeastern Turkey in July that killed 32 Kurdish activists. No one claimed responsibility for the attack but Turkish authorities said that the assailant was linked to the Islamic State. After Saturday’s attack, emergency medical workers tended to the dead and wounded, calls went out in Ankara for blood donations and political leaders, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, canceled their scheduled events for the day and rushed to the capital. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu canceled campaign events and called an emergency meeting in Ankara.
Violence in the country’s volatile southeast has flared since that attack, with the resumption of an old bloody conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K. Hundreds have died in daily clashes between Kurdish rebels and Turkish security forces. Mr. Erdogan, in a short statement posted to the presidency’s website, said, “I strongly condemn this heinous attack on our unity and our country’s peace.”
Although the clashes have mainly taken place in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, a sense of instability has settled over Turkey’s major cities, with increased fears over a spillover of violence ahead of a Nov. 1 parliamentary election. Images on social media showed bodies covered in the yellow, purple and green banners of the Kurdish political party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or H.D.P. A video that was shared on social media and by the Turkish press showed a group of young demonstrators holding hands and chanting just before the first blast is seen in the background. The explosion sent the crowd running toward the nearby train station.
“We were expecting an attack in Ankara before the election, but nothing to this extent,” said Sedat Kartal, who went to the scene of the blast on Saturday after hearing it from a distance. “There’s so much hate and polarization, nothing is surprising anymore.” Another witness, Oya Barlas, a Kurdish activist, said: “After the first explosion I just ran. When I went back to help there were bodies on the floor and blood spattered everywhere.”
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held an emergency security meeting after the incident on Saturday and was expected to issue a statement later in the day. Turkish authorities were investigating claims that the attacks were the work of suicide bombers. A similar bombing in July at a cultural center in the town of Suruc, in southeastern Turkey, killed 32 Kurdish activists. No group claimed responsibility for that attack, but the Turkish authorities blamed the Islamic State, the extremist Sunni militant group that controls large areas of Syria and Iraq.
Kurdish leaders, though, directed their anger at the Turkish state for that attack, accusing the government of supporting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in the group’s attack last year on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani.
After the attack on Saturday, Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the H.D.P., which faced several attacks during the election campaign ahead of national elections in June, spoke to reporters in Istanbul, making comments that seemed to, in veiled fashion, refer to political rallies in support of Mr. Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials A.K.P. “Gang leaders can hold safe rallies in this country, but those who want peace are murdered,” Mr. Demirtas said.
He also lashed out more directly at the Turkish state, saying: “We are faced with a murderous mob state. How is it possible that a state with such a strong intelligence network did not have prior information on the attack?”
While Turkey faces legitimate threats from the Islamic State which has made threats against the country at a time when it has stepped up its cooperation with an American-led coalition fighting the terrorist group, much of the violence is related to an old war: The conflict between the state and the militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which began in the 1980s and has claimed nearly 40,000 lives.
The two sides had been working through an ongoing peace process in recent years, but those talks collapsed in recent months as the P.K.K. stepped up attacks, and the Turkish military began bombing the group’s hide-outs in the mountains of northern Iraq and in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast.
Amid the carnage on Saturday there was one hopeful sign for peace: The P.K.K. announced, as expected, a cease-fire in advance of the elections, saying it would halt offensive operations and only act in self-defense, according to the Firat News Agency, an outlet close to the group. Whether that will lead to a drop in violence is uncertain, given that the Turkish government seems intent on maintaining its military operations against the group.
The resumption of hostilities came just after a historic electoral performance by the Kurdish movement’s political wing when the H.D.P., for the first time, met a 10 percent threshold in June’s national election to earn representation in Parliament.
But the Kurdish gains at the ballot box came at the expense of Mr. Erdogan’s party, which for the first time since rising to power in 2002 lost its majority in Parliament. The A.K.P. was still the party with the most seats, but after weeks of fruitless coalition talks, Mr. Erdogan called for a snap election, which is scheduled for Nov. 1.
The period before the new election has coincided with the renewed violence in the Kurdish southeast. While the P.K.K. has seemed eager to return to violence, critics of Mr. Erdogan have accused him of using war as a political strategy, to attract nationalist voters who had been opposed to the peace process to win back a parliamentary majority.
Turkey’s instability has becoming increasingly intertwined with the broader unrest in the Middle East, an area whose fortunes Turkey sought to shape in recent years by holding itself out as an example of a healthy democracy in the heart of the Muslim world.
For instance, Turkey’s war with Kurdish militants has been linked to its decision over the summer to join the American-led coalition against the Islamic State, after months of lobbying by the United States. But just after agreeing to take a number of measures to placate the Americans, including opening up its air bases to coalition warplanes, Turkey stepped up its attacks against the P.K.K., a group whose Syrian offshoot had become an important ally to the United States against the Islamic State in Syria.
Meanwhile, the attacks on the P.K.K. have coincided with a crackdown on Kurdish activists, through arrests, and an effort by government officials to tar the H.D.P. with the taint of terrorism by linking it to P.K.K. violence.
Emek Karakilic, an adviser to the H.D.P. who was at the demonstration in Ankara on Saturday, echoed the sentiments of many Kurds when he blamed the state for the attack.
“As Mr. Demirtas said in his statement, I think it’s obvious who was behind this,” he said.
Mr. Karakilic said on Saturday afternoon that he was just lucky to be alive. He had been standing just in front of an H.D.P. van when the first explosion struck.
“We fell to the floor and there was blood and flesh splattered everywhere,” he said. “I stood up and started running. There was about one second between each explosion. When I turned around I saw a lake of blood and bodies. I couldn’t tell who was dead or alive.”