This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/world/middleeast/9-detained-in-bombings-on-turkey-border-with-syria.html

The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
Turkey Says Evidence Links Syria to Car Bombings Arrests and Calls for Calm in Turkey
(about 9 hours later)
REYHANLI, Turkey — The Turkish authorities said Sunday that nine people had been detained in twin car bombings a day earlier in southern Turkey that killed 46 people, as funerals were held for at least 20 of the victims in this town near the Syrian border. REYHANLI, Turkey — Turkish officials said Sunday that they had arrested nine people accused of carrying out twin bombings in this town near the Syrian border the day before, as the investigation moved at a clip that underscored the intense pressure on the government to contain the fallout from the attacks.
Speaking at a news conference, senior government officials said that the investigation had linked the detainees, who were all Turkish citizens, to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and asserted that the attack was aimed at disrupting Turkey’s unity. The officials did not detail any ties between the suspects and Mr. Assad’s government, but they said the evidence included incriminating statements made by the attackers themselves. Officials said the detainees were all Turkish citizens and asserted that the group had been backed by the intelligence services of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
“The incident was carried out by those who have been closely linked with pro-regime groups in Syria,” said Turkey’s interior minister, Muammer Guler. “There is no merit in spelling out the names. We know them all.” Anxieties were high in Turkey’s ethnically and religiously mixed southern border region, where some saw the bombings — which killed 46 and injured more than 100 — as a menacing consequence of the government’s strong support for Syria’s rebels. Officials’ repeated calls for calm reflected fears not only of the conflict’s spreading across the border, but also of the contagion of its sectarian fighting, with massacres and forced relocations compounding the horrors of the war.
Turkey’s government has strongly backed the rebels fighting Mr. Assad. The Syrian government on Sunday denied an involvement in the bombings, and said that Turkey’s government bore responsibility. “Syria didn’t and will never undertake such acts because our values don’t allow us to do this,” Omran al-Zoubi, the information minister, was quoted as saying in Damascus. Turkey, like Syria’s other neighbors, is increasingly worried that the conflict will inflame border areas, where tensions among various groups are deepening amid the flood of traumatized Syrian refugees.
The developments in the investigation came as Turkey’s government struggled to contain the domestic fallout from the bombings, which were among the deadliest attacks on civilians in Turkey in at least a decade. After the explosions, groups of Turkish youths attacked cars and apartments belonging to Syrian refugees living in Reyhanli, where small protests were also held against the government. The reaction to the bombings in Reyhanli was a reminder of how quickly fissures could open. In a predominantly Sunni town that was seen as sympathetic to Syria’s Sunni-led opposition and the plight of those who have been displaced, some residents lashed out at Syrian refugees, tens of thousands of whom have settled in the town over the past two years.
Turkish officials, saying they were worried about the integrity of the investigation, barred the local news media from broadcasting photographs of the bombing sites, in what also seemed an effort to stop the images from inflaming the public. Some youths attacked cars with Syrian license plates, and Syrians spent a second day hidden indoors in fear. Yet it was not difficult to find Turks who said the government’s Syria policy had caused the violence.
The bombings on Saturday, within 15 minutes of each other, tore through Reyhanli’s municipal headquarters and a busy commercial thoroughfare, damaging shops hundreds of yards away. On Sunday, officials said they had identified 39 victims and that they included 35 Turkish citizens and 3 Syrians. Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the country needed to be “extremely calm in the face of provocations that are aimed at dragging us into the bloody quagmire in Syria.”
If connected to the Syrian war, as Turkey claimed, the attack would be the deadliest spillover since the beginning of the uprising against Mr. Assad in March 2011. In October, shells fired from Syria killed five people in Turkey, and the Turkish government blamed Mr. Assad’s forces. At least 14 people died in a separate episode when a car bomb exploded at a border crossing. He added, “Today, we have to be one.”
As rescue workers in orange jumpsuits combed through the wreckage on Sunday, anxious relatives traveled to Reyhanli’s morgue, to try to find information about people who had not been found, or who were still unidentified. They included Ibrahim Yeshar, 30, whose uncle showed a passport-sized picture to news photographers, hoping that someone knew something. Analysts said such appeals amounted to recognition of Turkey’s heightened risk of communal strife. “There is always a danger of events unfolding into something bigger,” said Ilter Turan, a professor of political science at Istanbul Bilgi University. “Both in terms of avoiding any possible reactions against Syrian refugees, and to prevent any negative interaction between ethnically and religiously diverse groups, the government used all possible tools to calm people.”
Fatima and Mehmet Aldag hobbled past as they left the hospital, with facial scars and other injuries they suffered in the blast. Mehmet said the explosion hit him “all of a sudden,” and wounded three others in his family. It was aimed, he said, at “creating problems between Syrians and Turks.” The calls for unity may have had another purpose: to quiet domestic arguments over the government’s peace talks with the P.K.K., the Kurdish separatist group, according to Guven Sak, the director of the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey. The P.K.K.’s armed conflict claimed tens of thousands of lives over three decades.
Turkish officials have been especially concerned with the possibility that sectarian tensions that have come to define the civil war in Syria will spill over the border and trouble ethnically mixed regions of southern Turkey. There are also fears that the sheer number of Syrians in Turkey will stoke resentment: around Reyhanli, about 25,000 Syrian refugees live among 90,000 Turkish citizens, according to local officials. The peace talks may also have played a role in the government’s quick blame of Mr. Assad’s government for the bombings.
On Sunday, Ibrahim al-Ibrahim, a Syrian refugee in Reyhanli, said he and other Syrians had been sequestered in their homes since the bombings. His windows had been blown out by one of the explosions, a few blocks away. After the bombings, youths threw rocks through the open windowpanes. On Sunday, three young Turkish men smashed the hood and windows of a white van that belonged to a Syrian neighbor. “Naming the Syrian regime as the usual suspect might have been aimed at clearing the names of the separatist Kurds, when peace talks remain fragile,” Professor Turan said.
Mr. Ibrahim said the bombings occurred as he received word that his house in Syria had been destroyed. “I have no house there, and no house here,” he said. The Syrian government on Sunday denied any involvement in the bombings, and said Turkey’s government bore responsibility. “Syria didn’t and will never undertake such acts because our values don’t allow us to do this,” Omran al-Zoubi, the information minister, was quoted as saying in Damascus.
Turkish officials said that the detainees included the ringleaders of the attack and that several suspects were still at large. Mr. Guler, the interior minister, said some suspects "were the ones who personally planned, did the reconnaissance and hid these cars.” Turkish officials said the bombers were members of a Marxist, pro-Assad organization with links they did not specify to Syrian intelligence. Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, suggested that the group’s “footprints” were on a recent massacre in the Syrian town of Baniyas, though he provided no details.

Kareem Fahim reported from Reyhanli, and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul. Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Reyhanli.

Muammer Guler, the interior minister, said Turkey’s assertions were backed by “concrete facts,” including the suspects’ own incriminating statements. If the Syrians wanted more evidence, “we will pass on our findings with related documents, together with code names,” he said, apparently referring to some detail of the investigation.
It remained to be seen whether the government’s reaction would be enough to console the people of Reyhanli. On Sunday, officials said they had identified 39 of the victims — 36 Turkish citizens and 3 Syrians.
Ibrahim al-Ibrahim, a Syrian refugee, sat in his apartment a few blocks from the scene of the attacks. After the bombings, youths threw rocks at his windows. On Sunday, three young Turkish men smashed the hood and windows of a white van that belonged to a Syrian neighbor.
Mr. Ibrahim said the bombings had occurred as he received word that his house in Syria had been destroyed. “I have no house there, and no house here,” he said.
Under pine trees at a cemetery at the edge of town, mourners gathered to bury Erkan Calim, a 41-year-old farmer and father who had been rushing to help victims of the first blast when he was killed by the second. Some of the mourners lashed out at Mr. Erdogan, holding him responsible for the bombings.
But a close friend of Mr. Calim, who declined to give his name, said it was pointless to assign blame after violence that had touched Syrians and Turks alike. “The dead are dead,” he said. “No accusation would bring them back.”