Istanbul bombings heighten tensions in an increasingly divided Turkey

**witchcurlgirl** · July 28th, 2008, 12:03 PM

A bomb attack in Istanbul on Sunday killed 17 people and left over 150 injured, heightening tensions hours before a controversial court case judging whether to ban Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) began Monday. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but speculations are rife, signaling the divisiveness of Turkey's political landscape.

According to Reuters, the attack was a particularly fatal double bombing.

Officials said a loud blast brought people into the streets and a larger bomb hidden in a rubbish bin exploded 10 minutes and 50 meters away in Gungoren district, near the main airport, where families gather in the evenings to dine and stroll.

The bombings occurred in the run-up to the meeting of Turkey's highest judicial body, which is to deliberate today whether the ruling AK party (AKP) has engaged in Islamist activity and should therefore be banned. The case is a standoff in a long-running power struggle between Turkey's secularists and Islamists, reports the BBC.

Turkey's Constitutional Court is meeting to consider if the governing AK Party should be banned for alleged anti-secular activities.

It is the culmination of a series of clashes between the party, which has Islamist roots, and the secular elite.

The AKP, which won a huge poll victory last year, denies it wants to create an Islamist state by stealth, and calls the case an attack on democracy.

The BBC adds, however, that it is unclear whether the attacks were timed to coincide with the controversial court case.
Although no group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, Turkish authorities are pointing fingers at Kurdish separatists, reports The Washington Post.

No one has claimed responsibility for the bomb attacks, the deadliest in Turkey since 2003. But police were increasingly looking at the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)....

Kurdish separatists, far-left groups and Islamist militants have all carried out bombings in Istanbul in the past.

The PKK, considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, has waged a deadly campaign for a Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey since 1984. But it usually does not target civilians.

Accusations are being directed towards Kurdish separatists because the Istanbul attacks occurred hours after Turkish jets bombed suspected PKK posts in Iraq, which are allegedly used as bases from which to carry out strikes on Turkish territory, reports the Journal of Turkish Weekly.

Turkish warplanes on Sunday bombed a dozen of the outlawed PKK targets in northern Iraq, the military has stated.

The fighter jets attacked 12 PKK targets in the Kandil Mountains, on the Iraqi-Iranian border, where the PKK leadership is believed to be based, the military said in a statement posted on its official web site.

A report in Today's Zaman, an English-language Turkish daily, states that prosecutors have shown that the PKK also has ties to the clandestine ultranationalist group known as Ergenekon – members of which were charged earlier this month with planning a coup.

The almost 2,500-page-long Ergenekon indictment has revealed serious connections between Ergenekon and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) and the Turkish Hizbullah (no relation to Lebanon-based Hezbullah).

On Friday, an Istanbul court agreed to hear the case over the investigation into Ergenekon, a move that will initiate the trial process for dozens of suspected organization members, including retired Army officers, academics, journalists, and businessmen.

The indictment announced earlier this month
includes charges of creating an "armed terrorist organisation," attempting to use violence to oust the government and fomenting an armed rebellion.

Another 21 people were arrested this month as part of the same probe, including two retired high-ranking military generals....

Prosecutors say the group is behind a series of violent acts including the bombing of a secular newspaper and an armed attack on a court - attacks they say were designed to provoke a response by nationalists, and a coup by the army.

But the opposition says that the arrests are political retaliation for a case brought against Turkey's governing AK Party.

While the Istanbul bombings may not be a direct response to the Constitutional Court's deliberations over the AKP, regional media draw attention to Turkey's increasingly divided political landscape. A commentary in The Daily Star, for example, says that the polarization is worrisome.

At this particular juncture, then, the burden of improving Turkey's civilian politics and consolidating its democracy along European Union lines falls on the country's political leadership. But the politics of the two cases, the way they were covered in the media, and the polarization that they encouraged exposed two deeper problems that are worrisome.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that polarized media coverage on the AKP trial and Ergenekon affair has made it difficult for citizens to get an accurate understanding of these critical developments.

...
what seems to have been lost in Turkey's increasingly bitter journalistic scuffle, say observers, is the chance for readers to find news they really can believe in.

"There is now a gray area in the media, where you cannot get a true picture of what is happening in Turkey," says Dr. Kaya, the scholar at Johns Hopkins. "The truth is missing."

Istanbul bombings heighten tensions in an increasingly divided Turkey | csmonitor.com

**betagrl** · July 29th, 2008, 05:39 PM

This is very sad. I vacationed in Turkey last fall and absolutely loved it. It's a fascinating country with such rich history. It's a strange time for them as they are trying to protect secularism and are fearful the country will fall under Islamic rule. The problem is that the majority of the country is poor and religious and if democracy were to reign, they would be under Islamic rule. It's a conundrum.

I see some of that happening in the USA with the religious right creeping their way into politics. Scary indeed.