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"Bomb message": leftists in Turkey change strategy

Türkiye Materials 7 January 2015 14:12 (UTC +04:00)
Suicide bomber blast on Jan.6 in the tourist center of Istanbul can be interpreted differently. But no matter who's behind it, it is first of all a warning to Turkey.
"Bomb message": leftists in Turkey change strategy

Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan.7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Suicide bomber blast on Jan.6 in the tourist center of Istanbul can be interpreted differently. But no matter who's behind it, it is first of all a warning to Turkey.

This is evidenced at least by the fact that the attack was carried out against members of law enforcement agencies, that is, it wore a local character, without mass casualties (especially among foreign tourists).

Today, Turkey is the staunchest supporter of the overthrow of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, making the country a kind of "ally" of all the forces that fight in Syria against the current leadership.

This indicates the fact that the attack against Turkey is not in the interests of those forces. And, moreover, it is not worth to immediately make these forces responsible for the attack due to the fact that the suicide bomber was fearing a burqa.

Regarding the traditional confrontation of Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), everything is not so simple there, either. In recent years, the relationship between the official authorities of Turkey and the Kurds got warmer, and Ankara provides them with a certain political and economic assistance.

So, the prospects, which opened up for the Kurds, make it unprofitable for them to attack. Moreover, the PKK does not confront using suicide bombers.

In recent years, Turkey has gone through many changes. Ankara has become one of the most influential players in both the region and beyond. Significant changes have occurred in the internal policy of the country as well.

In particular, today there is a confrontation between the current leadership of the country and the movement of Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is actively supported by the United States.

Thus, Ankara became very intractable and its political interests often clash with that of largest world political players. So, the explosion that occurred on Jan.6 could be a warning to Turkey.

It is also an important fact that the terrorist attack was committed against the police officers. In recent years, as part of the operations against Gulen movement, many police officers of Istanbul and other large cities were accused of having ties to this movement and were either dismissed or sent to periphery for working.

Today Turkish media writes about the weakening of the country's law enforcement system which couldn't prevent the terrorist attack.

During the investigation, it was revealed that the suicide bomber was a member of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) leftist radical terrorist group. Namely this organization is the perpetrator of the terrorist attacks that were committed in May 2013 in the Reyhanli city in Turkey's Hatay province, leaving 46 people dead and 155 more injured.

Earlier, the members of this group committed an act of terrorism in the building of the US embassy in Ankara, leaving a security officer dead and one more person injured. DHKP-C didn't use suicide bombers in any of these terrorist attacks.

As it turned out, the female bomber, who committed a suicide attack in Istanbul on Jan.6, Elif Sultan Kalsen, born in Turkey's Tunceli province, was residing in the country's Kocaeli province. She was a student of the International Relations Department at the University of Kocaeli.

Elif Sultan Kalsen was included in the list of nine "live bombs" published by the main law enforcement agency of Turkey in 2012. Right after the publication of the list, Kalsen denied she was a "live bomb" and that time the oppositional Republican People's Party of Turkey supported her.

Edited by SI

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Rufiz Hafizoglu is the head of Trend Agency's Arabic news service, follow him on Twitter: @rhafizoglu

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