Bombs in Istanbul - is a sinister right wing ultra-nationalist faction to blame?

[financeguy]

Two bombs explode in Istanbul leaving 13 dead - Times Online

At least 13 people were killed and more than 100 injured in a double bomb attack tonight in a busy shopping street in Turkey’s financial capital.

The pedestrianised shopping area in Istanbul’s working-class Gungoren district was a scene of devastation, with broken glass and human remains strewn across the bonnets of burnt-out cars. Casualties were being dragged to ambulances while police cordoned off the area, a narrow street lined with four-to-five storey apartment blocks.

“I felt the ground disappear beneath my feet,” one eyewitness, identified only as Alaattin, told NTV television. “People flew up in the air in all directions. It was absolutely horrible.”

Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler confirmed that there had been two explosives placed in rubbish bins — the first, small one presumably to attract the crowds and a second, bigger one to cause maximum casualties. Although the street was fairly quiet when the first bomb struck at around 9.45 local time, witnesses said a crowd of onlookers close to 1,000 people had gathered by the time the second bomb went off ten to fifteen minutes later.

The attacks come at a tense time in Turkey. Today the Constitutional Court begins to consider a controversial case to ban the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK) for alleged Islamist activity. Last Friday, an Istanbul court released an indictment that accused a shadowy group operating within the security forces and other institutions of plotting to create civil unrest and topple the Government.

According to unsourced leaks and extracts from the indictment, the so-called Ergenekon group appears to be the present incarnation of what has long been called the “Deep State” in Turkey — ultra-nationalists using murder and mayhem to destabilise the country and keep the reins of real power. It has been blamed for or is being investigated for links with several high-profile unsolved murder cases and bomb attacks, and is suspected of engineering some PKK and Islamic terrorist attacks as well as “mystery murders”.

 

[AcrobatMan]

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