Europe | Bombing in Turkey

A bloody warning from Islamic State?

A suicide attack threatens to spread the conflict between Kurds and IS into Turkey itself

|DIYARBAKIR

THE complex conflict between Kurdish militia groups, Islamic State (IS) and Turkey entered a dangerous new phase on Monday when a suicide bomb attack thought to have been carried out by IS killed at least 30 people and wounded about 100 others in the town of Suruc, on Turkey’s border with Syria. Izettin Kucuk, the governor of Sanliurfa province, where Suruc is located, confirmed that the attack involved a suicide bomber, but could not confirm reports that the bomber was an 18-year-old woman. If the attack was carried out by IS, it would mark the first time the group has dared to stage a major strike inside Turkey itself—and serve as a warning that the support of Turkish Kurds for their brethren in Syria could lead the violence to spread across the border.

The explosion ripped through the garden of the Amara cultural centre on Monday morning. Eyewitnesses say they saw the dismembered limbs of victims fly through the air. The blast sowed panic among residents, many of them refugees from the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane, which lies just across the border from Suruc. Most of the victims are believed to be young volunteers who were helping to rebuild Kobane and were boarding at the centre, which is a common gathering spot for visiting journalists.

The bombing seems clearly linked to the struggle over Kobane. The Syrian town was largely destroyed last year when IS militants sought to wrest control from the main Syrian Kurdish militia, known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The YPG liberated Kobane in January thanks to sustained American airstrikes against IS targets. IS launched a surprise counterattack in late June, killing hundreds, but was ultimately pushed back by the Kurds.

The bombing also seemed to be aimed at Turkey's own assertive Kurdish political forces, particularly the People's Democracy Party (HDP), a pro-Kurdish bloc that won seats in parliament for the first time in elections on June 7th. “The target of this attack [in Suruc] is the HDP,” said Orhan Miroglu, a member of parliament from the long-governing Justice and Development Party (AK). Mr Miroglu is himself Kurdish, but his party has no love lost for the HDP; the Kurdish group's gains in the elections cost AK its ruling majority in parliament. Suruc is run by the HDP, and it forms an anti-IS bastion on the Turkish side of the border.

Turkey and Jordan are considering establishing buffer zones in Syria
Turkey and Jordan are considering establishing buffer zones in Syria

All of this is part of a complex battle pitting IS and its mentors against the Kurds. The HDP makes no secret of its sympathy for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting on and off for decades to establish Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey. The YPG is the PKK’s Syrian franchise. The PKK called a ceasefire in 2013 to ease talks between their imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, and the Turkish government. They have since turned their guns on the jihadists in Syria and Iraq. In June they scored a major victory when they drove IS from the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad, which had served as a critical IS supply route for weapons and fighters slipping in from Turkey.

Meanwhile, the Kurds have long claimed that Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the AK are secretly backing IS in order to undermine their experiment with self-rule in the areas that they control in north-eastern Syria, which they call “Rojava”. After the attack in Suruc, those accusations burst into the open. “The administrators in Ankara who hurl threats at the HDP and pat the heads of IS are partners in this barbarity,” said Selahattin Demirtas, the HDP co-chair.

AK vehemently denies working with IS. Turkish police have arrested scores of suspected IS militants and their sympathisers over the past week, and Mr Erdogan swiftly condemned the attack in Suruc. But although Turkey is formally a member of the American-led coalition against IS, it has refused to allow its airbase at İncirlik to be used to launch airstrikes against the jihadists. Turkish foot-dragging ultimately prompted America to team up with the YPG. That has angered Turkey’s generals, who see no difference between the PKK and the YPG.

Mr Erdogan has long been hailed for his progressive approach to the Kurdish issue. As prime minister, he became the first Turkish leader to open formal talks with Mr Ocalan. But he has grown increasingly hawkish since being elected president last August. He outraged Kurds in October by declaring that Kobane was about to fall to IS, and he initially blocked Kurdish demands to let their fighters resupply Kobane via Turkey, capitulating only after America air-dropped weapons of its own. He has disavowed a ten-point peace plan that was announced between the AK and Mr Ocalan in March, claiming to have known nothing about it. Many believe the president is courting nationalist votes; AK has yet to form a government, and he may be forced to call new elections.

Mr Erdogan's policy of distancing Turkey from the fight against IS may be prompted in part by opposition to Kurdish nationalism, and in part by fear of jihadist terror. Either way, it does not seem to be working—as the bombing in Suruc showed. "If [Turkey] thought this would render it immune, well it obviously hasn't," said a Western diplomat.

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