Time news reports that on February 1st, early
afternoon, a man later identified as Ecevit Sanli, 40, detonated a belt with 13
pounds of explosives and a hand grenade in front of the personnel entrance of
the U.S. embassy. Sanli killed himself, a Turkish security guard, and injured
several others.
Considering the conflicts Turkey had recently been involved
with, among the suspects were al-Qaeda, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which,
for almost three decades, has waged war with Turkey, Syria, which is
antagonistic to Turkey for the revolt against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad,
Iran, Islamic extremists, and others. However, the real candidate behind the bombing
was the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), a Marxist
organization, which posted an online statement on Saturday that claimed
responsibility for the bombing and called the US “the murderer of the people of
the world,” warning the Obama administration to “get [its] bases…missiles…, and
[its] Patriots [or interceptor missiles used to protect against a Syrian
attack] the hell out of [Turkey]” because they “condemn the use of [their] land
for the imperialists’ interests against Syria.”
A question arises over whether or not Syria encouraged the
DHKP-C to execute this bombing. One opinion given by Henri Barkey, a professor
at Lehigh University and a former State Department official, asserts the
negative, saying the DHKP-C “will do things because they want to” and that the
Syrians would not risk the “wrath of America” for such a small-scale attack.
Another source discloses that Turkish authorities including
the security and intelligence organization had known beforehand about the
planned attack but, despite their efforts to warn the public, were unable to
prevent it due to lack of information.
Do you think this bombing will prompt the Obama
administration to intervene and, possibly, unleash its “wrath” upon the DHKP-C?
Is Barkey right when he says Syria would not have bothered to help operate this bombing?
Implications for the future?
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