Turkey blames Kurd rebels for Monday’s blast

ISTANBUL: The Turkish government blamed a Kurdish rebel group yesterday for a bomb attack that killed nine people near the Syrian border, amid concerns by ruling party officials that the militants may be developing links with the regime in Syria, and its civil war could have a destabilizing effect on Turkey.
The explosion in the southern city of Gaziantep on Monday followed an escalation in fighting between Turkish forces and the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which had close ties in the 1990s to then Syrian President Hafez Assad — current leader Bashar Assad's father. Turkey, which seeks the ouster of Assad, is sheltering nearly 70,000 Syrian refugees and has urged the United Nations to set up camps inside Syria for the displaced, a step that would require the intervention of a security force and pose a direct challenge to Syrian authorities.
Some commentators, however, have warned that Turkey misjudged the resilience of the Assad regime and is being pulled into a wider conflict with implications for the most vexing issue on its domestic agenda — a resolution of the state's conflict with Turkish Kurds who want self-rule in the mostly Kurdish southeast part of the country. The PKK has denied involvement in the Gaziantep blast, which numbered several children among the dead on a Muslim holiday, but Turkish officials, including President Abdullah Gul, cited the group's hand in similar attacks as a sign that it was the likely perpetrator.
“The incident is totally the work of the PKK,” said Gaziantep governor Erdal Ata. “Certain information has been attained. It may not be right to share it now, but evidence is being assessed.”
Anadolu, Turkey's state-run news agency, said anti-terrorism police detained four suspects in the neighboring province of Sanliurfa on Tuesday. They were taken to Gaziantep for questioning.
Turkey fears the PKK, which includes many Kurds of Syrian origin, is also moving into the power vacuum there, possibly with the cooperation of regime elements who want to blunt Turkish efforts to dislodge them.
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said any alleged link between the PKK and the Syrian regime in the Gaziantep bombing would be investigated, while Huseyin Celik, deputy chairman of Turkey's ruling party, said there were connections between Kurdish rebels and Syrian intelligence.
“The PKK is an organization that is capable of carrying out such an attack on its own, but could it have had supporters in such an attack? It's possible,” he said in an interview with a newspaper. “After all, Assad, acting on the premise that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' is in a tendency to regard Turkey's enemy, the PKK, as its friend. We don't have full information yet, but even if it is a guess, such a link is a probability.”