Istanbul | Turkey on Monday buried the six victims of the attack, which took place on Sunday on Istanbul’s main shopping street Istiklal and which authorities have attributed to the Kurdish PKK/YPG movements, which deny any involvement.
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More than 24 hours later, the operation was not claimed.
The city of Adana (south) attended the funeral of little Ecrin, 9 years old, who was killed with her father while they waited together for the mother to enter one of the many shops on the street.
The other four victims were buried in Istanbul. The city’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, carried the coffin of a slain young woman before helping to cover it with earth, shovel in hand.
The six passersby succumbed to a TNT explosion in the crowded artery on this sunny Sunday. More than 80 others were injured, including about 20 who remained hospitalized Monday.
Authorities were quick to blame Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters and their allies in Syria and announced 47 arrests, including that of the assassin, a 23-year-old Syrian girl who allegedly acted on their request.
“According to our conclusions, the terrorist organization PKK is responsible for the attack,” said Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on Sunday night.
But the PKK, which has faced Ankara for nearly forty years, asserted that it had “no connection to this event”: “We do not target civilians and oppose operations that do,” the organization said, via an agency press pal, Firat .
“Command from Kobane”
The main suspect, Alham Albashir police say, entered Turkey illegally via Afrine, in north-eastern Syria, controlled by the Turkish army and local aid workers.
Images released by Turkish police showed the young woman in a purple sweatshirt with a swollen face after her arrest in a suburb of Istanbul with other suspects.
According to Mr Soylu, “the order to attack was given from Kobané,” a town in north-eastern Syria controlled by PKK-affiliated Kurdish movements such as the YPG, the People’s Defense Units.
For Ankara, the YPG and the PKK are “terrorist” movements.
But in an explanation, the YPG also contests “categorically every connection to Ahlam Albashir”.
Kobani remains famous for the 2015 battle in which Kurdish forces, backed by the western coalition, repulsed the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vice President Fuat Oktay named “a woman” responsible for the attack on Sunday evening.
According to Turkey’s Minister of Justice, Bekir Bozdag, she “was sitting on a bench for 40 to 45 minutes and a minute or two later there was an explosion.”
Turkish media shared an image captured by a surveillance camera on Istiklal Avenue, showing a young woman in uniform and with a loose black scarf running away into the crowd.
Mr Soylu put a diplomatic twist on the crisis on Monday by saying Turkey “rejects” the condolences of the United States, which “supports the terrorists” of Kobané.
On Monday, the main traffic artery of Istaklal Caddesi, blocked after the explosion, was completely opened to the public.
But all the benches on the avenue – which was entirely paved with Turkey’s red flag on Monday – had been removed, AFP noted.
PKK and NATO
The PKK, viewed as a terrorist organization by Ankara and its Western allies, including the United States and the European Union, has been guilty of numerous bloody attacks on Turkish soil in the past.
Despite the denials, a senior Turkish official told AFP that elements point to “units within a youth organization linked to the PKK.”
In December 2016, a radical group close to the PKK, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), claimed responsibility for a double-barrel attack near the Besiktas football stadium in Istanbul that left 47 dead, including 39 police officers, and wounded 160.
The PKK is also at the center of a standoff between Sweden and Turkey, which since May has blocked the entry of Stockholm, accused of leniency towards the PKK, into NATO.
Ankara calls for several of its members to be delivered.
The Turkish army regularly conducts cross-border operations in pursuit of Kurdish fighters, particularly in the mountainous areas of northern Iraq.
Last month, allegations by the opposition and pro-Kurdish media, which were dismissed by the authorities, mentioned the use of chemical weapons against PKK militants. They released a list of 17 names, accompanied by photos of people portrayed as “martyrs” who were killed by poison gas.