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Car bombs leave dozens dead and hundreds wounded in Istanbul

Mevlut Katik 11/20/03

Car bombs that detonated November 20 killed at least 27 people and wounded nearly 400 in Istanbul, Turkey, only days after suicide attacks on two synagogues in the city. The death toll in the latest attacks is expected to rise, in what some local commentators have characterized as Turkey's September 11.

The November 20 suicide attacks targeted British entities in Istanbul, including the British Consulate. The bombings came at a time when US President George W. Bush is on a state visit to Britain. The explosions in Istanbul caused extensive damage in and around both an HSBC bank headquarters and the British consulate. Overall, up to five explosions are believed to have rocked Istanbul on November 20.

An eyewitness near the British consulate said that he saw a green pickup truck approaching to the consulate building just before the explosion occurred, the Anatolia news agency reported. Police officials told the news agency that the bombs may have been hidden in food cauldrons. Among those killed in the consulate explosion is British Consul-General Roger Short. In a statement in London, an HSBC bank representative confirmed a "number of fatalities."

According to Anatolia, an unidentified caller to the agency's Istanbul office said that al Qaeda, along with the IBDA-C, or the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders' Front, was claiming responsibility for the attacks.

The Turkish cabinet went into emergency session November 20 to formulate a response to the sudden rise of the terrorist threat in the country. Officials bolstered security measures not only in Istanbul, but also in other major cities, including Izmir and Ankara, the capital. "Turkey won't submit to terrorism. As we see this is an organized thing. Our security, police and intelligence will overcome that,'' Anatolia quoted Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as saying.

News of the blasts reportedly prompted the closure of Istanbul's stock market. The country's Central Bank announced that it was prepared to intervene in currency markets to support the Turkish currency, the lira. Telephone service also experienced interruptions, overburdened by the high volume of calls.

The attacks against the British targets came just five days after bombings near two Istanbul synagogues left 23 dead and an roughly 300 injured. Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek said that, according to initial findings, the tactics employed in the November 20 attacks had "some similarities" to those used in the earlier bombings.

Turkish officials on November 18 acknowledged that the two men who blew themselves up outside two Istanbul synagogues on November 15 were Turks. At a news conference, Istanbul governor Muammer Guler said the bombers, Mesut Cabuk, 29, and Gokhan Elaltuntas, 22, had been identified by DNA tests. The news came as a blow to this staunchly secular Muslim country that has always prided itself on a tradition of moderate Islam, thanks in part to close state surveillance of religious life.

"There have been suicide bombers from among both Kurdish separatist and extreme left wing groups in the past," says terrorism expert Umit Ozdag. "But this is the first time Turkish Islamists have used the technique. It is a worrying development."

Following a November 17 announcement that an al-Qaeda affiliate had claimed responsibility for the synagogue attacks, Turkish officials and experts still believed the November 15 suicide bombers were working as sub-contractors for the international terror organization.

In recent days, Turkish media has published a wealth of information about the synagogue bombers, and their suspected accomplices. Most information concerns Azad Ekinci, one of the bombers' suspected accomplices, who is believed to have bought the pickup truck used in one of the attacks. In an interviewed published by the Sabah daily on November 17, his brother said that Ekinci had fought in Bosnia and Chechnya. Along with Cabuk, one of the bombers, Ekinci is also thought by police to have received training in Pakistan. Ekinci is missing and believed to be in hiding.

Much of the Turkish media coverage of the bombers' links with foreign terror remains speculative. Press reports say that the two bombers and their accomplices were born in the Kurdish town of Bingol, where Ekinci and Cabuk were in the same year at school.

Bingol is most notorious for being one of the strongholds of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, whose fifteen-year war with the Turkish state petered out in 1999. But some terrorism experts now say that the city has emerged as a base for a rival group, Hizbullah.

Ekinci is thought to have been a Hizbullah member between 1990-1993. Meanwhile, two cousins of Elaltuntas, the second bomber, are currently on trial in the southern Turkish city of Diyarbakir on suspicions of involvement in the Hizbullah murders of 60 people between 1991-1994.

Unrelated to the Arab terrorist organization of the same name, the Kurdish Hizbullah came to the Turkish public's attention in 2000, following the police shooting of its chief Huseyin Velioglu. Interrogation of two of his followers led to the discovery of video tapes documenting the torture and execution of scores of people, largely religious-minded businessmen believed to have fallen out with the organization.

Editor's Note: Mevlut Katik is a London-based journalist and analyst. He is a former BBC corerspondent and also worked for The Economist group. Nicholas Birch is a freelance reporter based in Turkey.

Posted November 20, 2003 © Eurasianet

Topics: Anti-Semitism, Terrorists,