Terror Attack Kills 17 in Turkey
Charles Johnson
Mon Jul 28, 2008 at 8:26 am PDT • Views: 177
The Islamist government of Turkey continues marginalizing the Kemalist secularists, and although no one has claimed responsibility this is probably an Islamist attack to further intimidate the secularists: Istanbul rocked by bomb attacks.
Turkey’s political landscape was plunged further into turmoil last night when two bombs exploded in a packed pedestrian square in Istanbul, killing at least 17 people and injuring more than 150, in what officials called a terrorist attack.
In the deadliest bomb attacks in the country for almost five years, the two explosions, a few metres apart, were detonated within minutes of each other.
They were set off by devices left in rubbish bins in a busy shopping street in Gungoren, a working-class neighbourhood in the west of the city.
The prime minister, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, today cancelled his weekly cabinet meeting in Ankara and travelled to the area hit by the bombs.
The blasts underscored the divisions cutting through the country as a power struggle between secularists and the Islamist-leaning government comes to a head.
Frank says: