At approximately 1:15 p.m. on Feb. 1, a man later identified as Ecevit Sanli, 40, stopped outside a personnel entrance of the U.S. embassy in Ankara and detonated a belt carrying 13 lb. (6 kg) of explosives, as well as a hand grenade, killing one Turkish security guard, wounding several others and blowing himself in pieces. Amid the confusion that reigned over the ensuing few hours, Turkish news and social-media sites buzzed with the names of possible culprits. By late afternoon, the list that emerged began to read like a register of every conflict in which Turkey — NATO member, E.U. hopeful and rising regional power — has played a part over the past decade. First came the usual suspects. There was al-Qaeda, which has already been blamed for a series of deadly terrorist attacks in Istanbul in 2003. Then came the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has waged war against Turkey for almost three decades and whose imprisoned leader recently agreed to talks with the government. Then there was Syria, which has turned from best friend to ultimate foe since the beginning of the armed insurgency to unseat President Bashar Assad and which has been suspected, at least by the Turks, of having a hand in a deadly bombing in Gaziantep, a Turkish city, in August. There was Iran, which has warned Turkey that its belligerence toward Assad — and particularly the recent deployment of NATO Patriot missile batteries along the country’s border with Syria — may soon usher in another world war. The list closed with ultra-nationalists, rogue intelligence operatives and homegrown Islamic extremists. (MORE: Missing NYC Woman Found Dead in Turkey, Report Says) By the end of the day, however, it had become clear that the group that appeared most likely to have been behind Friday’s bombing was a Marxist organization: the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C). High-ranking Turkish officials, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared that Sanli, the suicide bomber, was a member of the group. He had been incarcerated between 1997 and 2002 on terrorism charges. In a lengthy, rambling![]()
