Aftermath: Ankara Bombings Leave Turkey More Polarized Than Ever

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/ankara-attacks-heighten-political-divisions-in-turkey-a-1058732.html



The terrorist attacks in Ankara have deepened Turkey's political rifts. While President Erdogan is fueling his supporters' hostility to the pro-Kurdish HDP ahead of snap elections, his opponents accuse him of being in cahoots with IS.

Aftermath: Ankara Bombings Leave Turkey More Polarized Than Ever
By Maximilian Popp and Christoph Reuter
October 21, 2015 – 02:21 PM

The square is emptier than it was a few days ago. But day after day, hour after hour, Sabri Batur maintains his vigil at the entrance to the Forensic Institute in Ankara. He keeps asking doctors if they know what's happened to his wife. None of them have given him an answer.

Over one hundred people died and several hundred others were injured on Oct. 10 when two suicide attackers detonated bombs at a peace rally in the Turkish capital. Forensic pathologists have managed to identify most of the bodies, but no trace of Sabri Batur's wife has been found so far.

Thirty-five-year-old Fatima Batur, a local politician from Alanya in southern Turkey and a mother of two, was among the demonstrators. She was talking to her husband in Alanya on her mobile phone when the first bomb exploded at 10:04 a.m. Sabri Batur heard the blast. Then the line went dead. Bloody TV images of the attack showed the dead and the injured lying on the street. Batur later found out that the wounded were still waiting for ambulances when police arrived and began dousing them with tear gas and beating them with truncheons.

The most deadly terrorist attack in recent Turkish history plunged the country into a state of shock. But after several days of mourning, there is now a growing sense of anger. Many in Turkey who are critical of the government are asking how the state -- with its all-powerful intelligence service -- could have failed to prevent a massacre in the capital. Why was so little police protection provided at the demonstration?