Who carried out the Ankara attacks?

Latest: Two male suicide bombers carried out the devastating twin bombings this weekend in Ankara, the office of the Turkish prime minister said Sunday, as the toll rose to 97 dead.
"Work is continuing to identify the corpses of the two male terrorists who carried out the suicide bombings" on Saturday, the office of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in a statement.

It said that the attack, the deadliest in the history of modern Turkey, had claimed the lives of 97 people, raising slightly the previous toll of 95.
Of those killed 92 have been identified and work is continuing to identify the five others, it added.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) has claimed the toll is far higher at 128 but this has not been confirmed by the authorities.

Who?

The Turkish authorities have said one of several groups could be behind the twin suspected suicide attacks in Ankara that killed 95 people, with initial investigations reportedly focusing on Daesh.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said groups including Daesh, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the far-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) were capable of carrying out such an attack.

Press reports have indicated that the authorities are looking at the possibility of a link to Daesh but this has yet to be confirmed by the government.

The attack came after months of violence that saw atrocities in Turkey carried out by all three groups, leaving uncertainty over who perpetrated out the current attack.

Here is an overview of the groups cited by Davutoglu as being possible suspects in the investigation.

 Daesh

The government blamed Daesh for a suicide bombing on July 20 in the town of Suruc on the Syrian border that left 33 people dead. Daesh has seized swathes of neighbouring Iraq and Syria, and Turkey was long criticised by its Nato partners for not doing enough to crack down on the group.

But now it has fully joined the US-led coalition fighting Daesh and allowed US warplanes to use its key southern base at Incirlik, raising fears Turkey could be vulnerable to revenge attacks by the jihadist group.

NTV television said the initial investigation pointed to a connection to Daesh and the suspected remnants of the suicide bombers would be subjected to DNA testing.

It said that experts believed that the type of bomb used was very similar to the Suruc attack and the same Turkish forensic team used in Suruc were now working in Ankara.

The Hurriyet and Haberturk dailies reported that the elder brother of Abdurrahman Alagoz, who carried out the Suruc suicide bombing, could have been implicated in the Ankara blasts.

Turkish police meanwhile arrested 43 suspected members of Daesh in raids across the country in cities including Adana and Antalya, but there was no suggestion of any link to the Ankara attacks.

 

Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)

The Kurdish militant PKK blamed the government after the Suruc attack and resumed attacks on the security forces after a two year truce. According to state media, over 140 members of the security forces have been killed in the violence.

Pro-government media such as the Sabah daily have implied a PKK hand in the Ankara attacks. However Kurdish activists were among those at the peace rally that was targeted. Also, the PKK on the same day as the attack announced a de-facto ceasefire, saying it would only launch attacks in self-defence.

 Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C)

The DHKP-C has claimed a string of attacks in Turkey in recent months, including a gun attack on the US embassy in Istanbul, but most have been small in scale and sometimes even amateurish in nature.

The DHKP-C, known until the mid-1990s as Devrimci Sol (Revolutionary Left), seeks a Marxist revolution in Turkey among the working classes but also espouses a fiercely anti-Western and anti-Nato agenda.

It claimed the hostage-taking on March 31 of prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz at his Istanbul office that ended with the killing of the captive and both hostage-takers during a police raid.

'Mafia state' The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas blamed a "mafia state" and a "state mentality which acts like a serial killer" for the attack. With tensions high ahead of November 1 snap elections, the HDP fears the government will try to benefit from the unrest at the ballot box. Many Turks are fearful of acts that the secret security services -- known as the "deep state" (derin devlet in Turkish) -- could commit. However the government angrily ridiculed the notion of any state involvement.

 

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