MESOP : THE SURUC MURDER WAS A NATIVE KURD – Turkey Says Suicide Bomber Was Its Citizen

By Emre Peker – Wall Street Journal – 2015-07-23 – ISTANBUL — Turkey said one of its citizens carried out this week’s deadly suicide bombing near the Syrian border, raising the prospect of security threats from homegrown jihadists.Turkish authorities on Wednesday identified the bomber as Seyh Abdurrahman Alagoz, a Kurdish native of Adiyaman province, two hours north of Suruç, where Monday’s suicide attack killed at least 32 people and wounded more than 100.

Government officials blamed Islamic State for the worst strike along the Syrian border in more than two years, for which no one has claimed responsibility.”It is very clear that it’s ISIS,” said a Turkish official, referring to Islamic State by its commonly used acronym. “Our thesis is that ISIS didn’t claim the attack because it was carried out by a local operative as per a general directive.”The 20-year-old Mr. Alagoz and his older brother, Yunus Emre, had been on a watch list of suspected terrorists and disappeared about six months ago, likely crossing into Syria to fight alongside Islamic State against Kurdish nationalists in Tel Abyad, the official said.Before the stint in Syria, the official said, Mr. Alagoz had been attending meetings of a Salafist group in Adiyaman for about a year, learning about jihad and adopting a radical outlook. Officials said he also was influenced by his older brother, who allegedly operated a tea house where Islamic State recruited fighters.

The attack on members of socialist youth organizations in Suruç followed Syrian Kurds’ victories against Islamic State in Syria. Young volunteers from throughout Turkey were en route to help rebuild Kobani, the Syrian city across the border from Suruc where Kurds backed by U.S. airstrikes defeated Islamic State. As Turkey reeled from the suicide bombing, an outlawed Kurdish separatist group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for the shooting deaths of a Turkish police officer and a member of a counterterrorism unit in southeast Turkey. The killings further stoked tensions and highlighted the mounting challenges the Turkish government faces in not only policing its borders, but also upholding security in the region. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, said the killings in Sanliurfa province were retaliation for the Islamic State strike in Suruc, and accused the police of aiding jihadists. The PKK has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey in a conflict that killed more than 40,000 people since 1984. Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union have designated the group a terrorist organization. “Our intelligence agency and security forces are investigating whether there is a PKK connection or if the statement was made for propaganda purposes,” Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said on Wednesday after a cabinet meeting. “Those who did this will certainly pay for it.”

The PKK also clashed with the Turkish military in Adiyaman hours after Monday’s suicide attack in Suruç, killing a soldier, the armed forces said. Those acts, along with the mounting Islamic State threat, reflect how conflicts in Iraq and Syria are spreading to Turkey.A primary driver in the spillover is the fight between Islamic State and Syrian PKK-affiliated Kurdish militias to control Syria’s north. The two groups’ sympathizers have engaged in deadly battles in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast.

“The ongoing conflict in Syria is naturally spilling into Turkey. On the one hand, the PKK is attacking ISIS sympathizers. On the other ISIS is responding to the terror,” the Turkish official said The government said it would bolster Turkey’s porous 565-mile border with Syria in an effort to clamp down on terrorists and foreign jihadists fighting with Islamic State. Turkey plans to set up a “physical security system” to target ISIS crossing points, Mr. Arinc said after the top army general and defense minister outlined the measures. Since the beginning of the year, Turkey has also placed under surveillance some 600 people suspected of connections to Islamic State, and imprisoned more than 100 of them, Mr. Arinc said.

Still, the government’s push to tighten security and identify those responsible for Monday’s bombing haven’t quieted the government’s critics, who slammed the administration for drawing Islamist militant groups into Turkey as it focused on toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, but doubts persist over the Ankara’s dedication to cracking down on the extremist group, which opposes the push by Syrian Kurds for autonomy and considers the Damascus regime its enemy.

Opposition lawmakers have called for mass protests to condemn terrorism and the government’s foreign policy, while police have deployed tear gas and water cannons against antigovernment demonstrators.In response to criticism, Turkish authorities briefly cut off access to Twitter Inc. on Wednesday. The aim was to curb the spread of information about the Suruç attack and to interrupt calls for “illegal mass demonstrations,” state-run Anadolu news agency reported. The temporary blackout came hours after a court in Sanliurfa ordered the suppression of attack-related photographs and video. A spokesman for Twitter had no immediate comment. A government official said Twitter was forced to shut briefly because it couldn’t remove SuruC-related content within the time period ordered by the court. An appeals court late Wednesday lifted the embargo. Internet controls have become a routine measure for Turkish authorities amid crises and scandals, said Burcak Unsal, former local counsel for Google Inc. who has fought the government’s Internet bans.”The government’s first reaction to events, which indicate a lack of authority, is a media ban,” said Mr. Unsal, now a partner at Unsal Gunduz, an Istanbul law firm. “The government is intolerant of even basic media freedoms and people’s right to know.”