BRITAIN TARGETED IN TURKEY FOR ITS ALLIANCE WITH THE UNITED STATES
ISTANBUL, 20 Nov. (IPS) Turkey was hit again on Thursday by terrorists believed to belong to al-Qa’eda organization when vans, loaded with huge quantity of explosives exploded at the British consulate and a leading British bank in Istanbul, killing at least 27 people and wounding nearly 500, some of them British staff at the consulate and the bank, including the General Consul, Roger Short, the rest are Turkish citizen.
The explosion also badly damaged an Iranian bank, wounding four staff and
clients, sources told Iran Press Service, describing the destructions
caused by the huge blasts as "scenes of the apocalypse".
The terrible bombing comes five days only after islamist radicals blasted two synagogues, one of them, Neve Shalom, the oldest Jewish cult center in Turkey, making 25 dead, six of them Jewish worshippers and more than 300 wounded.
Turkish Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said suicide bombers who used two pick-up trucks loaded with explosives to target the British consulate and Britain’s biggest bank HSBC in the late morning carried out the almost simultaneous attacks.
Turkey's Anatolia news agency quoted an anonymous telephone caller saying the attacks were a joint action by the al-Qa’eda terror group and the Islamic Front of Raiders of the Great Orient (IBDA-C) -- a radical Sunni Muslim group whose aim is to set up an Islamic state and "stop the oppression of Muslims".
The new explosions took place at almost the same time President George W. Bush, on his first official visit to Britain, was conferring with the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his most trusted friend and major ally in the war on Iraq, assuring that the war against international terrorism "would continue unabated".
"The terrorists hope to intimidate. They hope to demoralise. They particularly want to intimidate free nations", President Bush, adding, "They are not going to succeed. We are united in our determination to fight this evil wherever it is found".
As Jack Straw, the British Foreign Affairs Minister flew to Turkey, taking with him a dozen of crack anti-terrorist specialists to assist the Turkish police, Britain advised its citizens against "all but the most essential" travel to turkey and the US State Department cautioned that more terrorist attacks were possible in Istanbul and closed its consulate.
In their first reaction and comments, Iranian and European analysts said the operation were "obviously" targeted British interests because of its close cooperation with the United States in Iraq in the one hand and the Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Teyyeb Erdogan for failing to dissociate Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation, from Washington and Tel Aviv on the other.
Although the present Turkish government emanates from an Islam-based political organisation, the Justice and Development Party, but Mr. Erdogan kept alive Turkish membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as close military, security and intelligence cooperation with Israel.
More over, Turkish Parliament that is controlled by the JDP, voted last month a bill authorising the government to sent troops in Iraq to help American and British occupation forces in that neighbouring country.
However, under strong opposition from the Iraqi Kurdish organizations but also the American-installed Iraqi Provisory Government to the decision, Ankara backed off.
"Like in the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington, where al-Qa’eda hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, two hallmark symbols of the United States, its economic and military powers, here in Istanbul, symbols of the British Empire and its booming economy have been targeted", one Iranian analyst commented.
A former Iranian anti-terrorist specialist told Iran Press Service that the Thursday operations in Istanbul against British interests needed "months of preparations, like in the case of the 11 September attacks".
In his view, the perpetrators of the last blasts in Istanbul did profit from the "leniency" of the Turkish police and security services towards islamist groups, some of them enjoying support from neighbouring Islamic Republic of Iran.
Ankara frequently accuses Iran of helping Turkish radical Muslim groups and sheltering the peshmerga (fighers) of the outlawed Turkish Kurdish separatist organization PKK, or Party of Turkish Kurdistan Workers which is led by Abdullah Ocalan, now in jail in an isolated island-prison.
According to Turkish officials, some of the suicide bombers of the Jewish synagogues were trained in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.
Turkey has a long history of political and religious violence, including Armenian groups that in the seventies killed several Turkish diplomats, followed by Marxist guerillas and then Muslim organsations, not forgetting the 20 years of war waged by the PKK until the arrest of Ocalan in Kenya with the help of Israeli agents. ENDS ATO ISTANBUL NEW BLASTS 201103