Yet another terror strike clouds economic and political outlook

TURKEY - In Brief 18 Feb 2016 by Atilla Yesilada

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Terror struck Ankara a second time in less than twelve months, this time right at the very center of the city, very close to the headquarters of the Chiefs of Staff and Grand Assembly. The death toll is currently 28, with 61 injured. No organization claimed responsibility for this shocking incident, but Ankara suspects PKK, while the MO (a bomb packed car) suggests the culprit could be ISIS. Yet any small radical group such as ultra-Marxist DHKP-C, which has recently hired out it’s talents- reportedly-- to “foreign governments” such as Mr. Assad, might have been responsible. With some stretch of imagination, I could even implicate Mr. Putin who is rumored to be yearning to teach Mr. Erdogan a good lesson since the downing of the Russian jet. What matters is the perception that Turkish spy agencies and the police is no longer fit to deal with these frequent terror attacks, simply because they are either retired on account on being members of the Gulen Organization, or sent after imaginary enemies of Mr. Erdogan or Kurdish rights activists. Unless Turkey earnestly restructures its police force and intelligence agencies, such terror attacks are very likely to repeat with increasing frequency in the future. If the culprit is PKK, the attack signals that it has begun its long promised campaign to destabilize Western cities, with Istanbul as the next potential target. If it is ISIS, it is probably bothered by the more stringent efforts of border patrols to stop human trafficking and re-supply operations from Turkey. However, since Ankara is under serious pressure from U.S. and EU to deal with the ISIS menace, it is unlikely to relax these border controls. The culprits could ...