Scuffles broke out Sunday in the Turkish capital as police used tear gas to prevent pro-Kurdish politicians and other mourners from laying carnations at the site of two suspected suicide bombings that killed 95 people and wounded hundreds in Turkey\u2019s deadliest attack in years.
\nPolice held back the mourners, including the pro-Kurdish party\u2019s co-leaders Selahattin Demirta\u015f and Figen Y\u00fcksekda\u011f, insisting that investigators were still working at the site.
\nTurkey declared three days of mourning following Saturday\u2019s nearly simultaneous explosions that targeted a peace rally in Ankara to call for increased democracy and an end to the renewed fighting between the Turkish security forces and Kurdish rebels. The rally was attended by activists, labor unions and members of the pro-Kurdish party, and came just weeks as Turkey holds a new election on November 1.
\nA group of about 70 mourners was eventually allowed to enter the cordoned off area outside the capital\u2019s main train station Sunday to briefly pay their respects for the victims.
\nThe group of mourners then marched toward a central square in Ankara, chanting slogans against President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, whom many hold responsible for the spiraling violence that has plagued Turkey since the summer.
\nAddressing hundreds of mourners, Demirta\u015f accused the government of failing to prevent the attack.
\n\u201cThe state which gets information about the bird that flies and every flap of its wing, was not able to prevent a massacre in the heart of Ankara,\u201d Demirta\u015f said.
\nThere was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto\u011flu said Kurdish rebels and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants were the most likely culprits.
\nThe government announced Sunday that it had appointed two civil and two police chief inspectors to investigate the attack. Yeni \u015eafak, a newspaper close to the government, said investigators had determined that one of the bombers was a male aged about 25 or 30.
\nThe attacks came at a tense time for Turkey, whose security forces have seen renewed fighting with autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels since July. Hundreds have died in the last few months as a 2012 peace process with the Kurds was shattered.
\nThe fighting was rekindled following a similar suicide bombing in July that killed 33 peace activists near the border with Syria, which authorities said was the work of ISIS.
\nCritics have accused Erdo\u011fan of inflaming tensions and reigniting the fighting with the Kurds in the hope that the turmoil would rally voters back to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Electoral gains by the pro-Kurdish party caused the ruling party, founded by Erdo\u011fan, to lose its parliamentary majority in a June election after a decade of single-party rule.
\nErdo\u011fan, who strongly denies the accusation, condemned the attacks which he said targeted the country\u2019s unity and called for solidarity.
\nHours after Saturday\u2019s bombings, the Kurdish rebels announced a temporary ceasefire to allow the November 1 elections to proceed in a secure environment. Turkey\u2019s government has however rejected the declaration, saying the rebels must lay down arms for good and leave Turkey.
\nThe NATO member is also on edge over developments across in Syria, with which it shares a 560-mile-long border.
\nTurkey agreed to take a more active role in the US-led battle against ISIS. Turkey opened up its bases to US aircraft to launch air raids on the extremist group in Syria and carried out a limited number of strikes on the group itself.
\nRussia has also entered the fray on behalf of the Syrian government recently, bombing sites in Syria and reportedly violating Turkish airspace a few times in the past week. On Sunday, Turkey\u2019s military said two Syrian jets and surface-to-air missile systems based in Syria locked radars on three F-16 jets patrolling the Turkish\u2013Syrian border, in a new incident of harassment of Turkish planes from Syria.<\/p>\n
Source: Asharq Al-Awsat<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scuffles broke out Sunday in the Turkish capital as police used tear gas to prevent pro-Kurdish politicians and other mourners from laying carnations at the site of two suspected suicide bombings that killed 95 people and wounded hundreds in Turkey\u2019s deadliest attack in years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c59-islamic-world"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n