Turkish police near scene of explosion, Vezneciler, Istanbul, June 7, 2016. Emrah Gurel / Press Association. All rights reserved.June 7, 2016, was the first anniversary of the Turkish general elections in which the ruling conservative AKP (Justice and Development Party) experienced a vote loss for the first time in 13 years and the newly established pro-Kurdish HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) gained an unexpectedly significant success by expanding its support base towards the dissident groups in the non-Kurdish population of the country.
However, discussions and analysis about that election and its following events were absent from the agenda of Tuesday’s news. Instead, news focused on a bomb attack in the central district of Vezneciler in Istanbul, near the city’s main university which left 11 dead and many wounded, including civilians.
Nobody has yet claimed responsibility for this attack, however Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has implied that the armed Kurdish groups fighting in Turkey conducted the attack. TAK, a radical offspring of the PKK which has been the main armed actor of the Kurdish movement in Turkey for more than 30 years, has claimed responsibility for several car bomb attacks and suicide bombings in Ankara and Bursa over recent months.
