Extreme Left Turkish Group Claims Responsibility For Istanbul Blast
ISTANBUL (AFP) - An extreme left-wing Turkish underground group claimed responsibility Thursday for a deadly suicide bombing at a police building in Istanbul and threatened to carry out more attacks.
The Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) said in a statement that the bombing, in which a policeman was killed, was retaliation for a massive crackdown last month by Turkish security forces against hunger-striking prison inmates.
Thirty inmates died in the four-day operation. Most of them were leftists who committed suicide by setting themselves ablaze.
"One of our sacrificial fighters entered Sisli security department with a bomb and destroyed an enemy target," said the statement issued in English.
A police officer was killed and seven other people were injured Wednesday when the suicide bomber walked into the fifth floor of the regional police headquarters in Sisli and detonated the explosives wrapped around his torso.
Authorities identified the assailant, who was ripped to pieces in the blast, as 23-year-old Gultekin Koc, who had been detained twice on suspicion of being a DHKP-C member.
The DHKP-C statement said that Wednesday's attack was an answer to last month's raid by hundreds of paramilitary troops on 20 prisons across Turkey to end a hunger strike launched to protest the introduction of new jails with tighter security.
"There is no other way than to answer violence with violence," the DHKP-C said.
"It is the state that murderously and without restraint opens proceedings against prisoners, tortures prisoners, slaughters prisoners and rejoices in slaughtering prisoners; but no massacre can remain unpunished," it said.
The group also issued a warning that it would carry out more operations if Turkey continued to "attack the right of our people to defend themselves and carry out massacres."
"There is an inexhaustible supply of revolutionaries on the soil of this land," it said.
Meanwhile, Turkish police issued a nationwide warning against possible bombings and armed attacks by the DHKP-C and a Maoist group - the Turkish Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army (TIKKO) - to protest the prison operation.
The warning ordered officers to be vigilant and meticulously search suspicious-looking people and packages.
