ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A member of a Turkish leftist group that accuses Washington of using Turkey as its “slave” carried out a suicide bomb attack on the US embassy, the Ankara governor’s office cited DNA tests as showing yesterday.
Ecevit Sanli, a member of the leftist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C), blew himself up in a perimeter gatehouse on Friday as he tried to enter the embassy, also killing a Turkish security guard.
The DHKP-C, virulently anti-American and listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and Turkey, claimed responsibility in a statement on the internet in which it said Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was a US “puppet”.
“Murderer America! You will not run away from people’s rage,” the statement on “The People’s Cry” website said, next to a picture of Sanli wearing a black beret and military-style clothes and with an explosives belt around his waist.
It warned Erdogan that he too was a target.
Turkey is an important US ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism. Leftist groups including the DHKP-C strongly oppose what they see as imperialist US influence over their nation.
DNA tests confirmed that Sanli was the bomber, the Ankara governor’s office said. It said he had fled Turkey a decade ago and was wanted by the authorities.
Born in 1973 in the Black Sea port city of Ordu, Sanli was jailed in 1997 for attacks on a police station and a military staff college in Istanbul, but his sentence was deferred after he fell sick during a hunger strike. He was never re-jailed.
Condemned to life in prison in 2002, he fled the country a year later, officials said. Interior Minister Muammer Guler said he had re-entered Turkey using false documents.
Erdogan, who said hours after the attack that the DHKP-C were responsible, met his interior and foreign ministers as well as the head of the army and state security service in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss the bombing.
Three people were detained in Istanbul and Ankara in connection with the attack, state broadcaster TRT said.
The White House condemned the bombing as an “act of terror”, while the U.N. Security Council described it as a heinous act. US officials said on Friday the DHKP-C were the main suspects but did not exclude other possibilities.
