More than an anti-American attack

Star's Fehmi Koru says Friday's suicide bombing was not a surprise to him because the current direction of Turkish politics provokes further terrorism. Our country is under fire from many directions but we probably forgot about the existence of other terrorist organizations because we are so obsessed with one of them, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Choosing the US Embassy as the target is meaningful. In addition, more people could have been killed if the bomb had been detonated in the visa application hall, where dozens of people were waiting at the time of the incident, rather than at the embassy officers' entrance. This shows that the attack was nothing more than a show of power. It could be the work of the PKK, the DHKP/C, al-Qaeda, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Israel or any other group or country that does not want terrorism to end in Turkey, the columnist notes.

Abdülkadir Selvi from Yeni Şafak says he finds it odd that similar to the recent Paris murders of three Kurdish women who were linked to the PKK, the attack on the US Embassy came right after hopes of ending Turkey's terrorism problem were raised and just like Ömer Güney, the prime suspect of the Paris killings, Şanlı, the embassy suicide bomber, spent a long time in Germany. Also, the DHKP/C's activities are mostly planned in Europe. Therefore, Selvi claims, it must be a deep state in Europe or the European Gladio that carried out the attack.

Some claim that the bombing might be the continuation of the old anti-American tradition in the Turkish left-wing as the DHKP/C is a leftist, Marxist party. However, Kurtuluş Tayiz, a Taraf columnist, does not find the claim realistic. “The practice of suicide bombing is not common in the history of Turkish leftism or the DHKP/C. Suicide bombing is a personal phenomenon based on social reasons. There might be political, social, economic or cultural reasons behind the attack. But calling the attack an anti-American act would be taking the easy way out and an oversimplification.”

The attack on the embassy once again indicates that Ankara is currently the target of many terrorist groups, Milliyet's Fikret Bila says. It is a phase that we have to overcome by taking excessive measures and remaining cautious. There are several reasons why Turkey is the target of terrorist organizations but Bila thinks the most likely one is the conflicts in countries surrounding Turkey.