Turkey: A mysterious attack on the U.S. Embassy

Who was really behind last week’s attack on the U.S. Embassy in Turkey?

Who was really behind last week’s attack on the U.S. Embassy in Turkey? asked Murat Yetkin in Hurriyet (Turkey). We know who the suicide bomber was: Ecevit Sanli, who blew himself up at the visitors’ gate, killing a Turkish security guard and wounding a Turkish reporter who was waiting to interview U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone. Sanli was a member of the leftist militant group Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C); he had been released from prison after suffering brain damage from a hunger strike. The DHKP-C claimed responsibility for the attack, citing America’s “imperialist ventures.” But it seems bizarre and implausible that the radical leftists would strike against the U.S. now, decades after their Cold War heyday. We know the group had links to Syria in the past. Could Syria be involved?

The Syrian conflict is surely the cause of the attack, said the Daily Times (Pakistan). The DHKP-C posted a message to President Obama on its website saying, “It is the Syrian people who will decide how, and by whom, Syria will be governed,” and adding “Get your bases, your missiles, and your Patriots the hell out of our country.” That’s a reference to the deployment in December of U.S. Patriot missiles to Turkey, where they are manned by U.S. troops. The U.S. sent the missiles to aid its NATO ally after a number of skirmishes on the Turkish-Syrian border. But both Turkey and the U.S. would do better to stay out of the conflict. “The U.S.-led West should restrain its ambitions to mold Syria along the lines of Libya and desist from such interventions in a highly volatile area with the potential to threaten regional and world peace.”

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