TURKISH officials have been accused of covering up a terrorist bombing campaign in an attempt to safeguard the country’s lucrative tourist industry.

An explosion that killed four people and injured 28 last Sunday in a popular restaurant at a waterfall at Manavgat, about 60 miles east of the Mediterranean resort of Antalya, was blamed by Fikret Dayioglu, the local governor, on a faulty gas cylinder.

But he produced no evidence and could not explain why most of the casualties occurred away from the kitchen area.

Vatan, a leading Turkish daily, later reported that security cameras had captured footage of a three-strong terrorist cell placing a bomb in a bin 20 minutes before the blast.

The report was denied by local officials but responsibility for the explosion was admitted by the Kurdistan Liberation Hawks (TAK), a group controlled by the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK).

“There are a lot more attempted bombings than appear in the press,” said a well placed source in the Turkish security forces.

“The terrorists are poorly trained and a lot of their bombs simply don’t go off or blow up prematurely. This makes it easier for the government to suppress the news for fear of scaring off foreign tourists or depressing the public mood.”

About 1.5m British tourists visit Turkey every year and tourism is a main sources of foreign currency, earning £10 billion last year.

Earlier this year sources in the Turkish security forces warned that the PKK/TAK was planning a bombing campaign to coincide with the start of the tourist season.

Two weeks ago three people were injured in an explosion in central Istanbul. The authorities initially suggested that it had been caused by an aerosol left in a litter bin, although they later admitted it had been a bomb.

The dead in the Manavgat explosion were three foreign visitors to the beauty spot — Atilla Hankiss from Hungary, Edit Marvick from Norway, and Femmie Merkusscha from the Netherlands — as well as a Turkish waiter, Cemal Kaya.

It is not the first time that the local authorities in Antalya have been less than candid about the cause of an explosion in the area. Antalya has a large population of migrant Kurds from southeast Turkey, many of whom support the PKK.

In August 2004 the authorities attributed a series of blasts in the city to exploding gas cylinders, even though several explosions occurred simultaneously. Privately, members of the security forces now admit that the blasts were caused by bombs.

In a statement posted on its website on April 29 this year, the TAK announced it was planning a bombing campaign against tourist sites in western Turkey this summer and named Manavgat as one of 11 targets. It also warned the Turkish authorities not to try to claim that any of the bombs were “accidents” or “exploding gas cylinders”.

Last week, in its statement about the deaths at Manavgat, the TAK warned its bombing campaign would continue and that areas frequented by foreign tourists would be the prime target.

“It was not our first attack and it won’t be our last,” said the statement. “We are growing stronger every day. As we grow, we strike and as we strike, we grow.”

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