HELPLINE: Britons worried about relatives in the area can call a Foreign Office helpline on 020-7008-0000
TERRORIST bombers have carried out a 24-hour wave of attacks in Turkey, killing and injuring dozens of people, including British holidaymakers.
Tourists have been warned by the group that has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Marmaris that its campaign of terror has not ended and they should not travel to Turkey.
“Turkey is not a safe country. Tourists should not come to Turkey,” the Teyre Azadiye Kurdistan (TAK), also known as the Kurdish Liberation Hawks, said. A statement said that the group was behind a spate of bombings across the country this year.
The worst blasts occurred in the resorts of Antalya, where at least three people died when a bomb exploded in a marketplace yesterday afternoon, and Marmaris, where ten Britons were injured when their minibus was blown up in the early hours yesterday.
There were two further blasts in Marmaris, one of the most popular destinations for British visitors. Another attack injured six people in a suburb of Istanbul.
The bombing campaign is aimed at destabilising Turkey and damaging its economy, and is not targeted directly at British or Western interests. There have been twenty bomb attacks in Turkey this year, eight of which have occurred during August, the peak month for the millions of Britons who visit the country every year.
Legislation proscribing TAK — a splinter from the outlawed PKK, or Kurdish Workers’ Party — as a terrorist organisation came into force in Britain two weeks ago.
In Marmaris, where eight of the injured Britons were still being treated in hospital last night, tourists spoke of the frightening scenes when the minibus blew up.
A couple from Coventry have been discharged from hospital and two other Britons, a 73-year-old woman and a 13-year-old girl, underwent surgery for burns. Suzanne Poyraz, the foreign operations manager at Caria Hospitals, said: “Everyone is OK now but this was a really bad shock for people here.”
Rob Laughton, 41, from Chiswick, West London, was having dinner at a restaurant in the middle of Marmaris with his wife, Susan, and friends. “We were just sat there and heard this almighty explosion,” he said.
The group ran out of the restaurant. “We just saw the bus and bodies lying on the ground. We thought, ‘We just don’t want to be here.’ We just ran away.”
Jill Thornton, of Consett, Co Durham, said that her son Daniel, 19, was in Turkey with his girlfriend and her parents, and had seen the aftermath of the bus explosion. Daniel, who was walking with his girlfriend, Laura Stalker, 17, said that he was met by a shocking scene. Mrs Thornton said: “He is only 19 and his girlfriend is only 17. I am panicking. His girlfriend was very upset.”
In the Ahu Hetman hospital, Suzanna Beckford, from Birmingham, received treatment with her grandchildren, Alex and Louis. She said: “Why have they done this to us? We have done nothing. Who are these people?”
None of the Britons has life-threatening injuries. Police said that early examination of the minibus on which they were travelling suggested that the bomb had been placed under a seat. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office updated its travel advice to include news of the bomb attacks, and said that initial reports from Antalya indicated that no Britons were among the fatalities or casualties there. The injured included people from Germany, Jordan, Iran, Israel and Russia.
Witnesses said that the blast in the Mediterranean resort had caused panic, with bloodied people fleeing the scene, glass and debris flying through the air and a fire breaking out.
One of those who died was thought to be a pastry vendor who was set alight when the bomb exploded near him.
Sir Peter Westmacott, the British Ambassador to Turkey, who visited Marmaris, said: “I’m afraid this event shows that there are no countries in the world where we can be guaranteed to be safe from terrorist attacks.
“It is something we’re all in together and it can happen in all sorts of different countries. Alas it has happened here before. A year ago I was at Kusadasi, where there was a very similar bomb attack on a minibus which took the life of one British subject, and that was very distressing too.
“But I think people seem to have a great resilience. They are determined to get on with their holidays and they know sadly that these days you can’t be safe wherever you go.”
Kurdish rebel groups aligned with the PKK had claimed responsibility for an explosion in a tourist area 60 miles (95km)east of Antalya in June this year, which killed four people. They have also been accused of starting some of the forest fires that destroyed hundreds of acres of woodland this month.
The PKK, which began its armed struggle 22 years ago for a separate Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey, has languished, apparently demoralised and divided, after the capture and imprisonment of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999.
But for the past year or so at least one wing of extremists has been making the group’s presence felt with a series of attacks. Reports have also been rising of clashes in the southeast, where the PKK has been waging a campaign against the Turkish Army in a battle that has claimed about 30,000 lives.
The Turkish Government and military have long complained that the PKK rebels have found a fruitful training environment in mainly Kurdish northern Iraq since the US-led invasion. Military officials suspect that the PKK has access to some of the weapons flooding Iraq, including remote-controlled explosives, and smuggling them into Turkey.
Ankara has clashed with Washington, which it accuses of not doing enough to clamp down on the guerrillas. It has even threatened a cross-border incursion. The latest attacks coincided with the appointment of a new hardline chief of staff of the Turkish Army.
The wave of bombings suggests a return by separatist terrorists to a tactic last tested in the 1990s, targeting one of the biggest earners in the Turkish economy. Then, a series of resort bombs, combined with the Gulf War, left the Turkish tourist industry in despair. Even a temporary hitch to the short summer season can have a devastating effect. The tourist industry’s target of $20 billion (£11 billion) in revenue this year looks to be in jeopardy.
Although the panicked scenes of Sunday night were quickly replaced by business as usual in the restaurants and streets of Marmaris, and holidaymakers crowded the beaches as they had done all summer, local tradesmen and tourist officials were worried about the long-term impact of the explosions.
“The cowardly PKK cannot succeed in their aims,” a defiant Fatih Karatepe wrote in an e-mail to the Hurriyet newspaper. “We, the people of Marmaris, are now linked ever closer to our country and to our people, and tourists are also part of this warmth and closeness.”
A suspected member of the PKK was detained yesterday for planning an attack in the port city of Izmir. Others were detained for helping the suspect, and police seized plastic explosives in the operation.
Additional reporting: Sean O’Neill and Karen McVeigh
RECENT BOMBINGS
Aug 5, 2005 Five Turkish soldiers die in bomb attack blamed on the PKK in Hakkari province
July 16 Helen Bennett, of Co Durham, is among five killed when a PKK bomb explodes on a bus in Kusadasi
July 10 At least 20 people, including 2 tourists, injured by PKK bomb in Cesme
May 17, 2004 Four small bombs explode outside branches of HSBC in Ankara and Istanbul before Tony Blair’s visit to Turkey
Nov 20, 2003 Blasts outside British consulate in Istanbul and local HSBC headquarters kill 27 people, including Roger Short, the Consul- General. Al-Qaeda and Great Eastern Islamic Raiders’ Front claim responsibility
