By SEBNEM ARSU<\/p>\n
ISTANBUL \u2014 The suicide bomber who attacked a police unit in the heart of Istanbul on Sunday had ties to the separatist Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party, the Istanbul governor\u2019s office said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old bomber, who wounded 32 people and killed himself, struck on the last day of a unilateral, two-month cease-fire by the rebel group, known by the initials P.K.K.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate response from the organization, which had earlier emphatically denied having anything to do with the bombing and declared an eight-month extension of its cease-fire.<\/p>\n
The bomber, Vedat Acar, born in Van, a predominantly Kurdish town in southeastern Turkey, had joined the outlawed group in 2004, the governor\u2019s statement said.<\/p>\n
NTV, a private television network, reported that Mr. Acar had entered the country in August through a security post on the Iraqi border, where the P.K.K. has had a base for decades.<\/p>\n
The bomb exploded Sunday morning in Istanbul\u2019s busiest plaza, Taksim Square, wounding 15 police officers and 17 civilians.<\/p>\n
Some senior members of the P.K.K., including Abdullah Ocalan, the group\u2019s jailed leader, have been urging a political solution to the Kurdish conflict, which has claimed more than 40,000 lives since the early 1980s.<\/p>\n
Turkish nationalists, however, regard the political steps suggested by the P.K.K., like the start of official dialogue with Mr. Ocalan and constitutional recognition of Kurdish identity, as a threat to Turkey\u2019s unity.<\/p>\n
Some Kurdish analysts who favor a peaceful resolution to the conflict consider attacks like the one on Sunday to be efforts to derail political progress.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis attack came at a time when more effective, prominent circles were prepared to promote a democratic solution to the Kurdish issue at large,\u201d said Umit Firat, a Kurdish intellectual. \u201cNeither the state, the military, nor the people yield to such provocations anymore. Our nation knows about such dirty tactics well by now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government, led by the Justice and Development Party, has passed legislation improving the cultural rights of Kurds and offering them political recognition.<\/p>\n
For decades starting in the 1930s, Turkey tried to enforce a policy of absorbing the Kurds, the nation\u2019s largest minority \u2014 now more than 12 million people out of a population of 78 million \u2014 into a greater Turkish identity.<\/p>\n
The government, however, remains reluctant to introduce the Kurdish language in public schools and refuses to offer a general amnesty for fighters based in the mountainous regions of northern Iraq.<\/p>\n
Turkey\u2019s aspiration to become a full-fledged member of the European Union has been the strongest driving force behind granting greater rights to the Kurds.<\/p>\n
Still, the union has denounced violence by the P.K.K., and many countries, including the United States, regard the group as a terrorist organization.<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in print on November 4, 2010, on page A7 of the New York edition.<\/p>\n
via Turkey Links Suicide Bomber to Kurdish Group – NYTimes.com<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By SEBNEM ARSU ISTANBUL \u2014 The suicide bomber who attacked a police unit in the heart of Istanbul on Sunday had ties to the separatist Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party, the Istanbul governor\u2019s office said Tuesday. The 24-year-old bomber, who wounded 32 people and killed himself, struck on the last day of a unilateral, two-month cease-fire by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":43601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[1280],"class_list":["post-24712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-pkk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}