Two bombings in Istanbul on Saturday killed 25 and wounded over 300. The ostensible target was Turkey's tiny Jewish community, but the majority of the victims were Muslims. Gareth Jenkins reports from Istanbul Two massive car bombs ripped through Istanbul on Saturday, killing 25 and wounding over 300 others, 80 of them seriously. The bombs were detonated outside synagogues serving Turkey's tiny Jewish community, but 18 of the dead were Turkish Muslims. An e- mail sent to Al-Quds newspaper in London on Sunday claimed that Al-Qa'eda was responsible for the attacks. Turkish politicians have been quick to try to blame foreigners, although there is also little doubt that the attackers must have at the very least received logistical support from Turkish sympathisers. After nearly two weeks of cold wintry weather, Saturday morning dawned bright and fresh. In the narrow streets outside the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul's historic Galata neighbourhood, shopkeepers were opening up their stores or sitting outside on the pavement in the warm autumn sunshine, chatting and reading newspapers. It was they who bore the brunt of the attack. After two previous attacks on Neve Shalom -- the most devastating in 1986 when 22 Turkish Jews were killed by followers of Abu Nidal -- security was tight. No cars are allowed to park in front of the synagogue and it is under round-the-clock guard. Eye witnesses said that at around 9.30am a pickup truck drove up outside Neve Shalom and suddenly exploded. "It was raining pieces of car, pieces of car falling from the sky" said Halit Keles, 46, who was working inside one of the shops. "Nearly all of the people who were killed and injured here were people in the street, not in the synagogue." A few minutes later, another bomb exploded outside the Beth Israel synagogue in the business district of Sisli, some four kilometres away. Eye witnesses said that a pickup that had been driving slowly along the street behind the synagogue suddenly erupted. The blast tore a hole in the line of buildings on either side of Beth Israel, blowing out the plate glass windows of shops and leaving the street carpeted in glass, falling masonry and human body parts. Again, most of the victims were Turkish Muslims who just happened to be there at the time. "There were probably about 300 worshippers inside the synagogue at the time of the explosion," said Silvio Ovadyo, the press spokesman for the office of Istanbul's Chief Rabbi. "There are two places for prayer inside. Most of the worshippers were in the one further away from the explosion. We have a lot of injured and we have also lost some people." The injured were treated at 23 hospitals across Istanbul, which immediately put out desperate calls for blood donors. Meanwhile, search and rescue teams began to pick through the rubble and the gruesome task of collecting the remains of victims. Such was the devastation that it was not until late Monday that the body of the 25th victim was found. A dozen apartment blocks around Neve Shalom are so badly damaged that they will have to be demolished. Israel immediately dispatched search and rescue teams and special investigators to Istanbul to work with Turkish security forces. Meanwhile, Israeli officials were quick both to associate the bombings with suicide attacks in Israel and the occupied territories, and to generalise terror against Jews with terror against all states. "Terrorism is terrorism wherever it takes place," announced Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "These attacks are against Turkey as much as Jews," said a diplomat from the Israeli Embassy in Ankara. As the initial shock subsided, Turkish conspiracy theorists began to appear on television to claim that the attacks were the work of sinister forces trying to destabilise the country's moderate Islamist government, derail Turkey's EU bid or distract the world's attention from the deteriorating security situation in Iraq. Turkish government officials too were quick to try to place the blame elsewhere. "It is very likely that there is an international connection. We are not ruling out any possibility, including Al-Qa'eda involvement," Turkish Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said. On Monday Justice Minister Cemil Cicek launched an extraordinary attack on the EU, which he effectively accused of being responsible for the attacks by refusing to designate groups associated with the separatist Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) as terrorists. Yet, although the method and choice of target points to Al-Qa'eda or an associated group being behind the explosions, there is no doubt that the attacks could not have been carried out without the support of Turkish collaborators. On Monday Turkish police announced that they were looking for Azad Ekinci, a Turkish citizen who had reportedly fought in Chechnya and Afghanistan, in connection with the attacks. Significantly, Ekinci is from south-eastern Turkey, which after decades of economic underdevelopment and political oppression now supplies the majority of recruits to violent militant groups, whether they are leftist, Kurdish nationalist or purportedly acting in the name of religion.
