Explosive Message on Turkey’s Border
Cengiz Candar doesn’t expect Turkey’s response to the Reyhanli blasts, which killed 46 people, to go beyond tough rhetoric, despite its accusation that Syrian intelligence was behind the attack.
On May 11, two car bombs in the town of Reyhanli in the Hatay province on the western end of Turkey’s 911-km [566-mile] border with Syria — extending from the Mediterranean all the way to the Iraqi border — killed 46 people and wounded more than 100, of whom 29 seriously. The devastation went far beyond the scene of the attacks and dented Turkey’s credibility in the region and international arena.
Reyhanli is a border town almost a stone’s throw from Cilvegozu, the most active border crossing between Turkey and Syria. On Feb. 11, a bomb attack on the Turkish side of Cilvegozu killed two Turkish citizens. There were claims then that the bomb might have targeted Syrian opposition leaders who were expected to cross the border at that moment.
Now three months later, blasts in the Reyhanli town center, one in front of the municipality building and the other in front of the post office, caused the largest number of casualties ever seen in Turkey. Lebanon, intertwined with Syria for years, is used to these kinds of attacks. In Iraq, the number of casualties now sustained in Reyhanli is a daily statistic no longer extensively reported by international wire services. But Turkey, a country not inured to this scale of casualties, was shaken at its roots.
This may be why the first reactions on May 11 reflected bewilderment by officials. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Minister of Interior Muammer Guler, who were expected to make responsible statements about the attack, preferred to interpret the blasts as an attempt to sabotage the resolution process with the Kurds. Erdogan suggested a second possibility and alluded to ‘’sensitivities and peculiarities of Hatay and Reyhanli,’’ hinting that the Syrian regime could be behind the attack. Nevertheless, his emphasis was on “sabotage aiming at the resolution process that is progressing well with the Kurds.”
