The Ankara Bomber: A Pro-Assad Communist

When the United States Embassy in Ankara was hit this Friday by a suicide bomber, it was widely presumed that this must be yet another al-Qaeda attack on an American target. It soon turned out, however, that the bomber, Ecevit Şanlı, 39, was a member of a radical communist group: The DHKP-C, or the outlawed People's Revolutionary Liberation Army-Front, which is one of Turkey's infamous Marxist-Leninist terror organizations.

This revelation came a few hours after the attack, when Interior Minister Muammer Güler informed the press that the bomber was identified thanks to the security cameras. He added that, unfortunately, the suicide bomber killed not only himself but also Mustafa Akarsu, 47, who was a security guard working at the embassy for 20 years and was hoping to retire soon to move to the United States with his daughters. A female journalist, Didem Tuncay, who just happened to be visiting the embassy at the moment, also got seriously injured. 

The authorities later disclosed Ecevit Şanlı’s history of violence. He was first arrested in 1997, for taking part in the terrorist cell that attacked the Military Club in Istanbul with a light anti-armor weapon. He remained in prison until 2001, when he was released due to his Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, which was caused by the malnutrition he suffered during the hunger strikes that left-wing groups in Turkish prisons had initiated the year before. Şanlı's father, who was traumatized after Friday's attack, said to the press that his son had not talked to him for 15 years.

And one day after the embassy attack, the DHKP-C claimed the attack with a message on the Internet. The bombing, the message explained, was carried out “for the independence of our homeland, which has become America’s new colony.”