It’s a bunch of pro-al-Assad communists

Since last Saturday’s horrific bombings in Reyhanlı, a Turkish town right near the Syrian border, Turkey has been passionately discussing what really happened. It is clear that at least 51 people have been killed and more than a hundred have been injured in what went down in history as the worst terrorist attack ever on Turkey. But the culprits of this heinous crime have been a matter of controversy.

Right from the first moments of the bombing, some Turks, on the Internet and elsewhere, have shown great enthusiasm for putting the blame on the Syrian opposition, and in particular the al-Nusra Front, which has been declared a terrorist organization by the United States. Some even claimed on Twitter that “al-Nusra claimed responsibility for the event” without providing any evidence.

However, it did not make any sense to believe the Syrian opposition, who has been rigorously supported by the Turkish government, could have hit a Turkish town. Even al-Nusra and its ilk, which are admittedly fanatic and concerning, would not have any reason to attack Turkey, especially at a time they are fiercely fighting both the al-Assad regime and its foreign fighters, such as the so-called “Hezbollah.”

On the other hand, it looked more reasonable to suspect the al-Assad regime and its allies, who obviously see Turkey as one of their great enemies. Of course, a spokesman for the regime denied such involvement, saying “our values do not allow this [bombing].” Yet since we all know that their “values” allow the bombing of their own cities, and the mass murder of their own citizens, including women, children and babies, why should we be persuaded?

 No wonder it soon indeed turned out that the culprits of the Reyhanlı attack are a bunch of pro-al-Assad Turkish communist militants with deep ties to the Mukhabarat, the Syrian intelligence service, which employs some of the world’s best experts in torture, rape and slaughter. Since the attack, and based on the clues, the Turkish police have arrested 13 Turkish citizens, most of whom are members of either:

- The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C), a Marxist-Leninist terror group, which had also claimed responsibility for the bombing of the U.S. Ankara embassy in February.

- Or the “Acilciler” (The Urgent Ones), a splinter faction from the Turkish People’s Liberation Party/Front (THKP/C), the mother of all communist terror groups in Turkey.

According to the findings of the police, which have been released to the press by the interior minister, especially the group called the “Acilciler” seems to be the prime mover here, and for understandable reasons. For this is not just any communist terror group; it is a communist terror group that has specifically developed within the Nusayri community in Turkey, which is the same religious sect that Bashar al-Assad and most of his ruling elite belong to. Until the 2000s, they had been active in Hatay, just next to the Syrian border, and have fought against the “Turkish occupation” of the city, with strong backing from the Syrian state. Their longtime leader, Mihraç Ural, who now lives in Syria and is married to a relative of Bashar al-Assad, denied the accusations and put the blame rather on Israel, but has been rebutted by even some of his former comrades.

All this implies that the Syrian regime, with its ideological fifth columns inside Turkey, is directly attacking Turkish civilians now. How to counter this aggression is a serious question that needs to be calmly, but effectively, answered.