CHP calls on gov’t to declare national mourning over deadly Suruç bombing

ANKARA

DHA photo

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) has urged Turkey’s government to declare national mourning over the massacre of dozens of people in a devastating suicide bombing on the border with Syria, which it blamed on militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

“If we have previously declared mourning for the king of any old republic, mourning at a national level certainly needs to be declared to commemorate the 32 young people who we lost [in Suruç],” CHP Deputy Chair Haluk Koç said on July 21, speaking at a press conference.

“It is the government that will take this decision and it needs to take it without delay,” Koç said in remarks delivered after a meeting of the CHP’s Central Executive Board (MYK), chaired by party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.

The absence of official national mourning has led to fury among many Turkish citizens, after 32 people were killed and more than 100 wounded on July 20 when a bomb ripped through a crowd of young socialist activists preparing to take aid over the border into Syria.

As Koç implied, back in January the government declared national mourning for Saudi Arabia’s former King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.

On Jan. 23, Ankara announced that it had declared Jan. 24 as a day of national mourning for bin Abdulaziz, who passed away early on Jan. 23.

During the national mourning for the Saudi king, the Turkish national flag was flown at half-mast across the country and at foreign delegations on Jan. 24.