TURKEY: Turkey's powerful security forces are at the centre of a growing scandal as evidence grows that a fatal explosion in the remote Kurdish town of Semdinli was the work of their own men.
The bomb which killed a shopper in a bookshop on Wednesday was the 16th to go off in Turkey's most southeasterly province in the last two months.
As they had for the others, the authorities at first blamed the blast on the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which renewed its 20-year guerrilla war against Turkey last year.
This time, though, locals caught the suspected bomber as he attempted to get into a car and drive off. Only prompt police intervention saved him and two other men with him from a lynching.
A search of the car revealed that the three men were members of Turkey's feared military police intelligence, or Jitem. As well as identity cards, investigators also found machine guns, a map with the location of the bookshop outlined in red, and a list of local notables.
"The bombing was the work of people who stand to gain from a return to war," said bookshop owner Sefer Yilmaz, voicing a belief widespread among Kurds that the PKK's new campaign is the work of anti-democratic forces in the Turkish state.
"It is clear some elements are trying to stir things up here, and the state must ensure they fail," added local MP Esat Canan, a member of Turkey's chief opposition party.
The bombing, he added, was "worse than Susurluk". He was referring to the 1996 scandal that first revealed links between Turkey's intelligence services and the criminal underworld.
Of the three people killed in a car crash that night, one was a Jitem officer, another a notorious ultra right-wing gangster carrying two diplomatic passports signed by the interior minister.
In a documentary released this spring, a former Jitem operative claimed that 80 per cent of the 600 unsolved assassinations carried out in southeastern Turkey between 1990 and 1996 were the work of his organisation.
A parliamentary investigation into Susurluk fizzled out in 1997 after senior military and civilian leaders signalled they would not co-operate.
There is a risk the same thing could happen in Semdinli, where the investigation into the bombing remains shrouded in secrecy.
While the suspected bomber remains in custody, the other two men were released on Thursday after they told investigators their presence in the town centre was a coincidence. The news enraged locals, who barricaded the road leading into Semdinli and set fire to a police checkpoint.
Security forces responded by opening fire, killing one man and seriously injuring two others.
Protests spread yesterday to other towns in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
But Turkey has changed since 1996, one of the darkest years of the PKK war.
With half an eye on the European Union, which awarded the country candidate status in October, politicians from all parties show signs of taking the Semdinli affair very seriously.
"Those responsible for this will pay the price, no matter who they are," Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan promised yesterday.
He added that a team of investigators from the interior ministry would be joining two delegations of MPs already in Semdinli.