Turkey: Pkk Denies Istanbul Blasts

Kurdish groups denied responsibility yesterday for the double bombing that killed 17 people in Turkey's largest city and instead blamed a shadowy secularist group suspected of trying to topple the Islamist-leaning government.

Amid rising tension, the militant Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) rejected claims by the main opposition pro-secularist Republican People's party that it had planted the devices that brought death and destruction to Gungoren, a working-class neighbourhood on the European side of Istanbul. "The PKK has nothing to do with this event," the group's leader, Zubeyir Aydar, told a pro-Kurdish news agency.

One Kurdish politician refuted any link and said the attack bore the hallmarks of Ergenekon, a murky secular-nationalist cabal wanted for allegedly plotting a coup against the AKP with a series of violent attacks that would be blamed on other groups. Emine Ayna, co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society party, told the Guardian: "The Ergenekon indictment file states they will do these kinds of attacks and use the media to blame it on the Kurds. They want to use the media to create hatred and divide people."