Tourists In The Crosshairs
Kurdish rebels warned tourists Monday to stay away from Turkey, as the Kurds planned to use holiday spots as targets in their effort to win freedom for their imprisoned leader.
Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured in Kenya on February 15.
The rebels have promised to intensify their nearly 15-year fight for autonomy until Ocalan, who faces trial on capital charges, is freed.
"Turkey as a whole is a war zone at the moment, including those areas considered by Turkey as tourist sites," the rebel statement said.
Just hours after the warning, attackers hurled a firebomb in an upscale residential district of the capital, Ankara, where many foreigners live and several embassies are located, wounding a passerby in the leg.
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, but suspicion fell on Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.
Officials said Tuesday that Turkish security forces have killed seven separatist Kurdish guerrillas in clashes in the east of the country.
Turkish police have declared a state of alert in Istanbul to counter the wave of bombings there, as Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit fights to save his government ahead of April polls.
Parliament was scheduled to meet later in the day to discuss, among other things, a censure motion against Ecevit.
A mix of violence and political turmoil has shaken markets that only last week rose on confidence of a smooth Ecevit victory.
"We strongly believe in the possibility that terrorist actions will continue from now on," Istanbul governor Erol Cakir told a news conference. He was flanked on either side by the uniformed heads of the police and paramilitary forces.
He said that, by government decree, owners must now ensure extra security devices including metal detectors, fire doors, extinguishers, better lighting and in some case closed-circuit television.
Ecevit's popularity soared with Ocalan's capture only weeks after he took over an interim premiership to lead the country to April 18 polls.
Markets rose on anticipation that he would be re-elected in coalition with the center-right Motherland Party of Mesut Yilmaz.
Now Ecevit sees his ambitions endangered by what began as a rebellion by about 90 secularist deputies disenchanted by their exclusion from candidate lists and seeking to delay polls and change party law to curb leaders' power.
The "disgruntled," as they are called by the media, have been joined by the Islamist Virtue Party, the biggest in the 550-seat parliament with 144 seats.
Their chief aim is to force law changes to lift a ban on former Islamist leader Necmettin Erbakan and abolish a law on Â"provoking hatredÂ" used to prosecute prominent Islamists.
The censure motion would require the support of 276 deputies to force Ecevit's resignation.