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Photographer: Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images Photographer: Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images

Bombings in Ankara that killed at least 95 people brought Turkey’s political and ethnic tensions, exacerbated by the civil war in neighboring Syria, to a grim new level.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the deadliest terrorist attacks in Turkey’s recent history, though suspicion quickly turned to Islamic State. The blasts on Saturday targeted a march called to urge an end to violence between the government and Kurdish militants. In the wake of the attack, Kurdish fighters declared a unilateral cease-fire, which they said they would honor as long as they are not attacked.

The carnage in Ankara, the Turkish capital, came as U.S.-allied Kurdish forces affiliated with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, were preparing to advance toward Islamic State’s self-declared capital of Raqqa in Syria, according to Nihat Ali Ozcan, who studies the Kurdish conflict at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara.

“Daesh struck at the PKK in Ankara before a Kurdish offensive on Raqqa,” Ozcan said by phone, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. “Turkey has become the battleground in a growing war between the PKK and Daesh.”

Even though many Kurds were in the targeted crowd, Interim Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu maintained in a televised news conference that the PKK, and not only Islamic State, may be behind the bloodshed. “There are strong signs that the attack has been carried out by two suicide bombers,” Davutoglu added, saying Turkey has apprehended many would-be suicide bombers in recent days.

Davutoglu is due to meet with Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, in Ankara on Sunday to discuss the violence. After the attack, Kilicdaroglu said his party was prepared to do all in its power to end the violence. Devlet Bahceli, the head of the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, refused an invitation to meet, the prime ministry said.

In addition to the 95 people killed, 246 were wounded, including 48 being treated in intensive-care units, the prime minister’s office said on its website. Eleven of the dead belonged to CHP, Haberturk newspaper reported Saturday.

Parliamentarians from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, and CHP attended a memorial service for the victims in Ankara on Sunday. The HDP’s procession was attacked by riot police as it attempted to lay carnations for the dead, and several participants were injured, the party said in an e-mailed statement. Police and protesters clashed in Turkish cities on Saturday night after people took to the streets to condemn the violence.

Saturday’s attacks follow a July 20 bombing in the town of Suruc that was linked to Syria’s civil war and blamed on a suicide bomber with ties to Islamic State. Fighting on Turkey’s border is pitting Kurds that Turkey views as terrorists against Islamic radicals it also views as enemies. The Suruc bombing killed dozens of activists rallying support for Kobani, a Kurdish border town in Syria.

Allied Advance

Injured people are comforted following an explosion at the main train station in Turkey's capital Ankara. Photographer: Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images

Video images from Saturday’s blast showed bodies draped with peace banners and flags of HDP, whose success in elections on June 7 stripped the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, of the majority government it had since 2002.

Violence between Kurdish militants and the state escalated since that vote, which ended in a hung parliament and failed to produce a stable government. The Turkish government has repeatedly accused HDP of links to the PKK. HDP has rejected charges of terrorism while saying the PKK is a reality.

The militant group declared a unilateral cease-fire in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast on Saturday ahead of repeat parliamentary elections on Nov. 1, according to the pro-Kurdish ANF news agency.

“The cease-fire by the PKK comes at a time as it is shifting its focus from Turkey to its battle against Islamic State in Syria,” Ozcan said.

President Tayyip Recep Erdogan called a new vote after political parties failed to agree on forming a coalition, and the nation’s interim government, still dominated by the ruling party, ordered bombings of PKK positions in Iraq and Turkey after the Suruc attack. The strikes have killed more than 2,000 PKK militants, Davutoglu said on Friday.

The increased violence and political uncertainty have battered markets while raising fears that Turkey is being increasingly dragged into the civil war in Syria. Turkey’s lira has lost 20 percent of its value against the dollar this year, and yields on government debt are up by almost 300 basis points.

Declines

In an interview with ATV on Friday, Davutoglu said any truce was a stunt by the rebels and that operations against the PKK would continue until the group, classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and European Union, disarmed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on state television that the Ankara blasts were aimed at destabilizing the election campaign in Turkey, and called for efforts to join the fight against terrorists. Putin met Saturday with his security council in Sochi, site of the Russian Grand Prix auto race, to discuss Syria, terrorism and the attacks, according to the Kremlin website.

Emergency Meeting

Turkey, while a member of the Western coalition fighting Islamic State, has differed with the U.S. on its approach to Kurds in Syria. Turkey views Kurdish groups fighting the Islamic State there as terrorists, while the U.S. sees Syrian Kurds as its most formidable partner in the ground war against the Islamic radicals.

After Saturday’s bombing, Davutoglu led an emergency security meeting in Ankara, and said he would cancel campaign events for three days. Erdogan also canceled events planned in Istanbul.

Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of HDP, linked the blast to Islamic State attacks on Kurds in Turkey, Haberturk reported.

“It’s a continuation of the type of attacks in Diyarbakir and Suruc,’’ Demirtas told reporters. The Diyarbakir blast took place two days before the June election and targeted an event where Demirtas was scheduled to speak.

Erdogan connected the bombing to PKK attacks on Turkish security forces.

“The terrorist attack targeting civilian citizens today at the Ankara train station is no different at all from the previous attacks in various locations against our soldiers, our police, our village guards, public servants and innocent citizens,” he said in a statement. “I invite everyone to act with responsibility and to take their side against terror, not with it.”

— With assistance by Isobel Finkel, and Stepan Kravchenko

(Updates with Davutoglu meeting CHP leader in sixth paragraph.)