ANKARA, TURKEY – Sometimes all the words used to describe terrorist groups leave you no closer to understanding why they do what they do.
My career in intelligence began during the Cold War. Well, actually, it was closer to the end of the Cold War, though none of us knew that at the time.
Whatever you may think of this period in 20th century history one thing is clear (at least to me): what we were fighting for was way better than what the opposition had to offer. Marxist-Leninism purports to be all about freedom and equality but it is nothing more than brutality and violence (to sum up in one phrase I like George Orwell’s line in Animal Farm: “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”).
And yet this political doctrine survives to this day and is espoused by a number of terrorist groups in widely-separated nations – Japan, India, Iraq…
…and Turkey.
On this day in 2013
A suicide bomber detonated his load outside the US Embassy in Ankara, killing a guard (a Turkish national) and injuring a journalist. A Marxist-Leninist terrorist group called the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party, or DHKP-C, claimed responsibility.
Coming after Benghazi, it underscores the need for a comprehensive review of security at our diplomatic posts.
US representative Ed Royce, chairman of House Foreign Affairs Committee
The DHKP-C stated that it had ordered the attack probably to protest the deployment of NATO missiles along Turkey’s border with Syria (Turkey is in NATO). The terrorist group has ties with another Marxist-Leninist organisation, the Kurdish PKK, which has a strong presence in Syria (and Iraq). The suicide bomber, identified as Ecevit Sanli, was known to U.S. and other intelligence agencies.
OK, OK, so the DHKP-C is pissed at Turkish, US and NATO policies in the region. So it kills a guard, Mustafa Akarsu, and leaves his family in mourning. What the hell does this have to do with ‘equality‘? Or Marxist-Leninism for that matter?
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