ISTANBUL (AP) — A child suicide bomber killed at least 51 people and wounded nearly 70 others at a Kurdish wedding party near Turkey's border with Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday, decrying the attack as an apparent attempt by Islamic State extremists to destabilize the nation by exploiting ethnic and religious tensions. Multiple opposition parties denounced the attack, as did many foreign governments including the U.S., Germany, Austria, Russia, Egypt, Sweden, Greece, France, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan and global institutions including the United Nations, the European Union and NATO. Security expert Metin Gurcan, a former Turkish military officer and columnist for the online newspaper Al-Monitor, said that IS view the attack as "hitting two birds with one stone" — as retaliation for Syrian Kurdish advances on their forces in Syria, and for Turkey's attacks on IS targets. Gurcan said in an email to The Associated Press that IS has been trying to agitate or exploit ethnic and religious tensions in Turkey, and "we know very well to what extent wedding attacks can sow disorder in nation's social fabric from the Afghanistan experience." Meantime, there have also been ongoing attacks claimed by the PKK or linked to the militant group, as well as the coup attempt blamed on Gulen's movement. In the immediate aftermath of the Gaziantep bombing, Erdogan said there was "absolutely no difference" between IS, Kurdish rebels and Gulen's movement, calling them terrorist groups. "Putting these three organizations with different political objectives, tactics and techniques into the same basket ... causes the failure of tailoring specific counter strategies," he said.
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