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On Sunday two back-to-back bombs went off in the Turkish capital of Istanbul, killing 17 people. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately implied that it was the work of the Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK. But the PKK denied the accusations, and commentators agreed that the bombings were a departure from their usual tactics. According to the PM, the attacks were a “cost” of the military campaign against the PKK based in northern Iraq. The PKK is listed by the United States and Turkey as a terrorist group. They took up arms in 1984 ostensibly with the aim of creating an homeland in southeast Turkey. About 40,000 people have reportedly been killed in the conflict over more than two decades. There is speculation that the weekend’s bombings were in fact the work of a group of secretive ultra-nationalists known as the Ergenekon. Meanwhile on Monday the Constitutional Court began deliberations, on whether the PM’s party, the AKP was trying to establish Sharia law by stealth. The PM is downplaying the case saying that national unity in the face of the bombings is more important.

GUEST: Vera Beaudin Saeedpour, Director of the Kurdish Library, editor of Kurdish Life and International Journal of Kurdish Studies