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ISTANBUL, Turkey - One of two synagogues bombed in Istanbul last month reopened Saturday for Sabbath prayers in a ceremony attended by the country's chief rabbi, a spokesman said. The reopening came four weeks after the nearly simultaneous suicide attacks on the Beth Israel and Neve Shalom synagogues during Sabbath prayers. The synagogue bombings were followed five days later by similar attacks on the British consulate in Istanbul and a London-based bank. Turkey's government suspects al-Qaida involvement in the string of attacks that killed 61 people. Jewish community spokesman Silvio Ovadya said Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva, who was among those...

ANKARA, Turkey, Nov. 29 — Police arrested a man suspected of ordering one of four deadly suicide bombings earlier this month, officials said Saturday. THE MAN was brought to the wrecked Beth Israel synagogue early Saturday, police spokesman Halil Yilmaz said. He said the man, whose identity was not released, made plans for the attack and ordered it. The suicide truck bombings on the Beth Israel synagogue and another synagogue on Nov. 15, along with the Nov. 20 bombing of the British Consulate and a British bank, killed 61 people and injured 712. The four bombers were among the dead....

No, this was not the way that Recep Tayyip Erdogan imagined the first anniversary of his party's historic electoral victory. Earlier this year, at a meeting with a group of journalists in Switzerland, the Turkish Prime Minister spoke of his hopes for "a year of positive change" in a country thirsting for reform. The idea, he explained, was to "speed up the process of restoring the armed forces to their proper role" and taking "the last big steps" towards Turkey's membership in the European Union while the economy, in the doldrums for a decade, would start showing signs of a...

ISTANBUL, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Two young women sit side by side in the waiting room of Haydarpasa station in Istanbul, waiting for a train to take them home to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of Ramadan with their families. One, a 24-year-old university student named Sibel Ates, wears jeans, ear-rings and make-up. The other wears an all-encompassing black chador covering her hair and body. These are the two faces of European Union-candidate Turkey -- an overwhelmingly Muslim country which has been a secular state for more than half a century and which gave the vote to...

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Public prosecutors sought on Monday to charge 12 alleged accomplices of last week's Istanbul suicide bombers, amid signs of progress in the investigation into a suspected Islamic terror cell. Also, authorities using DNA samples have identified the man who rammed an explosive-packed pickup truck into the city's British Consulate, just minutes after the bombing of the London-based HSBC bank, Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said. "We've identified the culprits who carried out the attack on the British Consulate," Guler said. "We have all the details and we know their connections." Guler would not name the man. However, the...

November 24, 2003, 8:15 a.m.“Al Qaeda Dunnit!”Think again.By Laurie Mylroie “Al Qaeda is still everywhere and nowhere," or so opined a Columbia University professor after the double pair of car bombings in Istanbul. How can that be? For more than two years, the United States has led an international Coalition in a campaign that has succeeded in detaining or killing over half of al Qaeda's leadership, cut off a significant amount of its funding, and deprived it of its territorial base.Bombing attacks south of the Turkish-Iraqi border are regularly attributed to one party, Baathist stalwarts, while bombs north of...

BERLIN, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Emerging details of last week's Istanbul suicide bombings support the idea that al Qaeda is becoming more of a terror "consultancy" and less of a direct actor, security analysts say. Most see al Qaeda's hand behind the car bombs that blew up two synagogues, the British consulate and the offices of British-based banking group HSBC, even if Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has cautioned that the link is not yet proven. The car bombers were all Turks from the small southeast town of Bingol, known as a fundamentalist centre, and Erdogan said they had global...

Turks blame US policy for blasts Istanbul November 23, 2003 Several thousand Turks gathered in Istanbul and other cities yesterday to condemn this week's suicide bombings, with many protesting against what they see as the root cause of the attacks - the United States. Police in riot gear looked on in Turkey's business capital as unions, political parties and community groups peacefully joined those affected by the blasts to share their sadness and anger at the four attacks, which killed more than 50 people. "Curse this terrorism, it killed my friend," said retired businessman Ismail Yildirim. "The imperialist powers are...

The sky is a brilliant blue, the leaves are beginning to turn, the weather is warm all day with an agreeable crispness in the air as it gets dark: the nicest season of the year. Ramadan finished yesterday, culminating, when the fast was broken at dusk, in Kadir, the first of nine nights of feasting, Christmas and Easter rolled into one: houses spring-cleaned, everyone togged up in smart new outfits, getting ready for the customary festive visits to relatives and friends.And instead, after four massive bomb blasts in central Istanbul in six days, the mood, one resident said, "is surreal"....

This Shabbat, there were no prayers uttered at the Beth Israel Synagogue. Instead, workers bricked up the front of the gutted house of worship, one of two struck by truck bombs in Istanbul last Saturday. In the Beyalu neighborhood on Shabbat, the bombed-out Neveh Shalom Synagogue was also bereft of worshipers. Twenty-three were killed in the dual terrorist attack attributed to the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front, a local Islamist group affiliated with al-Qaida. Taking extra security precautions, the Istanbul Jewish community kept secret the location of alternative sites for weekend services. At Beth Israel, what furniture that could be...

Nov 22, 2003 Middle East Turkey: 'Sow war and reap terror' By K Gajendra Singh Sow war and reap terror - A banner in a February peace march in Paris Many disquieting messages have been sent with the two car bombings in Istanbul on Thursday, just five days after attacks on two synagogues and coinciding with Queen Elizabeth's hosting of United States President George W Bush in London. Turkey's stock market fell immediately, and world markets felt the fallout. The latest attacks, which claimed the lives of at least 25 people, will certainly adversely affect Turkey's economic recovery. The bombings...

In the fanatic Islamist mind, there are a thousand reasons to hit Turkey. It begins with history, and the fact that the Ottoman Empire, with its metropolitan centre in Istanbul, was the last universal Muslim caliphate. This fell in the upshot of the First World War — the empire was dissolved and distributed among the victorious European powers — but the Turkish heartland remained independent, becoming the nation-state of Turkey. Under Ataturk, it was vigorously secularized and Westernized, with outward signs of its Islamic past suppressed. The country has ever since wobbled back and forth between military authoritarianism and constitutional...

AL-QAEDA: The group's name again comes up. Experts see new organization, old violence. By Dave Montgomery and Warren P. Strobel INQUIRER FOREIGN STAFF RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - With al-Qaeda being linked to three devastating attacks in Turkey and Saudi Arabia in the last two weeks, the group appears to be leaving a new signature as an increasingly decentralized and unpredictable terrorist network that appears harder to fight.Experts and diplomats said the recent resurgence of al-Qaeda violence also showed that Osama bin Laden's 14-year-old terrorist fraternity was as lethal as ever, despite the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The organization essentially...

<p>Ramadan, the Muslim holy month devoted to contemplation, prayer and fasting, has become a synonym for violence this year, with unprecedented suicide bombings of targets friendly to the West, around the Islamic world.</p> <p>Attacks in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Turkey alone have left more than 100 people dead and injured hundreds more since Ramadan began Oct. 27, including yesterday's bombing in Istanbul. Ramadan will end with the new moon Monday.</p>

Bush, Blair: Attacks Are Proof By Matthew McAllester STAFF CORRESPONDENT November 21, 2003 London - President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke yesterday like two men whose main point had just been made for them by terrorist bombers in Istanbul, Turkey. "The nature of the terrorist enemy is evident once again," Bush told reporters at a news conference with Blair, a few hours after bombs hit a British bank and the British consulate in Istanbul, killing at least 27 people, including the British consul-general. "We see their contempt - their utter contempt - for innocent life....

Several people have been arrested in connection with the two devastating bomb attacks on British targets in Istanbul, the Turkish foreign minister said. Twenty-seven people were killed and hundreds wounded on Thursday in truck bomb attacks on the British consulate and the London-based global bank HSBC. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the attacks bore all the hallmarks of the al-Qaida network. "Some people have been arrested but it's too early to give any information about them," said Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul at a joint news conference with Straw in Istanbul on Friday. Turkish daily Hurriyet said on Friday...

Fighting between security forces and armed militants in Bingol province has yielded 14 dead militants as well as their weaponry. The Governor of Bingol, Huseyin Avni Cosh, told at a press conference that a confrontation at the Karacehennem (black hell) forests in Karliova county started in the early morning and lasted eight hours. Along with the corpses, one M-16, 2 Kanas rifles, 11 Klashnikov long barrel rifles, 4.6 Kilograms of C4 explosive, 60 hand grenades, and large amounts of other ammo were secured. The governor, who asserted that the militants were preparing for terrorist activity, stated that "It's obvious that...

ANKARA - The following is a glance at militant Islamic groups active in Turkey: IBDA-C - ISLAMIC GREAT EASTERN RAIDERS-FRONT. The group, which advocates Islamic rule in this predominantly Muslim and officially secular country, is allegedly backed by Iran. It has claimed responsibility for Saturday's pickup truck bombings outside two synagogues in Istanbul that killed 24 people, but Turkish authorities disputed the claim. Active since the mid-1970's, it has become increasingly violent in the last decade and has an estimated 600 followers. The group has staged attacks on left-wing and Christian targets as well as secular-oriented intellectuals, claiming responsibility for...

Jerusalem, November 20, 2003 FM Shalom extends condolences to Turkey and the United Kingdom (Communicated by the Foreign Minister's Bureau) Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Silvan Shalom expressed his deep shock over the attacks in Istanbul today (November 20, 2003). He extended condolences on behalf of Israel to the government and peoples of both Turkey and the United Kingdom. Foreign Minister Shalom stated, "Democtratic countries will not surrender to terrorism. They will fight againt it wherever it strikes. Terror is a global phenomenon and the community of nations must unite against it while ensuring the values of...

WASHINGTON, Nov 20, 2003 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Istanbul, Turkey's major city on the Bosphorous, was struck for the second time in less than a week by a devastating twin car bomb attack that killed at least 27 people and wounded nearly 450 others. Moments later, an unidentified caller to the Anatolian News Agency claimed responsibility on behalf of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. Indeed, two groups -- al-Qaida and the Islamic Brotherhood -- claimed responsibility for Thursday's devastating attacks. There is little doubt the second Istanbul bombings that targeted the British Consulate and a British bank in...