South African-trained journalist Jasper Mortimer lives 10 minutes’ drive from the place where two suspected Islamic State suicide bombers killed 95 people in Ankara on Saturday. This is his report.
The ambulances had taken away the last of the living casualties. The forensic experts were picking their way through the 95 bodies that lay in contorted shapes on the road and pavement.
Those who watched – the survivors of the rally, relatives of the dead, and journalists – were strangely quiet. A high-voiced woman 100m away could be heard remonstrating with a policeman. But, on my side of the police cordon, nobody spoke. Faces were sullen. People were shocked, saddened, hushed into silence by an atrocity.
Five hours before, this had been a happy place. Security cameras show young people dancing the halay in front of Ankara’s central station. They were waiting to march to the city centre to call for “peace and democracy” after 11 weeks of fighting between the Kurdish militants of the PKK and Turkish security forces.
At 10.04am, the first bomb exploded. The dancers flinched, and people ran in all directions. Seconds later, a second bomb exploded, 50m from the first.
The force of the blasts was stunning. It blew bollards off the pavements, smashed the station’s windows, and spattered bits of human flesh across 19 cars in the station car park. The explosives were laced with pea-sized ball bearings.
Some of these ripped through the ankle of a man standing outside the station cafeteria. A pool of blood showed how deeply he was cut. A trail of blood 50 paces long showed how far he had limped, in excruciating pain, to get help.
A waiter said he thought the man would survive, but would lose his foot. A video posted on the internet shows how dozens of people overcame their shock and rallied to the wounded.
Many doctors were on the scene as the Turkish Medical Association was one of the civil society groups that had called the demonstration. One of the organisers sat down, his megaphone between his legs, and sobbed loudly. But the doctors administered CPR to the nearly lifeless. And others carried the wounded or comforted them.
These videos, shot in the first minutes afterwards, show no sign of ambulance men. The state paramedics arrived later.
The demonstrators themselves were coping with the deadliest terrorist attack in Turkey’s history. And they were brave, too. They were defying the risk of further explosions. By the time I arrived, the demonstrators had covered the bodies of the dead with the banners and trade-union flags they had brought for the march.
For the sake of the investigation, they had to leave the victims where they fell, but they covered them in respect. Phalanxes of riot police cordoned off the scene, securing the site long after they should have. A demonstrator walked up to a helmeted policeman and shouted:
“You know who did this! You provide security for the AKP, but not for us!” she said, referring to the Justice and Development Party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Gunesh was an architecture student who had come from the southern city of Antalya with 38 colleagues to take part in the rally. She feared some were dead.
Like many in the crowd, Gunesh had no evidence of government collusion with the bombers, but she blamed the police for failing to protect the rally, whose participants were nearly all government opponents. Security would have been tighter at an AKP rally, she said.
“The police are AKP dogs,” Gunesh said.
A while later, a group of relatives of the dead tried to force their way through the cordon. They wanted to see their loved ones.
Fist fights broke out. A policeman fired his pistol into the air six times. The pushing and shoving died down.
Later, two cabinet ministers arrived in a motorcade. The crowd booed and began chanting: “Killer state will pay the price!” The ministers left in a hurry.
I went to the scene on Sunday. The authorities had washed the blood off the road, but traces were still there. Station workers were re-glazing the windows.