The Ankara Bomber Owned One of Turkey's Most Well-Known ISIS Hangouts
- Man who killed 99 ran a known Islamic State tea house
- Anti-terror efforts target Kurds while jihadi threat grows
People gather at the site of an explosion close to Ankara's main train station on October 10, 2015 in Ankara, Turkey.
Photographer: Muammer Tan/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesThe person named as a suicide bomber in Turkey’s deadliest terror attack was the owner of an Islamic State gathering place well known to Turkish authorities and Turkish media, which had been sounding the alarm about his cell for more than two years.
Yunus Emre Alagoz, identified on Thursday by newspapers including the pro-government Yeni Safak as one of two who killed 99 people at a peace march in Turkey’s capital on Saturday, was the older brother of Seyh Abdurrahman Alagoz, a suicide bomber who killed 33 pro-Kurdish activists in the town of Suruc on July 20. The two brothers had operated a cafe called the "Islam Tea House" in the southeastern city of Adiyaman, a nexus of Islamic State activity in Turkey. Orhan Gonder, who was charged with bombing a rally for a pro-Kurdish party in Diyarbakir on June 5, was a friend of the two brothers from the tea house, according to a field report from Adiyaman in August by the main opposition party known as the CHP.