“The administrators in Ankara who hurl threats at the HDP and pat the heads of IS are partners in this barbarity,” said a statement by Selahattin Demirtas, the HDP co-chair.

The military wing of the Kurdish independence movement, the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) accused the government of “supporting and cultivating” Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), following the attack which killed at least 31 people and injured scores of others in the town of Suruc, on the southern border with Syria. The Kurdish parliamentary wing, the People’s Democracy Party (HDP) which increased its vote share in the parliamentary election earlier this summer, agreed, despite the Turkish government publicly condemning the suicide attack.