An embassy security guard asks for help at the US embassy just minutes after a suicide bomber has detonated an explosive device at the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, At least two people are dead, officials said. An Associated Press journalist on Friday saw a body in the street in front of an embassy side entrance. (AP Photo/Yavuz Ozden, Milliyet) TURKEY OUT - INTERNET OUT
An embassy security guard asks for help at the US embassy just minutes after a suicide bomber has detonated an explosive device at the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, At least two people are dead, officials said. An Associated Press journalist on Friday saw a body in the street in front of an embassy side entrance. (AP Photo/Yavuz Ozden, Milliyet) TURKEY OUT - INTERNET OUT
Satellite map locates Ankara, Turkey site of a U.S. embassy explosion.
Medics and firefighters carry an injured woman on a stretcher to an ambulances after a suicide bomber had detonated an explosive device at the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. A suspected suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital on Friday, killing himself and one other person, officials said. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
FILE - In this April 14, 2012 file photo, Didem Tuncay, then a diplomatic reporter for Turkish news channel NTV, interviews Iran's Chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Istanbul, Turkey. Tuncay, a respected television journalist, 38, was injured after a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, A hospital official said she was " not in a critical conditoion." (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici, File)
Emergency personnel are seen in front of a side entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, after a suspected suicide bomber detonated an explosive device, Friday Feb. 1, 2013. The bomb appeared to have exploded inside the security checkpoint at the entrance of the visa section of the embassy. A police official said at least two people are dead. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) ? The suicide bomber who struck the U.S. Embassy in Ankara spent several years in prison on terrorism charges but was released on probation after being diagnosed with a hunger strike-related brain disorder, officials said Saturday.
The bomber, identified as 40-year-old leftist militant Ecevit Sanli, killed himself and a Turkish security guard on Friday, in what U.S. officials said was a terrorist attack. Sanli was armed with enough TNT to blow up a two-story building and also detonated a hand grenade, officials said.
Sanli had fled Turkey after he was released from jail in 2001, but managed to come back to the country "illegally," using a fake ID, Interior Muammer Guler said. It was not clear how long before the attack he returned to Turkey.
Sanli had been a member of the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, which has claimed responsibility for assassinations and bombings since the 1970s but has been relatively quiet in recent years. Compared to al-Qaida, it has not been seen as a strong terrorist threat.
Sanli's motives were still unclear. But some Turkish government officials have linked the attack to the arrest last month of dozens of suspected members of the group in a nationwide sweep.
Speculation has also abounded that the bombing was related to the perceived support of the U.S. for Turkey's harsh criticism of the regime in Syria, whose brutal civil war has forced tens of thousands of Syrian refugees to seek shelter in Turkey. But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denied that.
Officials said Sanli was arrested in 1997 for alleged involvement in attacks on Istanbul's police headquarters and a military guesthouse and jailed on charges of membership in the group.
While in prison awaiting trial, he took part in a major hunger strike that led to the deaths of dozens of inmates, according to a statement from the Ankara governor's office. The protesters opposed a maximum-security system in which prisoners were held in small cells instead of large wards.
Sanli was diagnosed with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome and released on probation in 2001, following the introduction of legislation that allowed hunger strikers with the disorder to get appropriate treatment. The syndrome is a malnutrition-related brain illness that affects vision, muscle coordination and memory and that can cause hallucinations.
Sanli fled Turkey after his release and was wanted by Turkish authorities. He was convicted in absentia in 2002.
The U.S. flag at the embassy flew at half-staff on Saturday and already tight security was increased. Police sealed off a street in front of the security checkpoint where the explosion knocked a door off its hinges and littered the road with debris. Police vehicles were parked in streets surrounding the building.
The Ankara governor's office, citing the findings of a bomb squad that inspected the site, said Sanli had used 6 kilograms of TNT for the suicide attack and also detonated a hand grenade. That amount of TNT can demolish "a two-story reinforced building," according to Nihat Ali Ozcan, a terrorism expert at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey.
Officials had earlier said that the bomber detonated a suicide vest at the checkpoint on the outer perimeter of the compound.
The guard who was killed was standing outside the checkpoint. The U.S. ambassador on Saturday attended his funeral in a town just outside of Ankara.
A Turkish TV journalist was seriously wounded and two other guards had lighter wounds.
DHKP-C's forerunner, Devrimci Sol, or Revolutionary Left, was formed in 1978 as a Marxist group openly opposed to the United States and NATO. It has attacked Turkish, U.S. and other foreign targets since then, including two U.S. military contractors and a U.S. Air Force officer.
The group, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and other European allies, changed its name to DHKP-C in 1994.
The attack came as NATO deployed six Patriot anti-missile systems to protect ally Turkey from a possible spillover from the civil war raging across the border in Syria. The United States, Netherlands and Germany are each providing two Patriot batteries.
Ozcan, the terrorism expert, said that the Syrian regime, which had backed terrorist groups in Turkey, including autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels, during the Cold War era and through the 1990s, had recently revived ties with these groups.
As Turkey began to support the Syrian opposition, Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime began to try "rebuilding its ties with these organizations," Ozcan said.
Radikal newspaper reported that the DHKP-C had recently been taking an interest in "regional issues," reviving its anti-American stance and taking on "a more pro-Assad position."
Former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Ross Wilson, speculated that the masterminds of the embassy bombing may have been partly motivated by U.S.-Turkish policy on Syria.
"A successful attack would embarrass the Turkish government and security forces, and it would have struck at the United States, which is widely ? if wrongly ? thought to have manipulated the Erdogan government into breaking with Bashar al-Assad and supporting efforts to remove him from power," Wilson, director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, wrote in an analysis.
"That might rekindle public support for the group. Alas for DHPK/C, this seems unlikely," he wrote.
Howard Eissenstat, a Turkey expert at St. Lawrence University in the United States, said the bombing showed that a "relatively isolated and obscure group" still has the capacity to cause havoc.
"They really fall outside of our comfortable narratives," Eissenstat wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "And they do seem to have been left in an ideological time warp. There is something distinctly cult-like about them."
The attack drew quick condemnation from Turkey, the U.S., Britain and other nations, and officials from both Turkey and the U.S. pledged to work together to fight terrorism.
It was the second deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic post in five months. On Sept. 11, 2012, terrorists attacked a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The attackers in Libya were suspected to have ties to Islamist extremists, and one is in custody in Egypt.
U.S. diplomatic facilities in Turkey have been targeted previously by terrorists. In 2008, an attack blamed on al-Qaida-affiliated militants outside the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul left three assailants and three policemen dead.
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Associated Press writers Ezgi Akin and Burhan Ozbilici and Christopher Torchia in Istanbul contributed to this report.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-02-Turkey-US-Explosion/id-9da0cef67c064fd0868a50051c62a94c
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I met Darren Rovell at the Super Bowl in 2005. He was at ESPN at the time, and wrote about the Super Bowl parties. As a media observer, I tracked his career to CNBC and last summer, back to ESPN. Rovell is very active on twitter (the Journal mentioned Kobe follows him) and the best word to describe his feed is polarizing. I decided to check in on him six months into his 2nd ESPN tenure, and ask him about life at the Worldwide Leader. He?s not at the Super Bowl this week, as he?s hanging out with Clydesdales. We swapped emails this week.