ISTANBUL — In a statement that called the United States “the murderer of the peoples of the world,” a Marxist group, with a history of political violence in Turkey, claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at the American Embassy in Ankara.
The statement, which also denounced American foreign policy, was reportedly released by the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party, and a translation was distributed by the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors the communications of extremist groups. The message, which was released on a Web site that has previously carried statements from the group, condemned Turkey’s policy of supporting Syria’s rebels against the government of Bashar al-Assad.
The statement included details that were similar to those released so far by the Turkish authorities, although the group’s message had a different first name for the bomber than the one given by Turkish officials and reported in the local news media.
The Turkish authorities said Saturday that the man who detonated himself at the American Embassy in Ankara on Friday, killing himself and one other, was a convicted terrorist who had twice attacked government facilities in Istanbul but was released from prison under an amnesty program.
Officials in Ankara said Saturday they were awaiting the results of a DNA test before releasing the bomber’s name, but officials in the Black Sea coastal town of Ordu identified him as Ecevit Sanli, 40, and said he was a registered citizen of their town. Authorities in Ordu said the bomber was identified by relatives through photographs.
The statement by the militant group included two photographs of the bomber (in one, he is holding an assault rifle, and a banner bearing the hammer-and-sickle communist symbol is behind him) that appeared to be the same person seen in photographs published by the news media. The group identified the bomber with the first name “Alisan.”
The attack, coming in the wake of the assault on an American diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, by Islamic extremists, raised fears that it was the work of jihadists. That the bomber appears to have ties to a relatively minor Marxist group, which was responsible for political violence in the 1970s, is likely to challenge assumptions about the nature of international terrorism and the risks to American interests abroad. American officials, however, have not confirmed the identity of the attacker, nor a motive, and the United States plans to conduct an investigation.
The statement from officials in Ordu said on Saturday that Mr. Sanli spent four years in prison after being arrested in 1997 for attacking a military hostel and police station in Istanbul. He was then released in 2001 under an amnesty program for inmates with medical conditions, the statement said.
The authorities said Mr. Sanli lobbed a hand grenade during Friday’s attack just before detonating himself, suggesting there were actually two explosions.
As the investigation continues, the authorities are trying to determine whether Mr. Sanli had any collaborators. The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that Mr. Sanli had fled to Germany after being released from prison, and had returned to Turkey only a few days before the attack.
The group has struck American and western targets in Turkey before, including during the gulf war in the early 1990s, and in its statement Saturday, the group condemned the recent deployment by NATO of Patriot missile batteries in southern Turkey.
In a report published several days before the bombing, Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, warned that Turkey’s support of Syrian rebels in their fight against the government of Mr. al-Assad, as well as the deployment by NATO of Patriot missile batteries, was rallying Turkey’s extreme left.
“The country’s political landscape still bears vestiges of violent leftist movements from the 1970s, as well as deeply anti-American ultranationalism,” he wrote. Mr. Cagaptay noted that some militant left-wing groups organized protests against the Patriot missile deployment in the southern port city of Iskenderun, where protesters have fired smoke grenades at NATO troops and burned American flags.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 2, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated, based on information supplied by the authorities, the year when Ecevit Sanli was released from prison. It was 2001, not 2002.
