leftists have carried out attacks on civilian, security and military targets in Turkey in the past. Turkey blames the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is viewed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States, for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since they launched an armed struggle in 1984 for a Kurdish state. Islamists set off a series of devastating bombs in Istanbul in November 2003, targeting British and Jewish sites and killing more than 60 people. --SP 22 54 Local Time 19 54 GMT
