Suruç bombing

On 20 July 2015, a suicide bombing occurred outside the Amara Culture Centre in the Suruç district of Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey, near the Syrian border town of Kobanî. The attack killed 34 people, including the perpetrator, and injured 104 others. Most of the victims were members of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) Youth Wing and the Socialist Youth Associations Federation (SGDF), young people who had gathered at the cultural centre while preparing to cross into Kobanî to take part in reconstruction efforts following the town's siege by Islamic State (ISIL) forces, which had ended in January 2015.

More than 300 members of the SGDF had travelled from Istanbul to Suruç and were staying at the Amara Culture Centre in the days before the bombing. The explosion took place while the group was giving a press statement about their planned trip, and was captured on camera. A survivor, theatre actor Murat Akdağ, said the bomb detonated in the middle of the crowd listening to the statement. Wounds observed on those taken to hospital showed evidence of burns and grenade fragments. Authorities warned of a possible second device and asked people near the centre to evacuate.

Initial reports differed on the identity of the bomber, with some early accounts describing an 18-year-old woman, before Turkish authorities identified the attacker as Şeyh Abdurrahman Alagöz, a 20-year-old Turkish Kurd from Adıyaman said to have been recruited by ISIL roughly six months prior. His identification card was found at the scene. Other reports pointed to Dokumacılar, a Turkish ISIL-linked group, as responsible for organizing the attack. ISIL claimed responsibility for the bombing the day after it occurred.

The attack drew condemnation from Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, as well as from a range of foreign governments and international bodies including NATO, the European Union, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Domestically, opposition figures, including leaders of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), accused the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) of complicity or negligence relating to ISIL activity along the Turkish-Syrian border; the AKP promised to tighten border security.

In the aftermath, two Turkish police officers were found dead in Ceylanpınar two days after the bombing, with the PKK initially claiming and then retracting responsibility, framing the killings as revenge for Suruç. Nine people were anonymously accused of the killings; their acquittal was upheld by Turkey's Higher Court as of 16 April 2019. Turkey subsequently launched Operation Martyr Yalçın, conducting airstrikes against both ISIL positions and, more extensively, PKK camps in Northern Iraq, and nearly 600 terror suspects were arrested nationwide, most of them affiliated with left-wing and Kurdish groups rather than ISIL. Two Turkish police officers were separately prosecuted in connection with the bombing itself.