The bombings that killed 17 people on Sunday in Istanbul are officially being blamed on the Kurdish separatist group the PKK who, as always, deny them.

The Turkish public is apparently not convinced :

Scepticism of the official Turkish media line, meanwhile, appears to be felt even among those most affected. "They say it was the PKK," said Ibrahim Culhaci, whose wrecked shoe shop stands metres from where the second, bigger blast occurred. "But everybody in this country is playing funny games. The PKK could just be a tool." [...]

Others find the timing of the explosion suspicious. It came just 12 hours before Turkey's top judges sat down to consider the unseating of an Islamic-rooted government a senior prosecutor has accused of trying to "establish a state system based on religious principles".

More importantly, the bombings also came just two days after a criminal court accepted the indictment of an 80-strong secularist-nationalist gang accused of plotting to overthrow the government. The gang, dubbed Ergenekon, is allegedly linked to the murder of a judge in 2006 as well as grenade attacks on a secularist newspaper. Its aim, according to the 2,500-page indictment, is to destabilise society. [...]

A columnist for Turkey's most influential daily, Cuneyt Ulsever , went a step further. "Call me paranoid, but I think Ergenekon did this," he said. "These are wild times for Turkey, the wildest I have ever seen. God knows where we are going."

This could get a lot worse before it gets better.