The police announced that the bombing happened because Guven Akkus, one of the dead 6 people, had carried a bomb of type A4 on his back.
The bourgeois media immediately stated that Guven Akkus had been arrested on Mayday 1996 under the pretext of being a member of TIKB and then imprisoned for 2 years. However, the Central Committee of the TIKB made a written statement stressing the fact that the organization has never had the understanding of realizing such an action where the target group is harmless and defenseless civil society. In the statement it also said that Guven Akkus had been sympathizer of the organization and that there were no organizational and political relations with Akkus any more after he left prison. The statement continued as following: "Our organization refuses that its name has been connected with this provocation which we have and will never support and which we condemn strongly."
The bourgeois media and state forces had anyway concentrated themselves on claiming that the PKK is responsible for the attack. It was claimed that Guven Akkus "might have established a relation with the PKK in prison".