Fingering Tehran

UGUR MUMCU WAS TURKEY'S TOP INVESTIGATIVE reporter and an articulate critic of Islamic fundamentalism. When a car bomb literally blew him to pieces in Ankara, Turks naturally suspected radical fundamentalists. Ozgen Acar, his editor at Cumhuriyet, the newspaper where Mumcu had worked for the past 18 years, said the murder was the work of agents sent from Iran, "the same people who are after Salman Rushdie."

Within a day, the police picked up 11 Iranian, Syrian, Libyan and Turkish suspects, said Acar, and authorities believe the murder may be linked to six others, including the deaths of an Israeli security officer and a U.S. serviceman. Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel spoke of "certain powers trying to create division and havoc in Turkey." In Ankara hundreds of thousands of mourners tossed red carnations at Mumcu's flag-draped coffin. At the Iranian consulate in Istanbul and elsewhere, protesting crowds chanted, "We are not Iran!"