'Will You Be Ankara?' Facebook Post Urges Solidarity With Bomb Victims

14/03/2016_Lowe_Ankara Bombing
Women cry over the coffin of a car bombing victim in Ankara, Turkey, March 14, 2016. A Facebook post has called for solidarity with the victims and the city. Reuters/Umit Bektas

Thousands have shared a Facebook post from bomb-hit Turkish capital Ankara asking social media users to show Turkey the same solidarity they have showed to France.

James Taylor, who hails from Northamptonshire in England but lives in the city, posted on the social media site asking: "You were Charlie, you were Paris. Will you be Ankara?", in a reference to popular online campaigns in support of the victims of attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris in January 2015 and those who died in gun and bomb attacks on the city later in the year.

Taylor said the bomb, which exploded in the center of the city on Sunday and killed at least 37 people, was "the equivalent of a bomb going off outside Debenhams on the Drapery in Northampton, or on New street in Birmingham, or Piccadilly Circus in London.

" Imagine [the victims] were English," he added, "and this attack was in England. If these people were instead the people you see every day on your way to work, people just like you and I, normal, happy people. Families, policemen, students, artists, couples. Your friends maybe.

"These people are no different. They just happen to be Turkish."

The bomb, which has sparked widespread condemnation from politicians around the world, has provoked a furious backlash from the Turkish government.

President Erdogan has vowed a crackdown on terror. The Turkish government believes the bomb was the work of the Kurdish PKK militant group, according to the BBC.

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