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 The blast on Monday tore through a group of university-aged
students from an activist group as they gathered in the border town
of Suruc ahead of a planned trip to help rebuild the nearby Syrian
Kurdish town of Kobani.
Kobani has come under repeated assault from Islamic State and been a
rallying point for Turkey's Kurdish minority, who have been enraged
by what they see as the refusal of President Tayyip Erdogan and the
ruling AK Party to intervene in a conflict played out within clear
sight of Turkish military positions.
Thousands of foreign fighters have crossed through Turkey to join
Islamic State over the past few years, fuelling accusations from the
government's opponents that it is turning a blind eye.
The United States and other Western allies have also urged Turkey, a
NATO member which shares a 900 km (560-mile) border with Syria, to
do more to tighten security on the frontier.
 "Turkey and AK Party governments have never had any direct or
indirect links with any terrorist group and have never showed
tolerance to any terrorist group," Davutoglu told reporters in
Sanliurfa province, where Suruc is located.
Authorities have carried out a string of raids in recent weeks to
arrest Islamic State suspects. They have also blocked more than half
a dozen Islamist news websites, prompting one group claiming
allegiance to Islamic State to accuse Turkey of persecuting Muslims
and declare: "Muslims might retaliate."
Anger among Kurds and their sympathizers has boiled over since the
Suruc attack.
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has waged a
three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state, said the AKP bore
responsibility for the bombing, accusing it of backing Islamic State
against Syria's Kurds.
In Istanbul, police fired tear gas and water cannon late on Monday
at protesters chanting "Murderer Islamic State, collaborator Erdogan
and AKP." At a similar protest in the southern port city of Mersin
an attacker opened fire, wounding two people, local media said.
"INHUMANE AND BARBAROUS"
Pro-government media accused the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP),
which draws most of its support from Kurds, of seeking to exploit
the Suruc attack by provoking Kurds to take up arms, an accusation
its leader Selahattin Demirtas denied.
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He told reporters it was "shameful" that his call to tighten
security at HDP buildings after the "inhumane and barbarous
massacre" had been portrayed as a "call to arms".
"No matter how much they attack, without fuelling hatred and anger
against each other, we will cultivate brotherhood and live in peace
in this country," Demirtas said ahead of a party meeting in the
capital Ankara.
There was a flurry of attacks overnight by Kurdish militants,
although there was no immediate evidence they were linked to the
bombing.
The Turkish armed forces reported two attacks against its soldiers
in the east on Monday night. In Igdir province, PKK militants closed
a highway and opened fire on security forces, while in the town of
Cizre, masked attackers threw homemade explosives at a barracks and
opened fire with rifles.
Separately, gunmen opened fire on a police station in the Sultangazi
district of Istanbul early on Tuesday. Nobody was hurt and it was
not clear whether there was link to Suruc, although the
pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper said a leftist group sympathetic
to Kurds had claimed responsibility.
The identity of the Suruc bomber has not yet been revealed but some
media reports said a man from the southeastern province of Adiyaman
was a prime suspect. Davutoglu said a suspect had been identified
and his links were being investigated.
(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Writing by
Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Ralph Boulton)
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