A tragic tale of two friends killed in separate attacks in Turkey

Both died a few months apart in terrorist attacks

In a tragic twist of fate, two friends who died in separate terrorist attacks have come to symbolise Turkey's sorrow following last week’s bombing in Ankara.

Ozancan Akkus was killed with 36 others when a huge explosion ripped through the Kizilay neighbourhood of Ankara on Sunday. His friend Ali Deniz Uzatmaz was also killed in a bomb attack - this one on October 10 during a peace rally he was attending in the Turkish capital with hundreds of others.



At that time, Akkus had taken to Twitter to pay tribute to his childhood friend. "He will live on in our hearts," he had said.

A few months later, people are now paying a similar tribute to him on his social media pages.

"Good-hearted beautiful people goodbye," one said, while another posted, "Who would have thought you would share the same fate?"

However, many have also expressed anger over what they believe was a brief social media blackout. One social media user, James Taylor, called for a universal show of solidarity for Turkey.

Taylor, who has been living in Ankara for the past 18 months, asked people to imagine what it would be like if the attacks happened where they lived. The post has gone viral and has been shared extensively.



"It is very easy to look at terror attacks that happen in London, in New York, in Paris and feel pain and sadness for those victims, so why is it not the same for Ankara?" he wrote.

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"Is it because you just don't realise that Ankara is no different from any of these cities? Is it because you think that Turkey is a predominantly Muslim country, like Syria, like Iraq, like countries that are in a state of civil war, so therefore it must be the same and because you don't care about those ones, then why should you care about Turkey?" he added.

In his latest post, he says he is humbled by the messages of support and ends with a poignant message: "We are Paris, we are Ankara, we are Syria, we are Ivory Coast, but above all we are human."

This article originally appeared on BBC.