Turkish officials detained 12 people Monday in connection with last week’s suicide bombings in Istanbul that killed over 50. The Washington Post reports that three of the bombers came from the eastern Turkish city of Bingol an area where the Turkish once encouraged Islamic militants to take up arms against the region’s Kurdish population. Official investigations have found that militants in the region were given weapons from the government’s arsenal and the deaths of thousands of Kurds were seldom investigated. An official with the Turkish Human Rights Association compared the Turkish government’s role in aiding the militants to that of the U.S. in Afghanistan helping the mujaheddin in fighting the Soviets during the 1980s.