Just like WalterBlack I suspect the Uyghur connection.
It might have something to do with that, from July 2015:
Thailand returns scores of Uighurs to China
Quote:Quote:
Thailand has sent nearly 100 Uighur Muslims back to China, a move likely to anger Turkey, as protesters targeted Thai honorary consulate in Istanbul against the move.
(...)
Thailand's embassy in Ankara announced on its Facebook page that protesters angry over the Uighur issue stormed the consulate in Istanbul late on Wednesday and warned around 1,300 Thais living in Turkey to "be on alert" following the attack.
Deportations like that seem to be a regular occurrence.
We know that the arrested suspect had a considerable number of fake Turkish passports in his possession and that the SEA route from Yunnan via Thailand to Malaysia is a popular escape route for Uyghurs who have some reason to leave China illegally, most heading to Turkey which grants them asylum.
My theory is that parts of the Turkish intelligence community close to the AKP and Erdoğan are instructed to provide Uyghurs from China with Turkish identities so that they can travel to Syria via Turkey and join ISIS.
This would fit with Erdoğan´s previous policy of barely concealed support for the Islamic State in order to keep the region unstable, weaken Assad further, prevent the Iranian supported Shiite forces from gaining ground, prevent the Kurds from consolidating and finally proclaiming their own state, ensure Turkey´s current state of being the dominant regional hegemon and thus advance his neo-Ottoman ambitions.
Now the following part is purely speculation on my part. When they have completed their basic training, gained combat experience and have been taught the ABC of asymetric warfare, they will be (are?) extracted and smuggled across the border back to Xinjiang/Turkestan via the Central Asian republics and join the anti-Chinese insurgency. There´s a considerable pan-Turkish sentiment in parts of the Turkish government that would love to see an independent Turkestan.
Some of these Uyghurs extracted via Thailand are obviously loose cannons, and it doesn´t seem far-fetched that one of them sought retribution for his recently deported Uyghur brothers (nothing good awaits them in China). So he plants a bomb at the Erawan shrine, which is popular with Chinese tourists.
It kills some Thais? Good. It kills some Chinese? Even better.
Also keep in mind that the other bomb that luckily detonated in the water was thrown at a Skytrain station that a lot of Chinese tour groups pass through, Saphan Taksin. There has also been a
a report in the English-language Bangkok Post which suggested that police had strengthened security around the Chinese embassy two weeks before the explosion, reportedly after receiving intelligence of an attack planned on Chinese tourists after Aug. 18.