INITIAL EVIDENCE SUGGESTS HOMEGROWN ORIGIN FOR ATTACK ON U.S. CONSULATE, By Gareth Jenkins. Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor, July 10, 2008.
The Turkish media have seized on the reported links of two of the assailants with foreign extremists as proof that the attack on the U.S. Consulate General was an Al Qaeda operation (Yeni Safak, Zaman, July 10). Such a conclusion appears, however, to be based more on a desire to deflect the ultimate responsibility for the attack onto outside forces than on an objective appraisal of the evidence. Even if two of the assailants had been in contact with Al Qaeda, the lack of either a detailed plan or more sophisticated weaponry strongly suggests that the attack was the exclusive work of the assailants themselves.
FWIW, a Turkish friend of mine thought it was related to Turkish Hezbollah, seeing as how the dead terrorists were from the southeast. This dovetailed into a pre-coup "strategy of tension" theory(conspiracy), based around connections between the military and Hezbollah.