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Could someone please explain the use of **か** and **よう** in the second
sentence below from an article about the recent terrorist attack in Turkey?

> トルコの警察は、 **爆弾を使ったテロだ** と考えています。１２歳〜１４歳ぐらいの子どもが、持っている爆弾を自分で爆発させた **か**
> 、誰かがリモコンで爆発させた **よう** だと説明しています。

My best translation (please correct if it is not accurate):

> The Turkish police consider the use of the bomb an act of terrorism. They
> explained that an approximately 12 - 14 year old child detonated the bomb
> (made the bomb explode) he was holding by himself or someone (else)
> detonated the bomb by remote control.

My main concern is the **use of か pointed out in bold**. Could someone please
elaborate on this usage. I was under the impression that か cannot be used to
link two independent clauses but I am evidently wrong. I translated it as "or"
due to the context but it was basically a guess.

I'm also interested in **why よう was used** in the と clause and how the meaning
changes if it is omitted (させたと説明 rather than させたようだと説明).

Finally, less importantly, what is the subject of 使った in this sentence from
above 爆弾を使ったテロだ? I'm fairly certain my translation is accurate in meaning but
the use of a relative clause in the Japanese confuses me. I would have
expected this to be expressed with こと like 爆弾を使うことがテロだ or maybe some noun that
expresses a specific incident rather than a general concept.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-08-25T14:05:30.223
38712
2016-08-25T16:26:48.977
3296
question
grammar translation
か connecting independent clauses　and ようだと
Yes, the か in bold is "(either) ～ **or** ～". You can safely use this type of か
between two clauses. To explicitly say "either A or B", `AかBか` is the basic
pattern, but the second か tends to be omitted under certain situations... I'm
afraid I can't fully explain when it's safe to omit the second か, but the
second か is omitted at least before ようだ.

>   * 生きるか死ぬか、それが問題だ。 To be or not to be, that is the question.
>   * 隕石は海に落下したか、空中で燃え尽きたようだ。  
>  Apparently the meteor either fell to the sea or burnt up in the atmosphere.
>

And this ようだ in bold just means "appears", "looks like". This ようだ is a part of
the quotation (because it's placed before the quotative-と), and implies the
Turkish police themselves are not sure how the explosion was triggered.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-08-25T16:26:48.977
38715
2016-08-25T16:26:48.977
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38712
answer