Bloody Terror Attack on ISTIKLAL STREET (Istanbul) 13.11.2022

The Turkish metropolis of Istanbul was shaken by a bloody terrorist attack, for the first time in several years. The bomb was detonated on the busy Istiklal Street in the historic Beyoglu district of Istanbul. Eight Turkish citizens, including children, were killed in the attack. So far, no group has claimed responsibility.

But Turkey's interior minister accused the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) of involvement in the blast.

Istanbul police said 46 people were arrested in connection with the attack, including a woman suspected of planting the bomb.

Two of the five people injured on Sunday are in intensive care in critical condition, the Istanbul Governor's office said. They were among the 31 injured still in the hospital. Fifty people have already been discharged from hospitals.

Hundreds of people left the avenue after the blast on Sunday as ambulances and police arrived. The area in the Beyoglu district of Turkey's largest city was as usual crowded over the weekend.

The police said that Ahlam Albashir is a Syrian citizen and admitted that she was trained by PKK militants. Television news reports show images of a man who appears to be a woman who left a package under a raised street flower bed.

Footage released by the Istanbul police shows the suspect had a gun and ammunition at home, as well as a significant amount of cash and some gold.

Police reportedly tracked Albashire using facial recognition software and GPS data. They said that TNT was used to make the bomb.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said the attack on Istiklal Avenue was ordered in Kobani, a city in northern Syria where Turkish forces have carried out operations against YPG militants in recent years.

Turkey sees the YPG as an extension of the PKK, with which it has been waging a deadly war for three decades.

Soylu said that Albashir passed through Afrin, another region in northern Syria, on her way to Istanbul.

After his initial statement, Soylu said in a live TV interview on Monday morning from Istiklal Avenue that if Albashir had not been arrested, she could have fled to Greece. The minister also said the authorities had a phone recording showing that the PKK had ordered the assassination Albashir after the attack and that the authorities had arrested the man sent to kill her.

The attack comes at a time when Ankara has stepped up its drone attacks and operations against the PKK leadership in Syria and Iraq, resulting in several deaths in recent months, from mid level commanders to people in the leadership.

There are also numerous Turkish military operations in northern Iraq that have pushed the PKK south.

Condemnation of the attack and condolences for the victims poured in from several countries, including the United States, the European Union, Egypt, Ukraine and Greece.

The terrorist attack on Istiklal Street shocked the Turks, accustomed to a more or less calm life, in large part because there were absolutely no signs of a possible explosion. Now many Turks fear the return of 2015 and the wave of terror that followed. But that wave had at least an understandable reason - the height of the war in Syria, the rise of ISIS and the PKK, the renewed conflict in eastern Turkey.

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