Medical teams help the injured and transport the victims of the Istiklal explosion. /
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan explains that “a man and a woman” have been involved in the “vile attack”
Terror today emptied Istiklal, Istanbul’s Independence Avenue, the commercial street par excellence that does not fail in the itinerary of every traveler. After four in the afternoon a strong explosion hit the heart of this avenue and panic seized those present. At least 6 people lost their lives and more than 80 were injured, according to the latest official balance of the Turkish authorities.
Nobody wanted to pronounce the word terrorism and the first one who did was the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Maybe I’m wrong, but the first events, added to the first information that the governor of Istanbul, Ali Yerlikaya, has given me, indicate that this smacks of terrorism,” said the president before describing what happened as “a vile attack.” .
Shortly after, with the investigation already underway, Erdogan pointed out that the security forces are working to identify those responsible for this “treacherous attack” and “those who are behind it.” The president insisted that “attempts to make Turkey surrender through terror have never succeeded and never will.”
I got information from our Fire Brigade teams on Istiklal Street. They continue their investigations in the area in coordination with the police. Our healthcare workers are also working hard. Once again, I wish God’s mercy on those who lost their lives and a speedy recovery to the injured. pic.twitter.com/unebipMEec
Ekrem Imamoglu (@ekrem_imamoglu) November 13, 2022
Along with Erdogan, it was the vice president, Fuat Oktay, who took on the task of reporting the events. “We consider it to be a terrorist attack due to the detonation of a bomb by an assailant believed to be a woman, according to initial information,” Oktay said, without clarifying whether the woman blew herself up or activated the bomb. from distance. Erdogan’s number two warned that “whoever is behind this we will catch him in the end, even if he is on the other side of the world, outside our borders.”
Five years without attacks
At press time, no group had claimed responsibility for the attack. In 2016 terror already hit Istiklal in the form of a suicide attack and five people were killed, including two US citizens, and 36 were injured. The Interior Ministry then assured that it was a suicide linked to the jihadist group Islamic State (IS). Between 2015 and 2017 both the IS and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) committed several attacks on Turkish soil and six years later the Ottoman media point again in these directions in search of culprits.
The last big attack in Istanbul was on January 1, 2017 at the Reina club and 37 people lost their lives in an operation taken over by IS. A terrorist broke into the premises with an assault submachine gun in the middle of the New Year’s Eve celebration. Since then the city remained safe from the hand of terror, although without lowering security measures.
The security forces sealed off all access to the site and restricted access to social networks such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube or Facebook, as is customary in the country when something of this kind occurs. An Istanbul court declared the “information blackout”, following the anti-terrorist protocol in Turkey.
political unit
Istiklal is a lung of life in the center of the city that descends from Taksim Square to the Bosphorus. The presence of tourists is so intense that sometimes the avenue seems like a kind of demonstration of travelers passing in front of the endless succession of shop windows. Hours after the attack, groups of tourists crowded in front of the fences deployed by the Police, unable to believe what had happened. This type of attack can happen to anyone, it is the lottery of terror.
The Turkish political parties, immersed in an endless campaign ahead of next summer’s elections in which Erdogan is playing for the Presidency, came together to condemn what happened. “To our citizens who have lost their lives, I wish God’s mercy and a speedy recovery to those who have been injured,” Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kiliçdaroglu posted on Twitter. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) expressed its “deep pain and sorrow over the explosion”.
There were also condemnations from abroad and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement to “categorically reject any form of terrorist violence.”