Overflown by a helicopter, by the police, Taksim Square and Istiklal Street, usually teeming with tourists, are sounded the day after the explosion of a bomb in a very commercial street which left six dead and more than 80 injured. Sunday, November 13, an attack left at least six dead and 81 injured.“The person who planted the bomb has been arrested” along with 21 other suspects according to Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu. Most businesses have lowered the curtain.
>> Istanbul attack: what we know about the investigation the day after the attack which left six dead and 81 injured
Monday, onlookers watch the riot police blocking the entrance to this pedestrian street, the beating heart of Istanbul. Lost tourists are wondering how to reach their hotel located in the forbidden perimeter. In his little shop at the entrance toIstiklal, muam laments: “Look at a place like Taksim which is centered on trade, everything is closed… And there is no one left. But that’s not the most important thing: what matters are the people. Because we we are not afraid, our nation is not afraid. But we are sorry for the victims.”
On videos shared on social networks, we can see images of bodies lying near a large black crater. On Monday, a red carpet covers the site of the explosion, on which passers-by come to place carnations, also red. The power of the explosion sent the windows flying around. Lhe president Erdogan has castigated a “cowardly attack“, designating the responsibility of a “person who planted the bomb“: a young woman of Syrian nationality who allegedly acted”by order of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party“(PKK), in armed struggle against Ankara for almost forty years, according to the Turkish authorities, was arrested. According to Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, 46 suspects were arrested, some of them at the same place as the young woman. The explosive device consisted of “high power DTT“, according to the police who claim to have discovered in the apartment a large sum of euros and gold coins in a bag, as well as a pistol and cartridges.
Many Istanbulites say they dreaded this moment, as Mirke, crossing in front of Istiklal street: “As the election approached, we expected this kind of situation. It’s very sad, it’s awful. This creates a feeling of fear and insecurity among the Turkish population.”
Everyone here has in mind the electoral countdown before the legislative and presidential elections next June. A very uncertain vote. In 2015 and 2016 already, at the time of the elections, a wave of attacks had killed several hundred people. In December 2016, a double attack near the Besiktas football stadium in Istanbul, which killed 47 people, including 39 police officers and 160 injured, was claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a radical Kurdish group close to the PKK. The PKK, considered a terrorist organization by Ankara but also by its Western allies including the United States and the European Union, has been in armed struggle against the Turkish government since the mid-1980s. It has often been held responsible by history of bloody attacks on Turkish soil.