The Erdogan government accuses the Kurds of having carried out the attack, in which six people died and more than eighty were injured
A corridor with more than a thousand Turkish flags runs through the heart of Istiklal. It descends from Taksim Square to Galatasary Square and in the middle of the route there is a point marked by the red of the flowers that citizens and tourists left in the place where on Sunday a bomb killed six people and caused injuries. over eighty. While this important artery of the city tried to recover some normality, the investigation progressed and Ankara announced the arrest of the alleged terrorist and 45 other people related to an operation that linked the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The Turks received condolences from around the world, but were clear not to accept those of the United States due to their collaboration with the Kurdish militias in northern Syria (YPG), which are the sister arm of the PKK.
Turkey points to the Kurds as perpetrators of the first attack suffered by Istanbul since 2017, but the PKK released a statement through social networks to deny its involvement. “Our people know that we have no relationship with this incident, that we never have civilians as a direct target and that we do not accept actions against civilians,” read the text of this group considered a terrorist by Ankara, the European Union and the United States. A similar message was launched from Syria by the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose commander, Mazloum Abdi, said “we have nothing to do with the bomb.”
The responses from the Kurds came after information from the Ministry of the Interior about the detained woman, Ahlan al Bashir, of Syrian origin, who would have confessed to having been trained by the PKK to commit this attack. The head of the Interior, Suleyman Soylu, explained that the alleged terrorist crossed into Turkey from Afrin, a Kurdish canton of Syria now controlled by the Turks, and that she received the instructions in neighboring Kobane. The local media broadcast images of the moment of the arrest.
In statements to the BBC, security expert Omer Ozkilzilcik explained that the PKK “only seeks to create confusion by denying its participation” and when assessing possible responses from Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he announced that “it is possible that very soon we will have a new military operation in northern Syria because that has been the way to prevent terrorist attacks on Turkish soil since 2017.” It is one of the most repeated scenarios among Turkish analysts in a country that is in a permanent electoral campaign ahead of the June elections in which Erdogan is playing for the presidency.
Istiklal once again became a procession of tourists and onlookers who mixed with politicians and journalists in the vicinity of the attack site. Life made its way in the place where terror reminded Istanbul of the wave of attacks suffered between 2015 and 2017. Phone in hand, everyone wanted a photo of the place, also ‘selfies’. Two Argentine tourists still couldn’t believe what they had experienced on Sunday afternoon because “we were about a hundred meters away, the explosion was huge and we went into a nearby shopping arcade where the employees closed the blind. Those were moments of great anguish.”
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