A terrorist bomb attack killed at least six people and wounded 53 in the explosion on Istanbul’s central Istiklal Street, Turkey’s conservative Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan has confirmed. “There are people who have died in a bomb attack at 4:20 p.m. [14:20 CET] in Istiklal. I offer my condolences to the dead and my wishes for recovery to the injured. The state will find the organizers of this terrorist attack,” Erdogan said in an appearance on public television TRT.
“Four people died at the scene and two in hospital; There are six dead and 53 wounded according to the latest information,” the president added. Istiklal Street, a pedestrian avenue full of shops, which starts in the emblematic Taksim Square, is at all hours full of passers-by, including many tourists. Erdogan was speaking moments before leaving for Indonesia, where the G20 summit of heads of state will kick off on Tuesday.
“The perpetrators of this vile attack will be unmasked. The people can be sure that the aggressors will be punished,” he added. However, he himself admitted that the hypothesis of a terrorist attack is not yet confirmed. “If we say it’s definitely a terrorist act, we can be wrong. But from what the governor (of Istanbul, Ali Yerlikaya) has told me, it looks like terrorism. A woman is believed to have been involved. But a final decision will be made after the investigation,” he said.
However, shortly after, the country’s vice president, Fuat Oktay, in an appearance before the press accused “a woman” of having “detonated the bomb” acting as a “suicide” attacker. In addition, a new balance raised the number of injured to more than eighty. Meanwhile, the Turkish broadcaster RTUK decreed a “temporary ban” on broadcasting images of the scene and giving information about possible suspects, except for statements by authorities, so as not to hinder the ongoing investigation.
In 2016 there were several terrorist attacks in Turkey, most perpetrated by networks of the terrorist group Islamic State, in Istanbul and its airport, one of them on Istiklal Street. However, after the massacre caused by a jihadist on New Year’s Eve that year in a nightclub on the banks of the Bosphorus and the arrest of the author, no attacks have been recorded in the city.
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