Turkey arrests woman, accuses PKK over Istanbul attack
ISTANBUL: Turkey on Monday accused a Syrian woman of planting a bomb that killed six people in Istanbul, blaming the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) of carrying out the attack.
Two girls, aged nine and 15, were among those killed when the bomb exploded shortly after 4:00 pm on Sunday in Istiklal Avenue, home to smart boutiques and European consulates. More than 80 other people were wounded.
“The person who planted the bomb has been arrested,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in a statement broadcast by the official Anadolu news agency early on Monday.
“According to our findings, the PKK terrorist organisation is responsible,” Soylu said.
“Our people and the democratic public know closely that we are not related to this incident, that we will not directly target civilians and that we do not accept actions targeting civilians,” the group said in a statement published by the Firat news agency, close to the PKK.
Police, quoted by private NTV television, said the chief suspect is a Syrian woman working for Kurdish militants. Forty-six people were detained in total, police said. Police footage shared with Turkish media showed a young woman in a purple sweatshirt being apprehended in an Istanbul flat.
Police, cited by NTV, named her as Alham Albashir and said she was arrested at 02:50 am in an Istanbul suburb. Local media said she was a trained PKK intelligence operative. There has been no claim of responsibility.
“We believe that the order for the attack was given from Kobane,” Soylu said, referring to a city in Syria near the Turkish border.
Pkk-affiliated Kurdish militants control most of northeastern Syria and in 2015, Kurdish fighters drove IS militants out of the city.
Turkey’s NTV channel also shared surveillance footage of a young woman dressed in trousers and wearing a loose black scarf who ran away into the crowd on Sunday afternoon.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told A Haber television that a woman had been sitting on a bench for more than 40 minutes, “then she got up”, leaving a bag.
“One or two minutes later, an explosion occurred,” he said.
On Monday, all the benches had been removed from Istiklal Avenue, where residents laid red carnations at the scene of the blast, some wiping away tears and others speaking of their fear of further attacks in the run-up to elections next June.
“We need more security!” said Idris Cetinkaya, who works at a nearby hotel and who came to pay his respects.
“The police just searched my bag when I got here, but that’s the first time in a year. Millions of people come here, anything could happen at any second!”
Istiklal Avenue was previously targeted during a campaign of nationwide bombings in 201516 that were blamed mostly on the IS group and outlawed Kurdish militants, killing nearly 500 people and wounding more than 2,000. On Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced the “vile attack” that had the “smell of terror” shortly leaving for the G20 summit in the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
Kemal Ozturk, a shopkeeper, is among those who fear another explosion ahead of presidential and legislative elections in seven months’ time. “In election period it can happen,” the 42-year-old said. “We live with fear”.
Regularly targeted by Turkish military operations, the PKK has also been at the heart of a tussle between Sweden and Turkey, which has blocked Stockholm’s bid to join Nato since May, accusing it of leniency towards the group. International condemnation flooded in from across the world, including from the United States, but on Monday Turkey said it rejected US condolences over the attack. Erdogan’s government has often accused US of supplying weapons to Kurdish fighters in northern Syria who Ankara labels as terror group.
Police, cited by NTV, named the suspect as Alham Albashir and said she was arrested at 02:50 am in an Istanbul suburb. Local media said she was a trained PKK intelligence operative