For its part, the Party denies any involvement in the attack: “It is well known that we have no connection with this event, that we do not target civilians and reject actions that do so,” he said. Monday in a statement published by the Firat news agency.
Police footage shared by Turkish media showed a young woman in a purple sweatshirt being apprehended in an apartment. “The person who planted the bomb has been arrested,” Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced early Monday, saying the suspect was preparing to “flee to Greece”. The explosive device was composed of “high-power TNT”, 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.
The young woman, presented as Alham Albashir, would have entered Turkey illegally via Afrine, a town in northeastern Syria controlled by Turkish soldiers and their Syrian auxiliaries. The police say they took their orders from Kobané, also in northeastern Syria and largely controlled by Kurdish movements allied to the PKK. Forty-six suspects were arrested, some of them at the same place as the young woman, the minister said.
Unclaimed attack
The attack, committed on the shopping street of Istiklal, was not claimed. Turkish media share an image taken from a surveillance camera on Istiklal Avenue, showing a young woman in fatigues, wearing a loose black scarf, who runs away into the crowd, designated like the bomber.
Among the victims, all Turkish, are a 9-year-old girl killed with her father and a 15-year-old girl who died with her mother. The avenue, partly closed on Sunday after the explosion, was fully reopened on Monday but all the benches were removed. A red carpet covers the site of the explosion, on which passers-by come to lay carnations, also red.
The attack killed at least six people and injured 81, of whom around 30 remain hospitalized on Monday.
YASIN AKGUL/AFP
Ankara rejects US condolences
The PKK, considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, but also by its Western allies including the United States and the European Union, has often been held responsible for bloody attacks in the past.
But Ankara has “rejected” the condolences of the United States which “supports the Kurdish terrorists” of Kobané, according to Süleyman Soylu. “We do not accept, we reject, the condolences of the United States. Our alliance with a state that maintains Kobané and pockets of terror […] must be discussed,” he said, accusing the Americans of supporting some PKK allies.