Istanbul attack: details that raise questions

The Turkish government is certain: the PKK was behind the attack in Istanbul in mid-November. While the Turkish army is now flying attacks on Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq, questions are being raised in Turkey.

When a bomb killed six people on Istanbul’s Istiklal shopping street in the middle of the month, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu quickly made up his mind. According to the minister, the Kurdish workers’ party PKK, classified as a terrorist organization, was behind the attack. There are now many questions about this interpretation.

But first, within a few days, the violence leads to more violence. The PKK denies being responsible for the deadly explosion and the murder of civilians. But the Turkish army took revenge and launched Operation Claw Sword a week later. Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for Turkish President Erdogan, wrote on Twitter that the time had come for reckoning.

The Turkish air force bombed positions of the Kurdish militia YPG, the Syrian arm of the PKK. More than 30 people are killed.

The YPG announce revenge. Shells fired from the Kurdish militia-controlled Manbij region killed a child, a teacher and a man in the Turkish border town of Karkamis. Earlier this week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan indicated that a ground offensive would begin in the near future.

questions about identity

At the same time, however, conflicting facts come to light that raise more questions than answers about the assassination. The pro-government daily Sabah quotes from the interrogation of the Syrian woman who placed the bag with the bomb on Istiklal Street.

Ahlam Albashir is not Kurdish, which rather speaks against membership in the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK. Arab media speculate that she could be of Somali origin or from Sudan.

During interrogation, she is said to have confessed that she was trained by the Kurdish militia and threatened to force her siblings to leave a bag in the pedestrian zone. At the same time, she didn’t know what the content was.

Incidentally, her brother is a fighter for the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) militia, which is allied with the Turkish military. He lost two legs in combat.

A SIM card raises questions

Albashir is said to have made the phone call using a SIM card registered in the name of a local leader of the far-right MHP party in the southeastern province of Sirnak. The MHP is in an alliance with Erdogan’s AKP party.

The local chairman justified the strange circumstance with the fact that his ID had been copied and the SIM card issued in his name had been obtained by fraud. The governor of Sirnak province confirmed this.

Albashir is said to have entered Turkey four months ago from the northern Syrian province of Afrin, according to investigators. However, the news portal “T24” claims to have learned from the accused’s neighbors that she has been living in Istanbul for a year.

Numerous arrests

Almost 50 people were arrested in the course of the investigation. This also applies to the Syrian Arab Ahmad Haj Hasan, with whom Ahlam Albashir is said to have temporarily lived in Istanbul. According to the Turkish media, he too had stated that he had never had anything to do with the PKK, but that his brother had fallen as a fighter for the FSA.

A Syrian Arab named Ammar Jarkas was also arrested. The investigators believe him to be the mastermind behind the crime in Istanbul. The newspaper “Hürriyet” quotes from the interrogation with Jarkas that he came to Turkey a year ago from the northern Syrian city of Kobane, which is controlled by the Kurdish militia YPG.

His brother, on the other hand, told a Turkish news portal that Jarkas has been in Istanbul for eight or nine years and founded a car rental company in 2020. Photos from his social media accounts have been published online showing him as a member of the FSA. But there should also be indications that he supports the Syrian regime.

The only two Kurds the police are investigating are a couple Albashir wanted to stay with after the bombing.

Pro-Kurdish party raises allegations

Pervin Buldan, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish HDP, notes that the explosion shortly before the Turkish air force attacked positions of the Kurdish militia YPG was no coincidence. There are many question marks that need to be clarified.

Since the AKP-MHP alliance feared having to accept losses in the upcoming elections next year and wanted to ensure its political survival, their election campaign began with war politics, according to Buldan. The AKP and MHP accuse the HDP of being in cahoots with the PKK.

doubts remain

The details that have come to light do not allow us to fundamentally question that the PKK carried out the attack. But the quick conclusion that it was undoubtedly the Kurdish militia, classified as a terrorist organization, is something that numerous Turkish voices on social media do not want to accept without further evidence.

Since 90 percent of the Turkish mass media are pro-government, the verdict of the AKP-MHP leadership is not called into question there. A military offensive in northern Syria using the argument of self-defense would only be justified if it was established beyond a doubt that the terrorist organization PKK was the perpetrator of the attack. She would definitely be capable of that.