İstiklal Street 1 Day After Bomb Attack

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İstiklal street is İstanbul's one of the most crowded centers that is populous every hour. It is quite empty on Sunday after the suicide attack launched in front of sub-Governorship building at around 11 a.m. on March 19, Saturday.

The street was closed to human and vehicle traffic until 6:30 p.m. on Saturday. The street couldn’t return to its routine even nine hours after police barricades are removed.

The street’s maybe the most crowded point was the scene of the explosion.

There is a constant crowd in front of the shop closed located between Atlas Passage and the sub-Governorship building.

As of Saturday night, the place has turned into a point where cloves are left in memory of the deceased, paper with messages written are attached, flags and pennants are hung.

People are writing new messages at the scene, have a souvenir photo taken by taking the placards left by those who came before them.

“We are not afraid”, “We are here and not going anywhere” words are read in most of the placards. Artisans of Beyoğlu district, where İstiklal street is locted, staged a protest at the scene with those placards and said they will continue to live and work in Beyoğlu.

The usual crowd throughout the street is no more.

There are some other changes too. For instance, the vehicle of riot squad police standing by in front of Galatasaray High School isn’t there. Besides, police vehicles in park throughout the street are absent as well. 

A police vehicle is standing by only in front of Russian Embassy.

On the other hand, there is no police vehicle in front of embassies of Sweden and the Netherlands.

There is no weekend rush in the street which gets crowded starting from morning hours.

As hours pass, this desolateness seems to fade away but still far from a routine Sunday for İstiklal street.

Majority of shops are either closed or empty. Employees of the open shops probably didn’t have a Sunday for a long time which they rested this much.

Taksim square is far from its usual appearance; it is almost empty.

Flower-sellers are on their usual corners but complain of not having any customers. Teary-eyed flower woman says she cried the whole night, and looks around plaintively…(NM/HK/TK)

* Photos: Nadire Mater