Minister: İstanbul bombing suspect taken into custody

Photo: AA

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The person who is suspected to plant the bomb that killed six people yesterday (November 13) in Taksim, İstanbul, has been taken into custody, the interior minister has announced.

Twenty-one people with connections to the suspect was also in custody, Süleyman Soylu told reporters this morning on İstiklale Avenue, were the explosion occurred.

The evidence they have collected indicated that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was responsible for the attack, he added.

The explosion occured at around 4.20 a.m. on the busy pedestrian street in a popular tourist area. Some 81 people were also wounded.

Soylu also announced the names of the people who lost their lives in the attack:

* Arzu Özsoy, born in 1984 in Istanbul, and her daughter Yağmur Uçar, born in 2007 in Eregli,
* Yusuf Meydan, born in Palu in 1988,
* Ecrin Meydan, born in Seyhan in 2013,
* Adem Topkara, born in Gumushane in 1982 and his wife Mukaddes Elif Topkara, born in Rize in 1995.

The minister said that 2 of the 81 injured people are in serious condition, 5 are in intensive care, and 50 people were discharged from hospital.

"For about 6 years, we have not experienced such an event, a terrorist incident like the one we suffered yesterday late afternoon in Istanbul. In this regard, we feel embarrassment. Only this year, we have prevented nearly 200 incidents. These were maybe terrorist incidents that would have caused more dire consequences than the incident we are facing," he said.

"After the incident, to find the perpetrators of the incident, a great effort has been made under the coordination of both our Chief of Police, our Head of Terrorism, our Intelligence Chief, and our Istanbul Police Chief. Both technically and physically, every step possible was taken.

"We have been tracing the same track since the first evaluations. Our assessment is that the order for the action came from Kobane [North Syria]. We have an evaluation that the perpetrator passed through Afrin [North Syria]. A little while ago the person who carried out the incident and dropped the bomb was detained by the teams of our Istanbul Police Department. Around 21 more people were detained before that.

"It is the PKK terrorist organization within the framework of our findings. Soon, we will show them a response where those who made us experience this pain in Beyoğlu's Istiklal Street can experience more pain." (HA/VK/PE/WM)