Istanbul today painfully remembered the 2nd anniversary of the bloody attack on İstiklal Avenue that killed 6 people and injured around a hundred others on 13 November 2022, in a terrorist attack that was claimed by the PKK/YPG terrorist group.
As numerous media in Turkey have recalled in recent hours, today marks the second anniversary of that attack in which a bomb placed on one of the benches of the famous avenue exploded, killing 6 people and injuring 99 others. Among the victims, a girl of only 9 years of age and her father, a young girl and her mother who were walking by the place at the time of the explosion, and a married couple.
The day after the bombing, Turkish security forces captured the terrorist, identified as Ahlam Albashir, a 23-year-old Syrian-born woman who was caught on security cameras fleeing in a taxi, and later located in a house where she was hiding in the Küçükçekmece district.
Police also identified an accomplice, Bilal El Hacmaos, married in 2021 to Albashir in the Syrian city of Manbij, who helped her prepare the bomb and transported her to Taksim Square, then fled in the direction of Edirne and Bulgaria, where he was lost track of. During the trial, which prosecuted a total of 36 defendants, Albashir confessed to feeling betrayed by Hacmaos, saying that she did not know he would escape and that ‘it was not supposed to be me, but Bilal, who would carry the bomb’.
A year and a half after the explosion, the bomber was sentenced to seven life sentences without the possibility of parole. But the attack on İstiklal Avenue, despite the tragedy, also served to unite all Istanbulites against terrorism: only a few days after the explosion, thousands of people marched along the avenue under the slogan ‘İstiklal bizim’ (İstiklal is ours).
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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