15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
I just checked the news and saw this. This is ten minutes from me; I walk through there every day. They're concerned there's a second device in the area.
Eyewitnesses claim that there were 2 perpetrators. One shot down by police before blast. Second managed to blast himself #Istanbul #Turkey4 minutes ago via TweetDeck
Breaking: PKK spokesman says he knows nothing about bomb in #Istanbul's #Taksim Sq - learned of it from CNN calling him to ask11 minutes ago via web judging from broken windows of hotels&other little shops&restaurants in the vicinity of #Taksim square explosion,the bomb was strong
Attack was directed to the police buses parked at the center of the square. Suicide bomber fused the bomb in between these buses. #Turkey
Update: This doesn't really require translation.
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Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
Claire, here's Haaretz's piece on the Istanbul bombing. I can't find any real information yet (as of twenty minutes after you posted).
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
The reports are very confused so far. Very unconfirmed: two dead, body parts on the ground, a second suspect shot by police, and a manhunt ongoing for the suspect. They're also saying the bomb was "aimed at police," but this makes no sense to me--as anyone who has ever been there knows, the police there are thoroughly intermingled with the civilians; you couldn't possibly know that someone was targeting the police just because they hit the police.
For what it's worth, the PKK announced very recently that it would stop targeting civilians. They were reportedly surprised when called by the news. And Turkey has been conducting a massive roundup of al-Qaeda suspects this week.
Aug '10
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
It's very sad, and you have my condolences Claire. Fortunately these were not highly trained and effective bombers typical of al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. If they had been there'd be dozens of dead and many scores of injured. Two suicide bombers wearing vests with C-4 explosive can devastate a city block and everyone in it.
Aug '10
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
Stay safe
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
Possibly. Initial and very unconfirmed reports suggest this was stronger than a typical PKK bomb, though. It's already being received as wisdom that it was the PKK, especially since the ceasefire expired on Sep. 20. It's also being rumored that major news stations aren't reporting on it so as to deny the perpetrators psychological impact. The reporting does seem very, very scanty so far.
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
Erdoğan just gave a speech that barely mentioned it. He's in Mardin, at a dam construction site--and he quickly segued to a discussion of a dam project.
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
Okay, I get it now--the bomb went off by the police busses, in a cordoned-off area. So yes, it probably was aimed at them. And yes, that does suggest the PKK. But there's no way you can set off a bomb in Taksim without injuring an excellent cross-section of civilians, as indeed this did. (For those who have wondered why I don't have a lot of sympathy with the PKK, here's your answer. Even if it wasn't them, their record is such that it's absolutely justified to suspect them first.)
Aug '10
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
When was the last time the PKK took credit for something? And I mean anything: not just killing people, but delivering the mail, providing potable water, or opening daycare centers.
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
They take credit now and again. If it was them, this would be their fourth attack on Taksim since 1995, so at this point, they don't really need to take credit; they'll be blamed for it anyway, and probably rightly so.
May '10
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
Suicide bombers are, definitionally, not experts. So it's luck of the draw whether they rather embarrassingly blow themselves up to no effect or take lots of people with them. Good Lord, Claire. This is happening every other month now. You'd be safer in Jerusalem. You wouldn't have the Bosporus, of course.
Jul '10
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
We can thank our lucky stars that our enemies are almost laughably incompetent. Shoe bombers tackled by air hostesses; underpants bombers who succeed only in charring their privates; Times Square truck bombs that don't go off; the list goes on and on. And these are guys who actually went to Pakistan or Yemen for training.
And then there's the Taliban, who are estimated to put fewer than one in 10,000 rounds on target.
They're the Wylie Coyotes of terrorism.
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
I'm not at all minimizing what happened today, and nor, I'm sure, are the people who were mutilated and maimed. But this is a city of some 20 million people. The odds of any one person, including me, becoming a victim of a terrorist attack are very tiny. And there's pretty much nowhere in the world you can go now where there's zero threat of terrorism. It seems there's a risk, albeit a small one, just in being under the flight path of a UPS cargo plane.
May '10
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
To be really good at killing you need real training and real practice. I'm not sure AQ is getting either. Practicing bomb detonation has a tendency to attract attention and there are no live ammo practice runs for the suicide type (and no do-overs, for that matter.)
And sometimes I think the human will to survive just kicks in. Maybe more than a few of these guys stop and say to themselves, "What the heck am I doing?"
Aug '10
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
EJHill
To be really good at killing you need real training and real practice. I'm not sure AQ is getting either. Practicing bomb detonation has a tendency to attract attention and there are no live ammo practice runs for the suicide type (and no do-overs, for that matter.)
And sometimes I think the human will to survive just kicks in. Maybe more than a few of these guys stop and say to themselves, "What the heck am I doing?" · Oct 31 at 9:27am
Having a preacher (imam) teach you how to shoot is kind of like ....having a killer teach you how to pray.
Having anyone teach you to how to kill yourself begs for some empiricism, always lacking in the lesson.
Jul '10
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
Now we hear that the toner bombs were assembled by AQ in the Arabian Peninsula's "Master Bomb-Maker", Ibrahim Asiri.
That's a very prestigious title for a guy whose previous feckless efforts include the failure to kill a Saudi Prince with a "butt bomb" inserted into Asiri's own brother and the Christmas Day underpants bomb.
Sounds like South Park.
Aug '10
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
Kenneth
You know one thing for sure: we're not getting the straight poop from the Fed on this. They are people right now at DOJ trying to work the spin on this "completely inadvertent attempt to kill us by alleged religionists from a Middle Eastern country".
And the NSC is drawing comparisons to his days at Fannie Mae and the time he said something mean to Barney Frank's beau and got the same thing in his mail.
Pretty sure the bomb guy was named Ibrahim Hankey Asiri .Well, Mr Hankey to you !
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
Correction: The 2001 attack was DHKP/C, not PKK. It's being reported that 16 members of the DHKP/C were arrested prior to the bombing today, but who knows what's really going on. The DHKP/C are scum-of-the-earth Marxist-Leninists; as, for that matter, are the PKK. Here's a guide, should anyone be interested, to the many varieties of scum-of-the-earth terrorists in Turkey. The takeaway point is that it's true that not all Muslims are terrorists, and it's even true that not all terrorists are Muslims, but it's pretty much true that all terrorists are either Muslims or Marxists.
Edited on Oct 31, 2010 at 12:35pmMay '10
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
I am retired defense industry. They constantly hammered security and low profile, especially in a foreign country. So I worry about you.
Do you get any worthwhile assistance from the American Embassy?
Y'all be safe.
Aug '10
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
That's some crackerjack detective work there. Yessir. Some real Türk iş, as they say.
Fizzy memories of my detention by Turkish cops in Sivas in 1992. Plucked me right off a suburban street. In the car, they asked me what Americans thought of the Kurdish situation. "Fikrimiz yok," I answered, accurately I do believe. We went to my hotel room. Rahat, they urged on me, and so I sat down and sure had some of that. They actually turned their backs on me as they searched my room. Gotcher savvy cop technique right here! Luckily they didn't search me: might've found the $3000 in cash I was carrying!
You know what? I'm just not intoxicated by the Middle East. Sensing goofballism, I do not reflexively exalt goofballs. The PKK is more Middle Eastern, even more Turkish, than it acknowledges. If it really is a force, which I doubt, then for all its Marxism, it must know deep down what a hick outfit it is. As must its notional enemies.
Re: 15 Injured in Suicide Bombing in Heart of Istanbul
John H.
That's some crackerjack detective work there. Yessir. Some real Türk iş, as they say.
Fizzy memories of my detention by Turkish cops in Sivas in 1992. Plucked me right off a suburban street. In the car, they asked me what Americans thought of the Kurdish situation. "Fikrimiz yok," I answered, accurately I do believe.
I wouldn't say that sums up this American's attitude toward them. Five years of this sort of thing does really put the Kurdish issue in the forefront of one's worries.
The forensic work on this is apt to be very good. I'm not intoxicated by every aspect of the Turkish bureaucracy myself, but from what I know, the very most competent people in the security forces will be working on this, and they're high-level competent. They won't be putting the amateurs on this job.
The PKK is certainly a force--for utter evil. It's too soon to say whether they were the authors of this, but definitely people aren't crazy to suspect they were.