Istiklal Street Bombing
Members of a forensic team work at the site of the bombing
On November 13th, 2022 a bomb exploded in the crowded Istiklal Street, killing 6 and wounding 81. Turkey was quick to pin the blame for the bombing on Kurds, in particular the PKK - but
strangely enough they also said that there was a possibility that ISIS carried out the attack in collaboration with the PKK; a rather ludicrous claim from Turkey considering that Kurds are the most active combatants against ISIS within the country of Syria itself.
The one main problem with the Turkish claims though is that the PKK, SDF and AANES have denied any involvement in the attacks themselves despite the strong Turkish claims that they were directly responsible for the blast;
meanwhile ISIS has said absolutely nothing on the subject, so that's where I started to think something was fishy as if it was ISIS they would've taken credit for it now. The same logic applies to the PKK as they have always taken
credit for their bombings and shootings so they would have no reason to deny this one; not to mention that their attacks have always targeted Turkish military and government buildings.
Some have already suggested that this bombing was carried out by the Turkish secret service with the intent to blame the PKK and justify an invasion of Northern Syria, this sentiment is given a slight boost when you consider that just 7 days after the bombing the
Turkish government initated Operation Claw-Sword, an extention of Operation Claw-Lock which started with Turkish
airstrikes against Syria that killed 35 people, an excerpt from an article that describes these suspicions against the Turkish government is quoted below and translated from German:
"The pro-Kurdish HDP party in Turkey strongly condemned the attacks. The government was using the Istanbul attack as a pretext to crack down on Kobane, which had 'inspired the oppressed of this world' with its 'epic resistance' against IS, it said.
Investigations continued after the bomb blast on Istanbul's busy Istiklal shopping street. On Friday, 17 people were arrested in Turkey. In addition, five people accused of assisting in the attack were arrested in Bulgaria.
The PKK and YPG strongly deny involvement and also accuse Turkey of using the allegation as a pretext for renewing military operations in northern Syria. Independent experts also expressed such suspicions, especially since the Turkish president has been announcing such an offensive for months. The United States, as well as Russia and Iran, had previously clearly advised Ankara against a renewed military offensive. Russia and Iran support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad."
An important detail to mention is that when a woman named Ahlam Albashir was arrested in connection with the bombing; the president of the Guclukonak branch of the Turkish Nationalist Movement Party, Mehmet Emin Ilhan, made made a series of phonecalls to Albashir but claimed that the phonecalls were "fake" - even the Office of the Governor of Sirnak stated that the number
registered to Ilhan had been illegally obtained by a dealer in the Cizre district.
Turkish news reports said that she was Syrian but many have questioned this notion, in particular noting that she had an Eritrean tattoo on her wrist.
A frame taken from the police raid footage
The running theory about the Istanbul bombing seems to be that the woman involved was lured into carrying out the attack by the Turkish government, then betrayed and forced to take the blame in an Operation Gladio style structure. One thing that supports this is her demeanor when planting the bomb, she is seen running away from the scene; something which doesn't fit the mold that the Turks painted her as being, which was a highly trained intelligence agent working on behalf of the PKK, an intelligence agent would not willingly draw attention to themselves when committing an action like this unless they were told to do so.
Video of a woman who is allegedly Ahlam Albashir fleeing quickly after planting the bomb
The kicker here though is that on an official level the bomber is still unknown as there is no legitmate evidence that Albashir was the actual bomber, as of now at least.
You might be asking why Turkey would stage this attack, to that I say it's rather simple; Turkey is using the bombing as a justification to invade Northern Syria, which they have been threatening to do since 2015; as far as I know they are now planning a fourth offensive and have seemingly used this bombing to bolster support for it, as this has been in the works since May of 2022.
Personally I believe that this bombing was carried out by Turkish intelligence itself, considering the corruption in the Turkish government and their use of false flag tactics before it would not be out of the question for them to do this.
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