Turkey has also launched a new operation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the country’s eastern Tunceli province two days after the attack.
A total of fifty people have so far been arrested in connection with the bombing that left six dead and 81 injured on a central street last Sunday. Istanbuland which the Turkish government attributes to a Kurdish group in Syria, the Justice Ministry said on Tuesday.
“The number of detainees in connection with the attack is now 50. No terrorist organization will succeed in attacking Turkey,” announced Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag.
The prime suspect is Alam Albashir, a Syrian national accused of planting the bomb in the well-known tourist and commercial street of Istiklal.
She was arrested ten hours after the attack as she planned to flee to Greece on Monday.
The fifty detainees are being interrogated in Istanbul police stations, various media reports.
Although there is no information on their identity, at least two other Syrians appear among the names leaked by the media.
Suspected militias
The government attributes the attack to the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG extensionconsidered a terrorist by Turkey but an ally of the United States in the fight against the jihadist Islamic State.
For Turkey, the YPG is indistinguishable from PKKthe Kurdish guerrilla considered terrorist by the United States and the European Union.
Ankara accuses Washington of funding and supplying equipment to the YPG.
Both the YPG and PKK have denied any involvement in the attack.
The presidents of the United States, Joe Biden, and of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, met this Tuesday as part of the summit of the G20 In Indonesia.
The official Anadolu agency indicated that the chiefs of staff of Turkey and the United States, respectively Yasar Guler and Mark Milley, would have analyzed the terrorist attack in a telephone chat and how to strengthen the bilateral military relationship of the two countries, allies in the BORN.
Public television TRT reported that 31 of the 81 injured in the attack are still hospitalized, two of them in critical condition.
