Nightclub gunman identified, Turkey says
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TURKEY has identified the gunman in the Istanbul nightclub massacre, the foreign minister said yesterday, as the president vowed that the country won’t surrender to terrorists or become divided.
The gunman, who killed 39 people during New Year celebrations at the Reina club, is still at large. But Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said authorities had identified the man, without giving details.
Turkish police, meanwhile, detained 20 suspected Islamic State militants, including 11 women, state-run news agency Anadolu reported.
It said the suspects were from the largely Muslim Russian republic of Dagestan, from China’s Uygur minority and from Syria. It said they are thought to have lived with the nightclub attacker.
IS has claimed responsibility for the attack, in which nearly 70 people were wounded. Of those killed, 27 were foreigners, many from the Middle East. Islamic State said a “soldier of the caliphate” had carried out the mass shooting to avenge Turkish military operations against IS in northern Syria.
The private Dogan news agency said yesterday’s police operation targeted three families who had arrived in the Aegean port city of Izmir about 20 days ago from Konya — a city in central Turkey where the gunman is thought to have been based before carrying out the attack. It said 27 people, including women and children, were in custody. At least 16 people were previously detained in connection with the attack, including two foreigners stopped at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport after police checked their cellphones and luggage.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the attack aimed to set Turks against each other and deepen fault lines, but that the country would not fall “for this game.”
Responding to accusations in the past that Turkey had given support to the Islamic State group, Erdogan said that “to present the country — which is leading the greatest struggle against Daesh— as one that is supporting terrorism is what the terror organization wants.
“To say Turkey has surrendered to terrorism is to take sides with the terrorists and terror organizations,” he said.
Erdogan also said that “in Turkey, no one’s way of life is under any threat. Those who claim this have to prove it.”
This was in response to a campaign before the attack by some government supporters who warned against New Year celebrations they depicted as a Western or Christian tradition, as well as some social media postings that seemed to support the attack. This caused uproar amid secular Turks who said their lifestyles were being threatened.
Police in Istanbul have set up checkpoints and are checking vehicles across the city as security levels remained high. Police were stopping cars and Istanbul’s ubiquitous yellow taxis, with passengers and drivers holding up their identifications while officers inspected inside the vehicles. Istanbul has been on high alert since the attack, with the gunman still at large.
The Hurriyet newspaper said the gunman had previously entered Turkey twice, in 2014 and in 2015. He is believed to have slipped into Syria illegally, where he was trained in the use of guns and bombs and fought.
The pro-government Sabah newspaper said he was born in 1988 and believed to be a Kyrgyz national. It said he speaks Russian, Uzbek, Arabic and Turkish.
Haber Turk newspaper reported that after the attack, he walked some 400 meters and then took a taxi but was forced to get off because he didn’t have any money on him. He later got on another taxi and woke up some Uygurs working at a restaurant in Istanbul’s Zeytinburnu district to get some money to pay the driver. The newspaper said seven Uygurs either working or sheltering at the restaurant have been taken into custody.
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