Istanbul, Turkey – Crowds have begun to return to Istiklal Avenue, the busy pedestrian thoroughfare in central Istanbul, where a bomb attack on Sunday killed six people and injured 81. Locals expressed shock and disapproval after the attack. Furkan works in a chocolate shop a few steps away from where the bomb went off. “At about 4:20 p.m [13:20 GMT] we were smoking a cigarette at the door,” he told Al Jazeera. “Suddenly there was an explosion. We were surprised. It was a scary situation.” He said a crowd quickly formed in the area and was concerned about the possibility of a second bomb. The store was closed for the rest of the day, but was back in business on Monday. Police had closed all entrances to Istiklal after the explosion. The road reopened on Monday, although the main entrance was temporarily blocked by police until 15:45 (12:35 GMT) as politicians visited the site of the blast, where flowers have been laid as a memorial for the victims. Istiklal was lined with Turkish flags, as many as 1,200, according to some accounts. The explosion killed a nine-year-old girl and her father, a teenager and her mother, and a married couple. All were Turkish citizens. On Monday, authorities said 57 injured had been discharged after treatment, while 24 injured, including two in critical condition, remained in hospital. Istiklal had a heavy police presence and was not as busy as usual on a Monday, but there were still many pedestrians walking the street. Metincan Alkan, 30, works at Marlen, a bar on a back street not far from where the explosion occurred. He said businesses in the area would be hit hard after the attack. “People will start again [stay] away from Beyoglu,” he said. “I mean, it’s bad for us from every angle.” Mustafa Toptsuoglu, 53, is on Istiklal Avenue, known for his icli kofte – bags of Bulgarian wheat filled with spices – which he sells from a small street stall minutes away from where the blast took place. He told Al Jazeera he was upstairs in the restaurant next door and heard the blast, but returned to his seat on Monday afternoon. “The purpose of terrorism is to terrify people, create an air of panic and keep them locked in their homes,” Topcuoglu said. “No matter what, we still came, we’re at work, we’re continuing our work and we’re open again.” Relatives and friends of Arzu Ozsoy and her 15-year-old daughter, Yagmur Ucar, who died in Sunday’s blast, attend their funeral in Istanbul [Emrah Gurel/AP Photo] The bench bomb suspect, a Syrian woman named Ahlam Albasir, was arrested in the Kucukcekmece suburb of Istanbul in the early hours of Monday. At least 46 people had been taken into custody in connection with the attack since early evening. According to media reports, the Istanbul Police Department said Albasir confessed to having ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its Syrian branch, the People’s Protection Units (YPG). However, in statements on Monday, the PKK and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which are mainly made up of YPG fighters, denied responsibility for the attack. The blast revived grim memories of a series of attacks carried out by PKK-linked groups and ISIL (ISIS) across Turkey from 2015 to 2017. In March 2016, an ISIL-linked suicide bomber killed four people on Istiklal Avenue. Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, told Al Jazeera that further violence would likely have an impact on Turkey’s parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for June. “This is quite a worrying development and we will have to wait and see who is behind it and if there is any group that is going to take responsibility,” he said. “This attack, if followed by others, could lead to a shift of the electorate to the right and a consolidation around the security candidate,” Cagaptay said. “This happened the last time Turkey went through a series of terrorist attacks in 2015.”
