On a Tuesday midday in one of Istanbul’s busiest commercial districts, a violent shootout between police and a group of armed assailants left one gunman dead and two other people wounded, with two police officers sustaining minor injuries, local governor Davut Gul has confirmed. The exchange of gunfire broke out shortly after 12:15 pm local time (0915 GMT) in the Levent business district, located on Istanbul’s European side, steps away from the Israeli consulate building.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, key questions remain unanswered, including whether the Israeli diplomatic mission was the intentional target of the attack. A source close to the situation told Agence France-Presse that no Israeli diplomats are currently present on Turkish territory. All Israeli diplomatic missions across the Middle East region, including those in Turkey, were evacuated shortly after the October 7, 2023 attacks by Palestinian group Hamas on Israeli soil, a security precaution implemented amid rising regional tensions.
Turkish authorities have already completed the initial identification process for all involved suspects. Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci confirmed that the group traveled to Istanbul from the northwestern Turkish city of Izmit using a rented vehicle. Ciftci also noted that one of the assailants has ties to an “organisation that exploits the region”, though officials have not yet publicly named the specific group linked to the attack.
Independent Turkish media reports have suggested the Islamic State (IS) group may be connected to the shooting. This potential link follows a deadly IS attack on Turkish police just two months prior in Yalova, a city on the Sea of Marmara roughly 55 miles southeast of Istanbul, where IS gunmen opened fire on police checkpoints, killing three officers and wounding nine more. In the wake of that December attack, Turkish security forces launched sweeping nationwide raids against IS cells, arresting more than 120 suspected militants.
Ciftci added that the two main suspects involved in Tuesday’s shootout are brothers, one of whom has a prior criminal record for drug offenses. Unconfirmed local media reports add that three total suspects were involved in the plot, all clad in camouflage gear, carrying heavy long firearms, and transporting supplies in large backpacks.
AFP correspondents on the ground observed a heavy, sustained police deployment cordoning off the area outside the consulate building in the hours after the shootout. Visible bloodstains were left on the pavement of an adjacent public parking lot, and footage broadcast by private Turkish news network NTV showed officers returning fire along a busy central thoroughfare, before emergency medics carried an injured victim away on a stretcher.
Turkey’s Justice Minister Akin Gurlek announced via social media platform X that the Istanbul public prosecutor’s office has opened a formal criminal investigation into the incident, with authorities working to piece together the full sequence of events and any broader connections to extremist networks.