Photo Feature: Bomb attacks in Turkey since 1982

ISTANBUL – Agence France-Presse

The following is a list of the worst bomb attacks in Turkey since 1982:  

August 7, 1982: A bomb at Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport followed by a gun battle leaves 11 dead and 63 injured. The attack is claimed by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA).

  
September 6, 1986: A twin suicide bombing claimed by Islamic Jihad kills 22 people at the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul.


December 25, 1991: Explosives and firebombs are hurled at Istanbul department store “Çetinkaya” by militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), killing 17 people and injuring 23 others. 

   
March 13, 1999: 12 die in a firebomb attack at Istanbul shopping mall “Mavi Çarşı” (the blue bazaar). The attack is claimed by the PKK, but the militant group later retracts its claim.

   
November 15 and 20, 2003: Four suicide car bomb attacks in Istanbul hit two synagogues, the British consulate and a branch of British multinational bank HSBC, leaving 63 dead, including British Consul General Roger Short, and hundreds wounded. The attacks are claimed by al-Qaeda and a Turkish extremist group named the Islamic Front of Raiders of the Great Orient.

   
September 12, 2006: 10 people, including seven children, are killed in a powerful bomb blast in Diyarbakır, the largest city in Turkey’s southeast, while the PKK denies involvement.
   
   
February 11, 2013: 17 people are killed when a Syrian minibus explodes barely 40 meters into the buffer zone of the Cilvegözü border crossing with Syria in the Turkish town of Reyhanlı.

   
May 11, 2013: A twin car bomb attack kills 52 people in Reyhanlı as Ankara blames pro-Damascus groups.

   
July 20, 2015: 34 people are killed and around 100 injured in a suicide bombing in the Suruç district of Turkey’s southeastern Şanlıurfa province near the border with Syria. Turkish officials blame the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). 

   
October 10, 2015: 103 people are killed and more than 500 wounded in a twin suicide bombing targeting a crowd of activists at a peace rally in Ankara. The government blames the attack - the deadliest ever on Turkish soil - on ISIL.

   
January 12, 2016: 10 people, all foreigners, are killed and 15 wounded in a suicide attack by a Saudi-born bomber in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district, the touristic heart of the city.