Istanbul NightClub Shooting Heralds Year of Bloodshed in Turkey

As New Year’s Eve approached, Turks were ready to put 2016 behind them: It had been a wretched year for the country, marked by numerous terrorist attacks and often violent political instability. Many wished each other not only a happy, but also a peaceful 2017.
Yet just over an hour into the new year, it became all too clear that Turkey would continue on its violent course, as a gunman stormed into an Istanbul nightclub, killing at least 39 revellers at a New Year’s Eve party.
The unidentified attacker killed a policeman and a civilian standing at the entrance of the Reina nightclub before shooting into the celebrating crowd at random. He managed to flee the scene shortly after as security forces stormed the venue, and was still at large Sunday afternoon local time.

The Reina club attacked early on Sunday is one of Istanbul’s most exclusive venues, popular with the city’s elite and tourists alike. It sits beside the Bosphorus strait that separates Europe from Asia, offering guests a spectacular view across the water.
On Saturday night, some 600 people were celebrating the beginning of the new year. As the gunman opened fire, some party-goers tried to escape by jumping from the club’s waterfront terrace. Police officers pulled several survivors from the Bosphorus, Turkish newspapers reported.

Inside the club, bodies covered the dance floor. “Before I could understand what was happening, my husband fell on top of me,” Sinem Uyanik, one of the guests, told the Associated Press. Her husband was wounded in the attack. “I had to lift several bodies from top of me before I could get out.”

The attacker, Kocarslan told Hurriyet, “raved through the place with Kalashnikovs”. He added: “U.S. intelligence warned over such an attack about one week or 10 days ago and measures have been taken, including on the sea front. And look what has happened then.”

Additional security measures had already been in place on Saturday night, with thousands of police patrolling the streets and squares in major cities, including 17,000 officers on duty in Istanbul. In Ankara, police arrested eight suspected Islamic State militants said to plan a New Year’s Eve attack.

The upmarket Istanbul Reina club, targeted in a gun attack during New Year celebrations that left at least 39 dead, is the haunt of Turkey’s young secular elite and one of the most prestigious nightspots in the city.

With an idyllic location on the shores of the Bosphorus on the European side of the city and a terrace spilling down to the water’s edge, Reina is the place to be seen in the city.
It is expensive and hard to get into, with bouncers giving would-be guests a hard time at the entrance to ensure they look sufficiently well-moneyed and beautiful.
The most well-heeled patrons can even be taken up to the waterside terrace of the nightclub in boats.

The club is popular with foreign visitors and of the 21 victims identified so far, 15 are confirmed to be foreigners.

The parties at Reina are legendary, with the action usually not starting until well after midnight and the venue endowed with several restaurants and dance floors.

The view from the terrace is spectacular, just underneath the mighty first bridge across the Bosphorus with the lights of Asia twinkling on the other side.

The bridge is itself now haunted by history and named after the victims of the failed July 15 coup attempt after it became the site of fierce battles between plotters and protesters.

greencrowJanuary 1, 2017 at 10:46 AM

BTW, Erdogan says there was only one attacker and he was NOT dressed up as Santa. Where did the previous disinformation come from????

Private NTV news channel said the assailant entered the upscale nightclub, on the shores of the Bosporus, on the European side of the city, dressed in a Santa Claus outfit.

Security camera footage obtained by AP from Haberturk newspaper, shows the male assailant dressed in black and carrying a backpack as he shoots down a police officer outside the Reina nightclub.