said<\/a> the NetBlocks founder, Alp Toker.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Turkish parliament\u00a0recently passed\u00a0a sweeping new law prohibiting \u201cdisinformation\u201d, under which social media users or journalists accused of breaking it could be jailed for up to three years. The head of RT\u00dcK, Ebubekir \u015eahin, warned citizens against spreading misinformation about the attack. \u201cWe are following the developments closely. Please do not rely on information from unclear sources. Let\u2019s get information from reliable sources. Let\u2019s not spread false information unknowingly,\u201d he\u00a0said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u0130stiklal Avenue is a crowded street popular with tourists and local people, lined by shops and restaurants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Istanbul mayor, Ekrem \u0130mamo\u011flu, of the opposition Republican People\u2019s party (CHP), visited \u0130stiklal Avenue following the explosion, which occurred less than 200 metres from the party\u2019s Istanbul headquarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI received information from our fire brigade teams on \u0130stiklal street. They continue their investigations in the area in coordination with the police. Our healthcare workers are also working hard. I wish God\u2019s mercy once again to those who lost their lives, and I wish a speedy recovery to the injured,\u201d\u00a0he tweeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turkey was hit by a string of deadly bombings between 2015 and 2017 by Islamic State and outlawed Kurdish groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They included a suicide bomber attack\u00a0on the same street on 19 March 2016, which killed five people and injured 36. Turkish police\u00a0later said\u00a0the bomber had links to IS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In January that year, a suicide bomber in the busy Sultanahmet district killed 13. In June, attackers armed with automatic weapons and explosives belts attacked the entrance of Istanbul\u2019s Atat\u00fcrk airport, killing 45 people other than the attackers and injuring more than 230.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWithout knowing who is behind this attack, the fact that this is the first terror attack in six years brings back terrible memories of the 2015-16 period when hundreds died across Turkey,\u201d said Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy thinktank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think we could see a hardening of the electorate to the right as a result,\u201d he added, pointing towards elections due to be held in Turkey next year, if not earlier. \u201cI think the same trend line could hold again, that whoever portrays themselves as a security candidate standing against terrorism could consolidate their base.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cagaptay said the Turkish authorities\u2019 efforts to throttle social media and clamp down on alleged disinformation could backfire, with the chilling effect of government restrictions visible across domestic media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a troublesome trend as people want to get news. Whenever you crack down on press freedom in a breaking news environment, where mainstream outlets are prevented from covering this, the trend is that people go to alternative sources. There\u2019s always a danger of fake news spreading whenever the government tries to clamp down on news stories,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Six people have been killed and 81 injured after an explosion on Istanbul\u2019s popular pedestrian thoroughfare \u0130stiklal Avenue, in a bomb attack that Turkey\u2019s president described as an act of terrorism. Speaking shortly before departing for Tuesday\u2019s G20 summit in Bali, Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan spoke of a \u201ctreacherous attack\u201d, adding: \u201cThose responsible will be punished.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":27298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4836,11261,5754,5304,7953,11394,8348,8952,5443,458,11555,7396,6083,5241,9196,8854,5468,7298,11949,6738,8057,12210,6159,11897,3545,4028,6046,8493,1445,2264,12773,11111,8394,10197,13157,4502,5539,9515,10454,8145,10342,10634,5331,10748,6332,1198,421,3805,12410,6944,11541,5655,1383,11179,5349,11325,7391,5374,11089,9151,7609,8511,10740,2570,5350,12605,6348,2354,5724,3954,11359,10415,36,594,9550],"class_list":["post-27297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-access","tag-accused","tag-airport","tag-attack","tag-attacker","tag-attacks","tag-ban","tag-blast","tag-bomb","tag-breaking-news","tag-citizens","tag-data","tag-dead","tag-died","tag-environment","tag-explosion","tag-facebook","tag-fake","tag-fake-news","tag-families","tag-fear","tag-female","tag-fire","tag-forensic","tag-founder","tag-freedom","tag-g20","tag-g20-summit","tag-god","tag-government","tag-increase","tag-injured","tag-instagram","tag-investigation","tag-islamic","tag-islamists","tag-istanbul","tag-killed","tag-killing","tag-kurdish","tag-law","tag-lost","tag-mayor","tag-militant","tag-online","tag-parliament","tag-police","tag-president","tag-press-freedom","tag-republican","tag-rt","tag-security","tag-security-services","tag-smoke","tag-social-media","tag-street","tag-suicide","tag-sun","tag-terror","tag-terrorism","tag-terrorist","tag-tirkey","tag-tourist","tag-turkey","tag-twitter","tag-uk","tag-us","tag-washington","tag-weapons","tag-will","tag-windows","tag-work","tag-world","tag-who","tag-youtube"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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