Turkey says it has identified Istanbul club attacker

Members of the Turkish special forces patrol near the Reina night club in Istanbul on January 4, 2017. Emrah Gurel/AP Photo

ISTANBUL // Turkey has identified the gunman in the Istanbul nightclub massacre, the foreign minister said on Wednesday, as the president vowed the country wouldn’t surrender to terrorists or become divided.

The gunman, who killed 39 people during New Year’s Eve celebrations at the Reina club, is still at large. But foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said authorities had identified the man, without providing details.

According to the pro-government Sabah newspaper, the gunman was born in 1988 and is believed to be a Kyrgyz national. It said he speaks Russian, Uzbek, Arabic and Turkish.

ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded nearly 70 people. Of those killed, 27 were foreigners, many from the Middle East.

Also on Wednesday, Turkish police detained 20 suspected ISIL militants – including 11 women – believed to be linked to the attack, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. The operation was launched in the Aegean port city of Izmir.

Anadolu said the suspects were from the largely Muslim Russian republic of Dagestan, from China’s Muslim Uighur minority and from Syria. They are thought to have lived with the Reina attacker.

The private Dogan news agency said Wednesday’s police operation targeted three families who arrived in Izmir about 20 days ago from Konya – a city in central Turkey where the gunman is thought to have been based before carrying out the New Year’s Eve attack. It said 27 people, including women and children, were taken into custody.

At least 16 people were previously detained in connection with the attack, including two foreigners who were stopped on Tuesday at the international terminal of Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport after police checked their mobile phones and luggage, according to Anadolu.

In his first public address to the nation since the attack, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it aimed to set Turks against each other and deepen fault lines, but that the country would not fall “for this game”.

Responding to accusations that Turkey had in the past given support to ISIL, Mr Erdogan said “to present the country – which is leading the greatest struggle against Daesh – as one that is supporting terrorism is what the terror organisation wants”.

“To say Turkey has surrendered to terrorism is to take sides with the terrorists and terror organisations,” he added.

* Associated Press