The 2003 Istanbul bombings were a series of suicide attacks carried out with trucks fitted with bombs detonated at four locations in Istanbul, Turkey, on 15 and 20 November 2003.
On 15 November, two truck bombs were detonated, one in front of the Bet Israel Synagogue in Şişli at around 9:30 a.m. local time (UTC+2.00) and another in front of the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Beyoğlu at around 9:34 a.m. As a result of these bombings, 28 people died, included the attackers, and more than 300 people were wounded. Five days after the first attacks, on 20 November, two attacks were perpetrated against the British Consulate General at around 10:55 a.m. and the HSBC General Headquarters in Beşiktaş at around 11:00 a.m., again using truck bombs. In the second round of attacks, 31 people lost their lives and more than 450 were injured. In total, 59 people died, including the four suicide bombers, and more than 750 were wounded in the bombings.
Investigations launched in the wake of the attacks determined that Al-Qaeda had orchestrated the bombings. The criminal case that began with 69 defendants and, with additions, included 76 defendants in February 2004 regarding the attacks concluded in April 2007 with the sentencing of 49 defendants, of whom seven were sentenced to life in prison, to various periods of incarceration. Some of the figures allegedly from the upper echelons of the militant organization fled to Iraq after the attacks and died there, while a portion were captured by security forces. After a retrial held because the Court of Cassation reversed some of the verdicts delivered in the initial trial, 16 defendants were not sentenced to prison.
The first attacks were carried out on 15 November 2003 against two synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey. At approximately 9:30 a.m. local time (UTC+2.00), a bomb-laden truck that had parked in front of the Bet Israel Synagogue on Nakiye Elgün Street in Şişli was detonated. Many of the worshippers praying at the synagogue that Saturday, a day considered sacred by Jews, and those near the temple lost their lives, and the area surrounding the synagogue was badly damaged.
Approximately four minutes after the first explosion, at around 9:34 a.m., a second attack occurred with the detonation of another bomb-laden truck passing by the Neve Shalom Synagogue on Büyük Hendek Avenue in Beyoğlu. Prayers were being held in three separate rooms of the synagogue, and a child's bar mitzvah ceremony was being held with 400 people in attendance. Because the walls of the synagogue had been fortified after previous attacks, the internal walls of the structure were not badly damaged, but the external wall and surrounding shops and buildings were damaged, and passers-by were killed by the blast. A hole approximately three meters wide and two meters deep appeared at the spot where the bomb exploded.
Teams from the Istanbul Metropolitan Fire Department, Health Department, Directorate of Road Maintenance, and Directorate of Cemeteries; the Istanbul Gas Distribution and Trade; and the Istanbul Water and Sewage Administration arrived at the scenes of both attacks. Search-and-rescue teams dug survivors out from beneath the debris resulting from the explosions and sent them to nearby health institutions. A team from ZAKA coming from Israel that comprised seven people who were experts in search-and-rescue and identification participated in the work after the explosions.
An Islamic militant group, IBDA-C, claimed responsibility for the blasts, but it was later determined that the attacks had been carried out by Al-Qaeda.
Five days later, on 20 November, as US President George W. Bush was in the United Kingdom meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair, two more truck bombs exploded. The first attack occurred at around 10:55 a.m. (UTC+2.00) with the detonation of a bomb, comprising 700 kilograms of ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate, and compressed fuel oil, in a truck that had parked in front of the HSBC Bank AS building on Büyükdere Avenue in the Levent neighborhood of Beşiktaş. There were fatalities and injuries inside and near the building, and after the explosion, the first six aboveground stories of the building became unusable and the front side of the building was badly damaged. Inside the building, an elevator that had been in motion at the time of the bombing collapsed. Body parts were flung from the site of the explosion, some even being found as far as 400 meters away at a petrol station.
Approximately five minutes later, at around 11:00 a.m., another bomb-laden truck drove through security and detonated in front of the British Consulate on Meşrutiyet Avenue in Istanbul's Beyoğlu district. Deaths and injuries were immediately reported from the explosion, and the outer wall of the consulate's front garden collapsed onto cars driving by in the street, and a fire burned in the garden itself. Buildings nearby the consulate, including the entrance to the Çiçek Passage market, and cars on the street were also badly damaged.
After the attack on the HSBC building, police cordoned off the area and began collecting evidence. Electrical and gas lines were shut off, and metro services were stopped. The wounded and other personnel were evacuated from the rear entrance of the building. The fire department, civil defense, provincial health directorate, police, and consulate officials dispatched to the area began search-and-rescue operations. Police also cordoned off the area surrounding the consulate. Within a day, Interior Minister Abdülkadir Aksu, Istanbul Governor Muammer Güler, and Istanbul Provincial Security Director Celalettin Cerrah participated in the investigations. Shortly after the two attacks, a warning of an additional bombing at the Galleria Shopping Center in Bakırköy began to spread; the Akmerkez, Galleria, and Carousel shopping centers were evacuated, although the warnings ended up being baseless.
The bombers appeared to have waited for the traffic lights in front of the HSBC headquarters to turn red to maximize the effects. Police say that the bombers may have timed the attacks to coincide with Bush's visit to the UK.
On the day the attacks were carried out, the Istanbul Provincial Health Directorate issued a statement at 4:00 p.m. that 20 people had died and 257 were injured in the bombings. A few hours later, Health Minister Recep Akdağ announced that the number of deaths was 20 and that 302 people had referred to various hospitals because of the bomb attacks. Interior Minister Abdülkadir Aksu, however, stated that the identified number of injured people was 277. Later the evening of the attack, a statement issued by the Istanbul Security Directorate increased the number of casualties to 23, it shortly thereafter brought the number back down to 20. The following day, Istanbul Provincial Health Director Erman Tuncer reported, again, that 23 people had died and that about 71 people, of whom four were in critical condition, continued to receive medical attention at various hospitals. The number of casualties rose to 24 on 17 November when the body of a woman was found at the scene of the bombing and later to 25 when a victim receiving treatment at a hospital succumbed to their injuries. In a statement he made on 19 November, Istanbul Governor Muammer Güler announced that 25 people had died and approximately 300 people were injured as a result of the attacks. On 28 November, Istanbul Deputy Security Director Halil Yılmaz reported, in a press release riddled with inaccuracies, that 23 people had died from the first bombings but later corrected the mistakes in a statement to the press and changed the number of casualties to 27. This number rose to 28 on 9 February 2004 when Celal Dilsiz, a patient who had been receiving care in a hospital for almost three months, died from his injuries.
The funeral ceremonies for six Jews who died in the attacks—Yoel Ülçer Kohen, Berta Özdoğan, Yona Romano, Annette Rubinstein, Anna Rubinstein, and Avram Varol—were held at the Ulus Ashkenazi Jewish Cemetery. The six people were laid to rest in the front section of the mausoleum where 23 people killed in the 1986 attack on the Neve Shalom Synagogue were buried.