2012 Istanbul Suicide Bombing

On 11 September 2012, at approximately 11:00 AM local time, a man later identified as İbrahim Çuhadar entered the grounds of the 75th Anniversary Police Station in the Sultangazi district of Istanbul, Turkey. He crossed a guard cabin at the station's gate and walked along a 50-meter pathway before climbing the entrance stairs and reaching an x-ray screening device at the door. He threw a grenade inside the station, which did not explode. Police officer Bülent Özkan then attempted to stop and push the attacker out of the building. The attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body during this struggle. A witness account from an officer on duty indicated two gunshots were heard from inside the building shortly before the explosion, reportedly fired by Özkan.

Officer Özkan sustained serious injuries and died while being transported to the hospital. The attacker, Çuhadar, also died in the explosion. A total of seven other people were injured, including four police officers and three civilians, who were treated at Bağcılar State Hospital, Okmeydanı Training and Research Hospital, and Bezmiâlem Vakıf University Medical Faculty Hospital. The blast partially collapsed the station's entrance gate and shattered windows of armored vehicles parked outside.

Investigators determined that the attacker was İbrahim Çuhadar, a member of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP-C), born in 1973 in Alaca, Çorum province. He had previously been held for eight months in Sincan F-type prison due to alleged DHKP-C membership. His body was released from the Forensic Medicine Institute on 14 September and buried in Gazi Cemetery in Sultangazi on 16 September. Forensic examination identified the explosive material as a pressure-triggered, fragmentation-type plastic explosive.

The DHKP-C claimed responsibility for the attack via a statement posted on an affiliated website, which included a photograph of Çuhadar and referenced the earlier death of DHKP-C member Hasan Selim Gönen, who died on 21 July 2012 after being shot during a police confrontation on 20 July 2012 near the same neighborhood. The organization's statement described the choice of the Gazi police station as deliberate rather than random. A photograph dated 30 August 2012, posted on the same website, reportedly showed Çuhadar wrapping the explosives around his body prior to the attack.

Turkish officials publicly condemned the attack, including President Abdullah Gül, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Governor of Çorum, the headman of Çuhadar's registered home village, and Istanbul's Governor and Police Chief, who spoke at Özkan's funeral. Local officials in Çorum stated that Çuhadar's family had left the village decades earlier and that he had no ongoing ties to the area.