2015 Istanbul Suicide Bombing

On 6 January 2015, a woman later identified as Diana Ramazova, a Chechen-Russian citizen from Dagestan, entered a police station in Istanbul's central Sultanahmet district, close to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, and detonated a bomb vest. Istanbul governor Vasip Sahin said the woman, who reportedly spoke English with a thick accent and was dressed in a niqab, told officers she had lost her wallet before setting off the device. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said she was carrying two additional explosive devices, which officers at the scene safely defused. Emergency services responded to the blast and the tram line running through the district was temporarily suspended.

The explosion killed Ramazova and injured two police officers. One of the injured officers, a young man from Trabzon who had recently become a father, later died of his wounds. He was the only other fatality in the attack.

In the immediate aftermath, six people — including three foreign nationals — were detained in connection with the attack. On 7 January, the far-left armed group Revolutionary People's Liberation Party–Front (DHKP/C) claimed responsibility, stating the attack was meant "to punish (the) murderers of Berkin Elvan" — a 15-year-old boy killed by a tear-gas canister fired by police during the 2013 Istanbul protests — and "to call to account the fascist state that protects AKP's corrupt, stealing ministers." The bombing came five days after another DHKP/C member had thrown two grenades, which failed to explode, at police guarding the Dolmabahçe Palace, which houses the Istanbul offices of the Turkish prime minister. DHKP/C had previously been linked to deadly attacks on Turkish government targets, including a 2013 suicide bombing at the US embassy in Ankara.

DHKP/C initially claimed the bomber was a woman named Elif Sultan Kalsen; after being called to a criminal medical center to identify the body, Kalsen's family denied the claim, stating the deceased was not their daughter. On 8 January 2015, authorities identified the actual perpetrator as Diana Ramazova. She had married Abu Aluevitsj Edelbijev, a Norwegian citizen of Chechen origin, in 2014. The couple spent three months in Istanbul, from May to July 2014, before entering Syria, where Edelbijev fought for ISIS and was killed in December 2014. Ramazova, who was pregnant at the time, reentered Turkey irregularly shortly after his death and carried out the attack the following month.