EXPLOSION AND FIRE at the Istanbul airport.

InstaPundit’s Istanbul correspondent Claire Berlinski emails:

I’m back in Istanbul (I flew in yesterday and as usual missed the excitement). I’m looking out the window, but not seeing this big black cloud of smoke everyone’s talking about — then again, I’m a ways from the airport and don’t have an unobstructed view in that direction anyway. Thing is, everyone is saying that it doesn’t seem to be terrorism, but first, how on earth would they know — after all, the place is on fire so they can’t exactly be sifting through the evidence — and second, isn’t that exactly the place you’d target if you’re trying to injure the Turkish tourism industry right before high season? That is, after all, the PKK’s explicit and stated strategy. The building on fire, by the way, is reportedly near a hangar housing military aircraft. I don’t have any kind of inside information, I just think it’s a little odd that everyone is so quick to say this doesn’t seem to be a work of terrorism, since if I were a terrorist, that would look like one mighty tempting target to me. Then again, what I do see out my window is four Turkish workmen horsing around on rickety scaffolding that is, to put it mildly, not up to EU safety standards, so it also seems quite culturally plausible that someone at the airport just stubbed out a cigarette around a pile of inflammable chemicals or something.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Berlinski sends a photo (by her fiance David Gross) of the scaffold. Click “read more” to see it.


berlinskiscaffold.jpg