The Israeli consulate in Istanbul is on Maslak's Büyükdere Avenue, which is not a diplomatic quarter — it is a canyon of glass towers housing banks and holding companies. The building was long ago vacated of staff; the nameplate, one imagines, polished less often than those in the lobbies of the offices above. Diplomacy abhors a vacuum, but it turns out an empty consulate makes quite a loud noise when three armed men arrive at the door.
France 24 tells us [18] that nearly 200 people have been arrested in the sweep that followed. That is a lot of arrests for a single morning's violence. It is also — this is a thought — a number that contains multiples: the gunmen who came, the police who responded, the investigators who fanned out across the city, and then a great many other people who were somewhere else when it happened but are now in custody anyway. The arithmetic of a counter-terrorism inquiry is never one-to-one.