Ekrem Imamoglu

According to a video shared by the Turkish Interior Minister on Wednesday, the fire in Istanbul was started by unlawful welding work. A worker welding a metal object with a blowtorch in the residential building when fires first erupt and thick smoke rises into the air. The fire broke out at midday on Tuesday at the Masquerade Club, a large nightclub housed in the basement of the 16-story apartment block in the Besiktas district's Gayrettepe neighborhood. 'The investigation [...] into the incident is still underway,' Turkey's Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said in a tweet on X.'

Around 12:45 p.m. local time (09:45GMT) at the Masquerade nightclub, which had been closed and undergoing repairs, there was a catastrophic fire. The club is located on the ground and basement floors of a 16-story residential building in Istanbul's Besiktas district, and the fire quickly erupted into an inferno that engulfed the entire block. Shocking images from a television broadcast in Turkey showed how thick fires and a column of black smoke gushed from the 16-story building's upper-storey windows. The number of people who died in the fire (in Istanbul's Besiktas district) has increased to 29,' governor Davut Gul's office reported in a statement, resending the earlier toll. Following the Interior Ministry's announcement that an investigation had been launched, many people, including the club's CEOs, were arrested for questioning.

Imamoglu led by ten percentage points in the mayoral election in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, while his Republican People's Party (CHP) retained Ankara and gained 15 other mayoral seats in cities around the country, with the majority of the votes counted. It was the worst loss for Erdogan and his AKP party (AKP) in their more than two decades in power, and it could have a dramatic change in the country's split political landscape. In a post-midnight address, Erdogan referred to it as a 'turning point.'