ANKARA — A hostage standoff at a Procter & Gamble plant near Istanbul has ended without any casualties nine hours after an armed man raided the plant on Thursday, taking seven people hostage in a protest against Israeli actions in Gaza.
Earlier Thursday, at around 2:30 p.m. local time, the assailant stormed the P&G plant in Turkey’s northwestern province of Kocaeli.
Kocaeli Governor Seddar Yavuz said that neither hostages nor the assailant was harmed in the operation.
“We neutralized him in a tiny operation because the negotiations failed,” he said, briefing the press outside the plant.
The governor added that the assailant was carrying two guns and that his goal was “to stop the massacres committed by Israel in Gaza and the opening” of the Rafah border crossing, linking Egypt to the Palestinian enclave.
Yavuz identified the man as a former worker at the plant and said that the Turkish security forces established no link between him and any militant group.
Relatives of the hostages who were waiting outside the plant’s vast compound cheered when they received the news, live broadcasts from the scene showed.
Earlier Thursday, a P&G spokesman from the company’s headquarters in Ohio told the AFP that it was “working with local authorities to resolve an urgent security situation.”
The company later informed its workers on the plant’s night shift not to come to the plant, employees told local Turkish media.
A few hours after raiding the plant, the assailant posted a video on his social media account that was taken inside the plant and showed writing on a wall, which read “The gates will open for Gaza,” and Turkey and Palestine flags, as well as a weapon sitting on a desk.
In another video also posted on social media, the assailant is heard asking for more humanitarian aid to reach Gaza. In the video hostages are seen unharmed and moving freely inside an office at the plant.
Police cordoned off roads leading to the plant. Ambulances were also dispatched to the scene, purportedly as a precaution.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Turkey has been a scene of mass protests against both Israel and the United States over Washington’s support of the Jewish state’s military operations against the militant group.
In November, the US embassy in Ankara warned US citizens about potential attacks on certain US-branded businesses amid ongoing mass protests against Israel over the ongoing war in Gaza.
Local branches of several multinational chains, including McDonald's and Starbucks, faced protests, boycotts and vandalism by demonstrators throughout late October and early November as the humanitarian toll in Gaza increased.
Turkish officials and official institutions also endorsed protests and boycotts against international brands. The head of the country’s state-run religious affair directorate, Ali Erbas, on Wednesday called on citizens to continue boycotts against Israeli brands.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a leading champion of the Palestinian cause, has also been chastising Israel over the rising humanitarian toll in Gaza.
Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack killed at least 1,200 people in southern Israel, and more than 28,000 people were killed in Gaza in the ensuing war between the Jewish state and the militant group.
This is a developing story and has been updated since its initial publication.
