18/08/2005
NEWS STORY
Mindful of the ongoing terrorist threat, both at home and abroad, the organizers of the inaugural Turkish Grand Prix are leaving nothing to chance in their efforts to ensure that this weekend passes without incident.
"We doubled (our security measures) after the British Grand Prix, or rather what happened that week," Mumtaz Tahincioglu, of the Turkish Autosport Federation told Reuters. "With what has happened around the world in the last few months, it figures that you need to do something extra.
"We have discussed this with the governor of Istanbul, the mayor and the prime minister and all together we decided that the standard security measurements we had planned needed to be doubled," he revealed. "Initially the private security company had supplied us with 2,000 people. We increased that to 4,000."
In addition to the terrorist atrocities in London, Turkey has also suffered at the hands of terrorists, with two fatal attacks in the last month, killing 7 people, while the bombing of the Istanbul HQ of the HSBC bank in 2003 saw more than 60 people lose their lives.