Sure, IST is perfectly safe, but has a long string of unfortunate events (often seeming to be unrelated). The latest being the closure of IST the airport due to a large fire (now how many airports have been closed due to a fire in the past decade?). I guess shoddy construction has as much to do with the risks of being in IST as anything else.

In hindsight the terrorist warnings that started this thread (2 years ago) were both right and wrong; or rather the attacks did happen but were not greatly disruptive. And of course the UK city attacks alluded to in this thread did happen, with the tube bombings in London the following year. Hard to rate these things, but I'd put London, Paris and New York at higher risk than IST (but Frankfurt at lower risk).