The man and woman were killed during an “attempt to attack” a security checkpoint at the Caglayan courthouse at 11.46 a.m. local time (0846GMT), Yerlikaya posted on social media.
Six people were injured in the incident, including three police officers. “I congratulate our heroic police officers. I wish a speedy recovery to our injured,” the minister added.
Caglayan, which is also known as the Istanbul Justice Palace, is a huge court complex in the Kagithane district on the city’s European side.
Yerlikaya later identified the attackers as members of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front, or DHKP/C, a far-left group that is considered a terrorist organization in Turkiye, the United States and the European Union.
The attack took place on the day when Turkiye was commemorating the anniversary of an earthquake in the country’s south that killed thousands of people.
The DHKP/C has been largely inactive in recent years. In March 2015, the group took a prosecutor hostage at the same courthouse, demanding details about the police killing of a teenager during anti-government protests the previous year.
Two gunmen died as police stormed the building, and the prosecutor later died of his injuries.
The group also claimed responsibility for a February 2013 suicide bomb attack on the US Embassy in Ankara in which a Turkish security guard was killed and four other people wounded.
Last month, a man was shot and killed at an Istanbul church in an attack that was claimed by the Daesh group.
Two men were later arrested on suspicion of killing Tuncer Cihan, 52, on Jan. 28 at the Santa Maria Church in the Buyukdere neighborhood. Dozens of suspected Daesh members and supporters also were detained.
