Although no group has yet claimed Tuesday's gun and bomb attack which killed 42 people, Ankara has pointed a finger at IS, which has been blamed for several suicide attacks around the country in the past year.
On Thursday, 13 suspected IS members were arrested over the bloodshed.
Turkey's opposition has accused Erdogan, whose Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been in power since 2002, of creating a climate which favours the extremism now stalking Turkey.
"Turkey is currently fiercely fighting IS -- but its past mistakes have had fallout," says Sinan Ulgen, president of the Istanbul-based Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM) and a former diplomat.
Ulgen sees Turkey as highly exposed to attacks owing to its shared border with Syria and Iraq, where IS controls swathes of territory, and the proliferation of IS cells on its own soil.
"Turkey is easy terrain for IS operations -- much easier than Europe," says Ulgen.
At the start of the Syrian conflict, Turkey took a relatively indulgent approach towards the jihadists, with whom it shares a key goal: ousting the regime of Erdogan's arch-enemy Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Turkey also saw the extremists as a potential bulwark against Syrian Kurds, whose separatist ambitions have emboldened Kurdish rebels acting within Turkey's own borders.
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