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The Eurasian Politician - December 2003
By: Christian Jokinen and Anssi Kullberg
Translation of the article published in the Finnish daily Turun Sanomat on 23 Nov. 2003.
Last week's bomb attacks against two synagogues in the largest city of Turkey, Istanbul, in Jewish Sabbath, were not enough for the terrorists. One week later, new bomb attacks targeted the British Consulate and the Honk Kong HSBC bank.
The way how the attacks were made hints at more than just a domestic terrorist group behind them. The attacks were immediately connected with al-Qaida, although it may have exploited domestic, Turkish or Kurdish, extremists. An organization called "Islamic Attack Front of Great Orient" took responsibility of the attacks. It is a strange organization, which combines radical Islamism with Marxist slogans and rhetorics.
Turkey has a long experience of fighting against terrorism, although the most active suicide bombers in Turkey have so far been communist terrorist groups claiming Kurdish cause, most importantly the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party.
Although their propaganda raises mainly leftist echoes also in the West, it is necessary to remember that the PKK (by its latest name Kurdistan People's Congress, KHK) is indisputably a terrorist organization, large part of whose victims have been Kurds, and who has severely damaged all efforts to improve the position of the Kurds in Turkey.
Al-Qaida has again showed that it is capable of performing strikes aiming at mass loss of lives. One of the most esteemed experts on al-Qaida, the Sri Lankan / Singaporean researcher Rohan Gunaratna, warned Europe in October, when visiting Denmark, about the operational autonomy of al-Qaida cells, their ability to act independently, although simultaneously under strict ideological control. He recommended an increase of countermeasures against terrorist groups infiltrated by al-Qaida.
During the past year, al-Qaida has suffered serious defeats, as many of its key directors have been arrested and the organization has lost its base in Afghanistan. This seems not to have weakened the organization's will of fighting, and its capability to inspire, indoctrinate and finance smaller terrorist organizations in their battle against moderate Muslim communities and governments.
The bomb attacks in Turkey were a blow under belt against the very kind of tolerant and reformist Islam, which could best act as a mediator in the dialogue between Western countries and the core areas of Islam.
Turkish Jews, who fell targets of the first two strikes, are themselves heritage of Turkey's position as a fortress of tolerance in Europe, as they descend from the Jews who fled the inquisition from Spain. Turkey has traditionally received also others who have been persecuted in Europe. Among the most famous individuals who found asylum in Turkey were for example the freedom heralds and national writers of Hungary and Poland: Lajos Kossuth and Adam Mickiewicz. Latest Turkey has received many refugees from the massacres of the Balkans and the Caucasus.
In Western Europe, Turkey suffers from an undeservedly bad reputation, mainly due to the fierce propaganda advocated against Turkey by her historical rival states and more lately by extreme leftist Kurds. Yet Turkey has been the very country, where also the Kurds of neighboring countries, Iran, Iraq and Syria, have sought asylum from persecution.
When the terrorist stroke first against Saudi Arabia and then against Turkey, one cannot avoid the impression that radical Islamists strike against their both most important rivals within the Islamic world: Conservative Islam, which prevails in many Arab countries, and reformist Islam, whose most powerful guardian is Turkey.
Al-Qaida follows the strategy outlined by the Marxist theorists of terrorism, trying to provoke governments into actions against pious Muslims, thus radicalizing Muslim populations into revolutionary atmosphere. At the same time, the organization tries to antagonize the relations between the Islamic world and the West, and thereby make the hazard of "clash of civilizations" become true.
In its attempts to polarize the world, al-Qaida attacks against those who serve as bridges and mediators between cultures. That is exactly what Turkey is.
Instead of attacking directly Western countries, al-Qaida has now set out for striking against liberal and Westernized Muslim countries. Before Turkey, they had stroke, among others, in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
All these are also important tourist destinations. It is most probable that one of al-Qaida's goals has been to hit interaction between cultures also in the form of tourism, by spreading panic that prevents Westerners from travelling to Muslim countries. [The authors of this article experienced this when trying to find inexpensive flights from Finland to Turkey in December. Travel agencies had reacted by postponing all charter flights, and there were only expensive route flights left.] Western media faithfully helps the radical Islamists by spreading the panic on their behalf. Unfortunately making terrorist attacks in the more free Muslim countries is also easier than in strictly governed police states.
The strikes concretely manifested that the terrorists were not stopped by the fact that Turkey presently has an Islamist government, which has appeared critical at the United States and the war in Iraq.
Moderate Islamists, too, are enemies for the anti-American radical Islamists represented by al-Qaida. Meanwhile, un-Islamic dictatorships who however belong to the anti-US camp, like Syria, Libya, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, have not been targeted by al-Qaida.
The Istanbul terrorist strikes were a serious lesson that turning into criticism against the US, accompanying the anti-American rhetorics of some major European states, and reluctance to participate in the war in Iraq did not save Turkey from Islamist terror.
It seems that Turkey's political decisions have by no means lessened the danger Turkey faces from radical Islamist terrorists. More probably, Turkey's indecision and bowing at the "Old Europe" instead of the earlier pro-American direction, has been interpreted as weakness by Turkey's enemies, and it has just inspired and encouraged all anti-Turkish extremists. This assumption is supported by the fact that also the PKK has recently threatened to re-start violence.
The way how the Istanbul terror strikes were done, points at careful planning and professionalism. Such strikes are planned months, even years, before their performance. Thus the common media speculation about a connection with President Bush's visit to London is unreliable, while a more credible factor in the timing of the strikes was the coming last prayer day of the Ramadan. For al-Qaida, the Western media and its assumptions are of course very important, but we should not forget another media, which is of immense importance for them: the radical mullahs and imams speaking in the mosques around the world.
The Istanbul strikes remind Europe for how seriously the war against terrorism touches us, too. Turkey is the absolutely most democratic and Western of all Muslim countries. Its history, culture and politics connect it with Southern Europe more strongly than with the Arab world, and in many ways it can be said that in spite of being a borderland, Turkey self-evidently belongs to Europe.
Among the contemporary states, Turkey is the clearest heir of the Byzantium, although Kemal Atatürk's reforms put an end to the imperial status and transformed Turkey into a national state of the model prevalent in Europe. Istanbul, former Constantinople, is the former capital of Turkey, and is half located on the European continent.
Integration of Turkey with the rest of Europe - including the European Union - is in long run most important for Europe's relations with the Middle East and the Arab world, because it is for Europe even more important than for the trans-Atlantic US, to have a reliable and strong bridge to the Islamic world, as well as to support and strengthen reformist, tolerant and democratic Muslim culture.
The EU again soon faces its obligation to assess how Turkey has made advance in the reforms aiming at the EU membership, which Turkey has applied for decades already. It has been a democracy longer than Spain, Portugal and Greece, who underwent military dictatorship just before becoming EU members. Also, Turkey's problems are not unbearable compared with the former socialist countries which now join the EU.
Terrorists want to radicalize Turkish Islamists, but the effect of the strikes may actually be the opposite. Turkey's Islamists have already undergone remarkable moderation. One only needs to compare the present premier Recep Tayyip Erdoghan's regime with that of his predecessor as an Islamist leader, Necmettin Erbakan. Just some time ago, when Erdoghan himself was still the mayor of Istanbul, he, too, opposed Turkish membership in both the EU and the NATO, and Turkey's close relations with Israel, but nowadays the government of the moderate Islamist party Adalet ve Kakinma is loyal to all these policies, although it is more critical at the US than the previous Turkish governments.
It is to be expected that the acts of terrorism alienate the Turks from the goals of the terrorists even more.
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The authors are doing research on terrorism at the University of Turku, Department of Political History. E-mail: euraspol@suomi24.fi