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Turkey
Still Dances with ISIS
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Originally published under the title "Turkey's Grisly
Dances with the Islamic State."
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The
largest terror attack in Turkish history targeted a peace
demonstration.
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On October 10, Turkey woke up to the worst single terror attack in its
history. The twin suicide-bomb
attack in Ankara killed 97 and injured nearly 250 people, with more
than 60 of the wounded being treated in intensive care. As of October 14,
no one had claimed responsibility, but all indications pointed to the
Islamic State (ISIS, or IS)—the same jihadists Turkey's Islamist
government once helped logistically, in the hope that they would
facilitate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's downfall and the
establishment of an Islamist regime there.
In fact, the attack in front of the main train station in downtown
Ankara looked like a bigger-scale version of a July 20 attack in
Suruc, a small town on Turkey's border with Syria. A Turkish-Kurdish
suicide-bomber with ties to the Islamic State murdered 33 people at a
pro-Kurdish meeting in Suruc, and paved the way for a spiral of violence
that has since claimed
hundreds of lives. Actually, since most of the deaths resulted mostly
from Turkish-Kurdish clashes, the attacks may have claimed thousands:
Kurdish militants' casualties remain unknown. Since July 20, more than
150 Turkish police and military officers have been killed.
ISIS felt that Turks had not
followed its call to "rise up and fight against these atheists,
these Crusaders and these traitors."
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One of the two perpetrators
of the Ankara bombings now is believed to be the brother of the Suruc
bomber. The second suspect also has alleged ties with jihadist groups.
On October 10, thousands of pro-peace activists from different
NGOs—most of them pro-Kurdish, secular, leftist and opponents of the AKP
government—had gathered in front of Ankara's main railway station, to
protest the wave of violence sparked by the Islamic State suicide-bombing
in Suruc in July. They had no way of knowing that two other jihadists
would turn their "peace rally" into a bloodbath. The usual
police body searches for weapons or bombs—carried out routinely before
every public rally—were omitted this time. Interior Minister Selami
Altinok admitted that the body searches were not done, but refused to
accept allegations
of negligence.
The murder of nearly 100 people in a terror attack is shocking
wherever in the world it happens, or whoever commits it. But the Ankara
attack was hardly a total surprise. This author has mentioned
at least a few times the findings of an August 2014 poll, which found
that 11.3% of Turks did not view the Islamic State as a terrorist
organization. Eleven percent is in no way a marginal figure: If a
"mere" 11.3% of Turks thought so generously of ISIS, it meant
that there were nearly nine million Turks sympathetic to jihadists. And
only 5% of that would mean an army of nearly four-and-a-half million. The
two suicide-bombers on October 10 were most likely just a two of that big
bunch of 4.5 million or so sleepers inside Turkey.
Shocking? Not really. In August, the Turkish Justice Ministry revealed
that there were only 126 people in Turkish prisons on charges of being a
member of IS. "Hence the unnerving threat of IS attacks on Turkish
cities, most probably by the group's 'sleeper cells' inside Turkey,"
this journalist previously
warned. IS had recently released a video promising to "conquer"
Istanbul by the armies of the Caliph:
Soon, Turkey's east will be dominated
by the atheist PKK [Kurdish militants], and the West will be dominated by
the Crusaders. They will kill children, rape women, and enslave you. O
people of Turkey; before [it is] too late, you should rise up and fight
against these atheists, these Crusaders and these traitors. You should
also repent. You should condemn democracy, secularism, human-made laws,
tomb-worshipping and other devils.
Apparently, the people of Turkey did not "rise up and fight
against these atheists, these Crusaders and these traitors." So they
had to be killed by jihadists in suicide-bombing attacks. IS promised to
attack, and it did.
4.5 million minus two (suicide-bombers) leaves behind too big a
number. Turkish cities are unsafe. Turkey's Islamist leaders look
appalled to have been attacked by their one-time comrades. They should
not. They wanted to dance with the devil in order to "Islamize"
the failed state of Syria. The dance has ended up in carnage. It had to.
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Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu suggested that Kurds or Communists might have
been involved in the blast.
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Turkey's Islamist leaders once hoped that they would triumphantly
visit Damascus when it would be Sunni Islamist, not Shia and secular.
Instead, their former jihadist friends hit them right in the heart of
their capital. But Ankara does not learn.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, instead of calling a spade a spade, mentioned
three other organizations as potential culprits for the attack. In
addition to the Islamic State, he said, other suspects were the PKK, the
Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) and the
Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP).
These Kurdish and extreme left organizations mentioned by Davutoglu
are big enemies of jihadists, not friends with whom to jointly organize a
terror attack. Most victims were sympathizers of the Kurdish and leftist
groups. Yet four days after the Ankara bomb attack, after the police had
already identified the two suicide-bombers as Turkish sleepers linked
with the Islamic State, Davutoglu still said
that the attackers were linked with both IS jihadists and Kurdish
militants.
Davutoglu cannot admit that jihadists alone simply murdered people en
masse in twin bomb attacks.
The Ankara bombing was a bad ending of one part of the Turkish
Islamists' willing dance with the devil. The dance is not over yet.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based
columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the
Middle East Forum.
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