Terrorism in Turkey: Blown apart

Date: 22/11/03

The Istanbul bombings this week look like the work of al-Qaeda

IT IS a city that, first as Byzantium, then as Constantinople and now as Istanbul, symbolises the country's proudly secular tradition. Turkey, the only secular Islamic republic, has a history of religious tolerance going as far back as the end of the 15th century, when Sephardic Jews fleeing Spanish persecution were welcomed by Sultan Bayazid II. The sultan said he wanted his empire “to become an umbrella for humanity”.

This week that humanity was severely tested. On November 20th, two explosions that may have been the work of suicide bombers hit the offices of HSBC, a British-based bank, and the British consulate. At least 25 people were reported to have been killed, and as many as 300 were wounded. The blasts came only a few days after suicide bombers had struck two of the city's oldest synagogues, Neve Shalom and Beth Israel. In those two attacks, perpetrated on the Jewish sabbath, some 25 people died, six of them Jews and the rest Turkish Muslim passers-by, while over 300 people were injured.

The British government promptly linked the November 20th attacks to al-Qaeda. The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, declared that they had “all the hallmarks of international terrorism practised by al-Qaeda and associated organisations.” The Turks were slower to draw the same connection, though one al-Qaeda group duly claimed responsibility. The link to al-Qaeda looked stronger for the synagogue suicide bombers. Their attack was claimed both by a local Islamic group and by an Egyptian offshoot of al-Qaeda. And Turkish police were quick to establish the identities of the two bombers.

The two men, Mesut Cabuk and Gokhan Altuntas, were Kurds from the south-eastern province of Bingol, long a fertile recruiting ground for terrorist groups. The pair allegedly had links with Hizbullah, a murderous Turkish faction that, like its Lebanese namesake, has been armed and trained in Iran. Ironically, the group was tolerated by the authorities in the 1990s because Hizbullah militants killed hundreds of left-leaning Kurd nationalists.

Among the questions after the attacks were: why Turkey? And what might the attacks have been meant to achieve?

Turkey may have become an al-Qaeda target for all sorts of reasons. It is an ally of the United States and a member of NATO. It is Islamic, but at the same time both fiercely secular and a democracy. Last month, the Turkish parliament approved a request from the Americans to deploy Turkish troops in Iraq (though in March the parliament had rejected a plan to let American troops use Turkey to launch a second front against Saddam Hussein). Yet the response to the idea of Turkish troops in Iraq, especially from Iraq's Kurds, was so negative that the plan has now been quietly dropped.

As to the attacks' goals, one might have been to weaken Turkey's close links with Israel. If so, it has failed. Turkey's prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, may have begun his political career in a pro-Islamic group that called Jews “blood-suckers”. But this week he became the first Turkish leader to visit Istanbul's chief rabbinate, when he called on Yitzhak Haleva the day after the synagogue attacks. The Turkish and Israeli foreign ministers pledged jointly to work to fight terrorism, and thousands of Turks attended this week's funeral to bury the Jewish dead.

Turkey's military and intelligence ties to Israel were largely unaffected by the arrival of Mr Erdogan. Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognise the state of Israel. In 1996 the two signed a military co-operation agreement that allowed Israeli air-force pilots to train in Turkey. Israel is among Turkey's top suppliers of military hardware. Yet Mr Erdogan's rebuttal earlier this month of a request by the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to visit Ankara alarmed some Israeli diplomats. The government has also stepped up its criticism of Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Some more radical Islamic attitudes can be discerned in Turkey. Yeni Safak, a pro-Islamic daily, claimed that the synagogue attacks were orchestrated by the Israeli secret service and the CIA. Deniz Baykal, leader of the opposition pro-secular Republican People's Party, accuses the government of being soft on Islamic extremists. Some 130 Hizbullah militants were freed from jail under a general amnesty approved in September. Yet even Mr Erdogan's critics acknowledge that he has displayed remarkable statesmanship over this week's terrible atrocities. Bayazid II would have been proud.

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