You Can’t Start and Stop Jihadism at Will

The coordinated terrorist attack at the international airport in Istanbul on Tuesday is the latest in a rash of deadly attacks that have struck Turkey in the past 18 months. The Cipher Brief spoke with Aykan Erdemir, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of the Turkish Parliament, who says the latest incident has the earmarks of ISIS, and he fears the Turkish President will use the attack as an “excuse…to tighten his hold on Turkish politics and society.”

The Cipher Brief: How could Tuesday’s attack on Atatürk International Airport in Istanbul impact Turkey’s security moving forward?

Aykan Erdemir: This attack came in the immediate aftermath of the Turkish government’s diplomatic U-turn, that is the normalization of relations with both Israel and Russia. These two deals were expected to bolster Turkey’s security and improve Turkey’s standing in the region. The Istanbul attack, therefore, took place at a hopeful moment on the Turkish end, and took Ankara off guard.

But, international observers were not surprised, because ISIS carried out two earlier attacks targeting key tourism sites in Istanbul. The main difference between those earlier attacks and the Atatürk Airport attack is that the first two attacks targeted predominantly foreign nationals. This attack, however, was an indiscriminate attack. So far there have been 41 fatalities and the vast majority of the victims seem to be Turkish citizens. So, although it is difficult to tell whether this was intended, there seems to be a change of M.O. on the ISIS side.

ISIS has seen Turkey not only as a target but also as a fertile recruitment and breeding ground. This is why ISIS has always been very careful with its attacks in Turkey, because it doesn’t want to alienate wide sections of the Turkish society. There are polls that put sympathy for ISIS among the Turkish population at eight percent. This is a significant amount and a substantial sympathizer base for ISIS to recruit from. Now, it will be interesting to see whether the Turkish public’s feelings will change following the Atatürk Airport attack. But if you compare this attack to ISIS’s Brussels airport attack, actually the M.O.’s match to a great extent, and it’s almost like a copycat attack; the number of assailants, arrival to the scene by taxi, the first bomb to divert attention, and the subsequent attack with automatic weapons and bombs. So, this has all the signature moves that ISIS used in the Brussels attack and further strengthens the suspicions that this was an ISIS attack.

TCB: Is there a symbolic significance that this attack was carried out at the Atatürk Airport, which is the third largest airport in Europe?

AE: Yes, Atatürk Airport is the third largest airport in Europe. It is not only the main hub of Turkey, but also of Turkish Airlines, the national carrier that flies to the highest number of countries in the world. The attack hit Turkey at a difficult time, because Turkey’s tourism industry is at an all-time low following the downing of the Russian jet and the escalation of terror attacks. Turkey was already suffering from a very poor performance and the attack in Istanbul will certainly make matters worse. So ISIS will also inflict economic damage in addition to having scored a symbolic victory by targeting Atatürk Airport.

We should also keep in mind that unlike other airports around the world, Turkish airports are not that soft of a target because, similar to airports in Israel, Turkish airports are heavily guarded with two or three security perimeters. Passengers need to go through checkpoints before they can enter the terminal for their check-in. By carrying out this attack against a well-protected target, ISIS, in a way, is daring Turkey by demonstrating that it can even get at hard targets in addition to soft targets.

TCB: How is Turkey likely to respond?

AE: The Turkish government is still in an ambiguous position vis-à-vis ISIS. Although Ankara has made repeated calls for global cooperation against terrorism, when it comes to the home front, the Turkish state has been quite equivocal vis-à-vis ISIS. In other words, the Turkish state has been very unforgiving in cracking down on all sorts of opposition, but not when it comes to jihadist groups including ISIS and Al-Nusra Front. We know that until quite recently, ISIS could move quite freely in and out of Turkey, had a lot of cells, and received logistical support within the country. Just 11 months ago, in Istanbul of all places, there were reports of an outdoor meeting organized by ISIS under the watch of the Turkish state. This once again shows that although the Turkish government has been brutal in its crack down on dissidents, it has failed to be vigilant when it comes to ISIS.

Turkish President Erdoğan has seen jihadists, including ISIS and Al-Nusra Front, as a useful tool for toppling the Assad regime in Syria and counterbalancing Kurdish insurgents in Turkey and across the border. There was ample warning that this would lead to the Pakistanization of Turkey.  Erdoğan, however, assumed that he could turn on and off jihadist violence the way he saw fit. A lot of people, including me, tried to caution the Turkish government saying jihadism, as we can see from Afghanistan and Pakistan, is not a tool that you can start and stop at your will. You certainly can fuel the fire, you certainly can ignite it, but from that point on, it has a mind of its own, and you never know when and whether it will stop.

Today Ankara seems much more skeptical about ISIS, but I would argue that it’s quite late at this point. ISIS seems to be entrenched in Turkey – it has cells, militants, sympathizer base, and it has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to strike at targets across Turkey – in the Southeast, in the nation’s capital Ankara, and in different quarters of Istanbul. This makes me conclude that Turkey will have to learn to live with ISIS, since there will not be a quick solution to the problem. It is an unfortunate prediction, but it seems that ISIS will continue to take lives and hit Turkish targets in the future.

TCB: Could the attack lead to stronger a domestic crackdown against ISIS cells in Turkey?

AE: When ISIS attacked opposition rallies by Kurds, liberals, and seculars in Turkey’s Southeast and in the nation’s capital Ankara, the Turkish government didn’t seem keen on cracking down. The Istanbul attack, however, hits closer to home. From what I can see of the casualty list, with the exception of a sole Ukrainian national, all victims seem to be either Turkish or Muslim. There are five Saudis, two Iranians, an Iraqi, a Jordanian, a Tunisian, an Uzbek, and an Uighur from China. So almost all the victims are Muslims, and we know that Erdogan cares deeply about religious identity. The Turkish government will react much differently than the previous attacks against Erdogan’s opponents.

This could work both ways. Erdogan will use this as an opportunity to tighten Turkey’s terror laws to crack down on what is considered to be terrorism, but all of this effort will not solely be focused on ISIS. Erdogan will use the opportunity to crack down even harder on dissidents. So this could be yet another excuse for Erdogan to tighten his hold on Turkish politics and society.

Just to give you one concrete example: while Turkey was shell-shocked with the attack and was still trying to make sense of the attack, Erdoğan’s AKP party was busy in the Turkish parliament passing a bill which would give full control of the Turkish high courts to the executive. Erdoğan did not even hesitate for a second to go forward with his takeover of the judiciary, and despite the protests from the opposition parties, the Turkish parliament continued to work on Erdoğan’s power grab plans. Yesterday, when the parliament reconvened, all three opposition parties initiated motions to set up an ad hoc committee to look into the Istanbul attack. Erdoğan used the AKP’s parliamentary majority to reject all three motions and prevented the parliament from looking further into the Istanbul attack. We have to realize that Erdoğan will, to some extent, remain ambivalent about cracking down on ISIS and will continue to use this to strengthen his one-man rule.

TCB: To this point, all signs have pointed to an ISIS attack, but are there any thoughts, even remotely, that the attack was carried out by a Kurdish militant group?

AE: When the attack first took place, there were only two guesses: this is either ISIS or this is the PKK-offshoot TAK, because TAK has a history of attacks on civilian targets in the western part of the country. Last year, it claimed the mortar attack against Istanbul’s second airport, the Sabiha Gökçen International Airport, so it was also likely for TAK to be behind this attack. But at this point all fingers point to ISIS. Although TAK has a habit of claiming its attacks, ISIS rarely claims its attacks in Turkey. We’ll see in the next few days how this will turn out, but it is most likely that this was an ISIS attack.

Aykan Erdemir is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @aykan_erdemir.