Bombing of the Airport in Istanbul, Turkey

On the 28th of June 2016, the main airport in the city of Istanbul, Turkey was the target of a terrorist attack. The essay will begin by describing the event itself. Then, it will proceed to consider the event within the context of the broader string of terrorist attacks that have been plaguing Turkey as of late. After this, the essay will proceed to a discussion of the parties responsible for the attack. Finally, the essay will reflect on the implications of the attack for Turkey and for the world. 

The Terrorist Attack

The terrorist attack under consideration here took place at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul. This is the how the New York Times has described the attack, in a couple sentences: "A Turkish government official said that shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday, the police fired on two attackers at the entryway to Ataturk airport's international terminal in an attempt to stop them from reaching a security checkpoint. The two attackers then blew themselves up, the official said. A Third attacker denoted explosives in the parking lot" (paragraphs 5-6). So, the attack was carried out by suicide bombers who did not actually expect to survive the attack itself. This has been a consistent trend with terrorism inspired by extremist Islamic ideology, given that according to that ideology, persons who give themselves to the cause in this way are martyrs who are guaranteed a ticked to Heaven. In any event, insofar as the attack was meant to cause terror and mayhem within the city of Istanbul, the only conclusion that could be reached is that the suicide bombers succeeded. 

Sariyuce and Part have quoted one eyewitness as saying that "It was like hell . . . There was panic everywhere. We did not understand that it was a terrorist attack;" and they have quoted another such eyewitness speaking the following words: "everywhere was covered with smoke, all of the windows were shattered and people were fluttering around. . . . My colleagues who work at the ticket sale desk, they were on the ground and crying. A couple of my friends are wounded, hit on the head by different objects. . . . There are many casualties, legs, arms and everything, everywhere." If these descriptions sound nightmarish, then all that can perhaps be said is that they not even come close to capturing the actual trauma experienced by the people who were part of the scene. The attack has resulted in the United States renewing its warning to travelers with respect to going to Turkey; this warning has been in place due to the fact that such events have become all too common within Turkey as of late. This point is worth discussing in greater depth. 

The Attack in Context

The bombing of the Istanbul airport is in fact not just a standalone event; rather, the event is also the latest in a chain of terrorist attacks that have been occurring in Turkey over the past historical while. As the New York Times has indicated: "The assault on Turkey's largest airport on June 28 continues a string of deadly terrorist attacks that have struck the same country. In the past year, Kurdish and Islamic militants have staged at least 14 major attacks across Turkey, killing more than 280 people" (paragraph 1). Of course, this does not make any individual terrorist attack anything other than unacceptable. But even so, it does provide some context through which the attacks can be better understood. As of late, Turkey has faced an epidemic of such attacks, with the most recent airport bombing being not all that different from the previous attacks in terms of magnitude or character. 

There are historical and geopolitical reasons why this trend has emerged specifically within the nation of Turkey. Gilsinan has reviewed some of these factors in the following statement: "Major drivers of the increase in lethal terrorism in recent years—including the Syrian Civil War, the rise of ISIS, and the collapse in 2015 of a two-year ceasefire between the Turkish government and the collapse in 2015 of a two-year ceasefire between the Turkish government and the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its affiliates—come together within Turkey" (paragraph 5). In other words, the nature of Turkey's specific situation at this moment in history is that the nation is especially susceptible, for reasons both global and domestic, to become the host and target of terrorist attacks. Some of the factors have to do with geopolitics—with, for example, the fact that Turkey is situated in the Middle East and shares a border with Syria and Iraq. Other factors, though, are intrinsic to Turkey itself.

In particular, terrorist attacks related to the Kurdish cause are somewhat unique to Turkey as such and its domestic issues and have somewhat less to do with global factors. As Cultural Survival has indicated: "Since World War I, Kurds in Turkey have been the victims of persistent assaults on their ethnic, cultural, religious identity and economic and political status by successive Turkish governments" (paragraph 1). This has largely been due to the fact that the Kurds belong to a different ethnic group than the dominant Turks within Turkey. This poor treatment of the Kurds has been a major point of contention with respect to allowing Turkey into the European Union; and it has also been a major cause of conflict between the Kurdish population and the nation-state of Turkey, leading both to calls for Kurdish separation into a new nation as well as violent events within Turkey itself. The bombing of the airport in Istanbul that is under consideration here, though, has been linked not to Kurdish groups within the nation but rather the global threat known as ISIS. 

Responsible Parties

No organization has formally taken responsibility for the recent bombing of the airport in Istanbul, However, suspicions are leading quite consistently to ISIS. As Agence France-Presse has reported: "Thirteen suspects, including 10 Turks, have been charged over the Istanbul airport suicide bombings, the deadliest of several attacks to strike Turkey's biggest city this year. Turkish officials have pointed blame at the Islamic State jihadist group" (paragraphs 1-2). This suspicion is grounded in the fact that the general method and execution of the attack was highly consistent with the method and execution of several other attacks across the world that have been conducted by ISIS; the attack has, as it were, the watermark of ISIS on it with respect to how it was carried out. Again, though, ISIS itself has not claimed responsibility for this attack, just as it has in general not claimed responsibility for any terrorist attack of the past string of terrorist attacks within the nation of Turkey.  

At this point, it is perhaps worth saying a couple words about ISIS itself. ISIS is an extremist religious and political organization that claims to represent the one true interpretation of the Islamic faith; and it seeks to establish a new caliphate run under a literal interpretation of Sharia law. The organization began as a break-off from Al-Qaeda, but has since come to achieve the rather impressive feat of in some ways making Al-Qaeda itself look relatively good. ISIS has become known around the world for its extreme brutality. The organization now actually controls land and territory within the regions of Iraq and Syria (both of which, again, share a border with Turkey), and it has carried out gruesome terrorist attacks even within the West, most notably within the city of Paris itself. From the outside, ISIS could be classified as a kind of death cult whose values are radically at odds with anything that the West—or for that matter, the world—have ever known to he the values of life and civilization.

In any event, Butler has indicated that suspects who have been apprehended thus far in connection with the Istanbul airport bombing have in general denied the allegations brought against them. There would seem to be a certain circularity in the criminal justice process thus far. On the one hand, it appears that the suspects do in fact have at least affinity with the extremist Islamist ideas proposed by ISIS, even if they may not have affiliation with the organization itself. However, the criminal justice process would also seem to be proceeding in accordance with the premise that the Istanbul airport attack was related to ISIS—and from that point, of the investigation could be expected to turn up suspects who are highly sympathetic with the ideology of ISIS. This is not a bad route of inquiry per se. However, it does call attention to a broader problem that has emerged regarding terrorist attacks such as this one: that is, whether they are to be attributed directly to ISIS itself, or rather to the more pervasive and indirect cultural and political influence that ISIS has come to have. 

Implications of the Attack

One of the main implications of the bombing of the Istanbul airport is related to the timing of the attack: it occurred right during the lead up to the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. This further suggests that either ISIS is directly responsible for the attack, or that the attack was carried out by people directly inspired by ISIS. The organization has developed a tradition of staging high-profile campaigns and attacks during this time (see Engel). This is congruent with the organization's demented belief that the members of ISIS are the only true Muslims, and that the death and carnage that they seek to wreak on infidels is pleasing to the one true God. If carried out by ISIS, then this means that the organization still has enough logistical capacity to take action within a modern airport; and if carried out by unaffiliated followers, then the attack is a sign of the dangerous way in which the message of ISIS has come to resonate with many people. 

This latter implication is worth considering a little further. The real danger that ISIS presents to the civilized world is not primarily a military one but rather a cultural one. That is, the real problem is not that ISIS is insane in a more or less self-contained way; after all, this would bring the organization face to face with defeat eventually, almost as a matter of necessity. Rather, the real problem is that ISIS may serve as a kind of contagion that enables others, even within the modern world, to act on their darkest and most violent fantasies, whether or not those others are formally affiliated with the organization itself (see Lesaca). By presenting itself as a credible religion, ISIS more or less invites others to share in and act out its own nightmarish visions. This is part of why it is often difficult to tell whether an attack has been perpetrated by ISIS itself or by unofficial followers; and this is also why it is so crucial for the civilized world to struggle against ISIS at not just the military and geopolitical but also the cultural, psychological, and ideological levels.  

Conclusion

In summary, the present essay has consisted of a discussion of the recent terrorist attack on the airport in Istanbul, Turkey. The essay has provided both an overview of the event itself and an analysis of who is responsible for the event and the implications of this for the future. A key conclusion that has been drawn here is that the bombing is almost certainly the work of ISIS, due not only to the nature but also the timing of the attack. However, it has become in general difficult to tell the difference between the specific and direct responsibility of ISIS and the more diffused and indirect responsibility of ISIS. This produces the insight that it is necessary to resist ISIS not only militarily but also at the level of ideological influence.

Works Cited

Agence France-Presse. "Turkey Airport Attack: 13 Suspects Charged over Istanbul Bombings." Guardian. 3 Jul. 2016. Web. 6 Jul. 2016. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/04/turkey-airport-attack-13-suspects-charged-over-istanbul-bombings>. 

Butler, Daren. "Turkey Jails 17 over Istanbul Attack, Blames Ex-Soviet Members of ISIS." Reuters. 5 Jul. 2016. Web. 6 Jul. 2016. <http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-blasts- arrests-idUSKCN0ZL0F4>.

Cultural Survival. " Repression in Turkey." Author, n.d. Web. 6 Jul. 2016. <https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/turkey/kurdish-repression-turkey>. 

Engel, Richard. "Analysis: Month of Terror during Ramadan Shows ISIS's New Phase." NBC. 6 Jul. 2016. Web. 6 Jul. 2016. < http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-uncovered/analysis-month-terror-during-ramadan-shows-isis-s-new-phase-n604506>.

Gilsinan, Kathy. "Turkey's Brutal Year." The Atlantic. 29 Jun. 2016. Web. 6 Jul. 2016. <http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/turkeys-brutal-year/489383/>. 

Lesaca, Javier. "On Social Media, ISIS Uses Modern Cultural Images to Spread Anti-Modern Values." Brookings, 24 Sep. 2015. Web. 6 Jul. 2016. <http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/techtank/posts/2015/09/24-isis-social-media-engagement>. 

New York Times. "Airport Attacks in Istanbul Is the Latest in a Year of Terror in Turkey." Author, 30 Jun. 2016. Web. 6 Jul. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/28/world/middleeast/turkey-terror-attacks-bombings.html?_r=0>.

Sariyuce, Isil, and Madison Park. "Istanbul Terror Attack Witness: 'It Was Like Hell." CNN. 29 Jun. 2016. <http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/29/europe/turkey-airport-attack-witness-accounts/>.