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Radicals may yet rue tackling
Turkey
By Brian Maher
The
recent terrorist attacks in Turkey capped off a
six-month period that witnessed a slew of attacks in
Muslim countries from Morocco to Indonesia to Saudi
Arabia and, of course, Iraq. These attacks vividly
demonstrate that the US-led "war on terrorism" is far
from decided, even though al-Qaeda has no doubt suffered
operational setbacks as a result of Washington's global
campaign against the group. It is even possible that
al-Qaeda as such no longer has the organizational
strength to carry out the sort of elaborate, detailed
strikes against high-value Western targets that so many
fear.
Yet the recent attacks indicate a strategy
that, first of all, relies on local, loosely-affiliated
cells to carry out attacks and secondly, strikes at the
heart of Islamic societies in order to undermine
moderate governments that have disturbing Western
leanings, especially Turkey. In so doing, they appear to
have abandoned concerns about harming fellow Muslims. It
may be an ill-conceived strategy, however, that ends up
turning the Muslim world against them.
After
al-Qaeda was driven from Afghanistan at the end of 2001,
it was forced to abandon its more centralized structure
and become highly distributed, becoming more like a
franchised operation, with local, more or less
autonomous cells. This franchising is not necessarily
new, but it has evolved and assumed greater importance
as a matter of necessity. Osama bin Laden became a
symbolic figurehead and a source of inspiration, but he
was no longer needed as an organizational leader.
With al-Qaeda on the defensive and at least some
of its funding having dried up, the group took on a
somewhat different role, serving as mentors for local
Islamic militants willing to mount attacks in their host
countries. Al-Qaeda may provide ideological, logistical
and financial support to these local independent cells,
but it leaves the work to them. This appears to have
been the case with the Turkish bombings. As Rohan
Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at the Institute of
Defense and Strategic Studies, avers: "The threat has
moved beyond al-Qaeda. While it was the instigator of
recent attacks, very few have actually been carried out
by al-Qaeda."
These local cells are neither
large nor well organized, which makes them especially
difficult to spot, allowing them to plan attacks without
being detected by local intelligence or security
services. The attacks are also generally directed at
soft targets of opportunity, with relatively short
planning times, which makes them exceedingly difficult
to prevent. This may very well have been the case with
the attacks in Turkey, which merit a closer look.
Turkey provided an especially juicy target. Its
secular orientation, relationship with the US, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization membership and strategic
alliance with Israel make Turkey an obvious target of
Muslim extremists. It's somewhat surprising that attacks
such as these did not occur earlier. In several
respects, Turkey is a divided country and al-Qaeda hopes
to exploit these divisions in order to destabilize the
moderate Islamic government. The role of the military is
a controversial one, for example, with many questioning
the traditional role of the armed forces as Turkey's
guarantor of Kemal Ataturk's vision of a modern, secular
society. Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
has in fact campaigned to greatly reduce the military's
role in the country's political life.
The
perpetrators of the attacks surely realized that the
bombings would provoke a crackdown by the military,
which they hoped would sew division in Turkish society
and create fissures in Ankara's moderate government.
Indeed, provoking such a crackdown may have been one of
their primary objectives.
Ankara was quick to
link al-Qaeda with the attacks, which strongly resembled
the group's operational pattern, with suicide bombers
carrying out successive, nearly simultaneous attacks.
Indeed, it is unlikely that the Turkish group believed
responsible for the attacks, the Islamic Great Eastern
Riders Front, was capable of conducting such a
coordinated operation without outside assistance.
Invoking al-Qaeda suits Ankara because the mere
name draws an almost Pavlonian response from Washington.
It galvanizes American support and will help to erase
the Bush administration's memories of Ankara's refusal
to cooperate with the US invasion of Iraq. Ironically,
al-Qaeda is all too willing to accept blame because it
proves to the world that it is still very dangerous and
capable of conducting deadly attacks on its enemies,
despite the American "war on terrorism". It matters
little if it has only a tangential relationship with the
groups carrying out the attacks - the propaganda value
is far more important.
But al-Qaeda's attempts
to destabilize Turkey will likely backfire. Turkey does
have internal tensions, but al-Qaeda overestimates its
vulnerability, a misperception fueled in part by the
election of an Islamic government, albeit a moderate
one. The bombings will alienate the vast majority, with
the likely effect being a wholesale rejection of Islamic
militants and their objectives by a moderate Turkish
society. The military's role in the country's political
process will likely increase and enjoy widespread
support. Erdogan has promised to crush the militants and
the hand of the secularists has only been strengthened.
There will be no more talk of taking the military out of
politics for some time.
The attacks will also
refocus Turkey's intelligence services, which have
tended to concentrate on the "Kurdish problem" rather
than the challenges posed by the country's radicals.
Starting in the mid-1980s, Turkey's security forces
developed a relationship of convenience with the
country's radical Islamists. This was directed against
Kurdish separatist groups who had communist leanings and
were considered a threat by both sides. This has come to
an end. The bombings will force a significant
reorientation of the intelligence services, which will
now target the radicals with a vengeance.
Al-Qaeda may have made a strategic blunder by
making enemies in the Muslim world at a time when
anti-US sentiment is powerful and widespread. Instead of
capitalizing on that emotion, it is alienating an
increasing number of Muslims who can no longer view
al-Qaeda as a just defender of Islam in the face of
Western and Israeli imperialism. This is exactly what
Washington is hoping for.
Published with
permission of the Power and
Interest News Report, an analysis-based
publication that seeks to provide insight into various
conflicts, regions and points of interest around the
globe. All comments should be directed to content@pinr.com
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