A small victory after Istanbul
Confessed mass killer remained in the Turkish city for weeks after murdering dozens in a nightclub, but that hunt is over and unfinished business must be addressed and painful questions answered, Foreign Correspondent Josh Wood reports
BEIRUT // The arrest of Abdulgadir Masharipov, the gunman who admitted to the Reina nightclub attack in Istanbul, was a welcome moment of relief for Turkey after a manhunt of more than two weeks.
But with the country vulnerable and attacks increasingly common, this small victory almost certainly does not mark the end of such violence. Although the Reina attack garnered worldwide sympathy – most likely because of its timing in the first moments of New Year’s Day and the large number of foreigners killed – it is one of a number of ISIL-ordered or inspired mass casualty attacks to hit Turkey.
It is a symptom of the situation in which the country finds itself.
After turning a blind eye to the growth of ISIL for years and allowing fighters to cross its territory to join the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria, Turkey is familiar territory to the extremists.
It restrained itself from cracking down on the border, probably afraid that it would attract attacks. But by intervening militarily in Syria last summer with the aim of driving ISIL away from its border, Turkey went to war with a group whose growth had been partly enabled by Ankara’s inattentiveness. Confronting ISIL at home would be possible for the Turkish government if it were just ISIL. But these days it is not just the extremists launching attacks in Turkey. Over the past few years, a web of violence has emerged, with the government confronting several groups.
Ankara is seemingly at war with everyone, making it harder to crush a single threat.
Since July 2015, Turkey has again been at war with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and, as a result, has had to dedicate large numbers of its security forces to recapturing and holding areas in the south-east.
Meanwhile, hardline PKK offshoot the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (Tak) has turned to ISIL-- style mass casualty suicide attacks against civilians far from the country’s Kurdish heartland. In a December attack that received scant international attention compared to the Reina shooting, a Tak suicide bomber and car bomb struck outside hit an Istanbul stadium, killing 46 people.
Tak may be relatively unknown internationally, but to the Turkish government the group represents a threat equal to – and sometimes more pressing than – ISIL.
Since last July’s coup attempt in Turkey, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has carried out a widespread and continuing crackdown against people his government claims are connected to the plot. This too, along with fears that there are still plots under way to unseat him, surely tugs at the attention of Turkey’s security services.
The strain seems to be showing. With the eyes of the world on Turkey, it took Ankara more than two weeks to apprehend the Uzbek they say was responsible for killing 39 people at the nightclub. His face became quickly known to the world, yet still he managed to disappear in Istanbul.
Days after the massacre, a selfie video surfaced showing the perpetrator walking through Istanbul’s Taksim Square, unsmiling and silent. It was unclear whether the video was shot before or after the attack, but its release seemed to taunt those pursuing him – a defiant statement that with so much violence in Turkey today, perpetrators of terrorism might just be able to walk away after the horrors they have committed.
Turkey restrained itself from cracking down on the border, probably afraid that it would attract attacks