During our last visit to Turkey in the autumn of 2013, we spent less than a week in Istanbul. But it felt like as if we had lived all our life in the ancient city that is hard to define until you have experienced it yourselves. Istanbul has that magnetic charm and warmth about it that makes total strangers fall in love and feel at home. Straddling the Bosporus Straits, Istanbul or Constantinople does not just connect Asia and Europe and the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara, for centuries, it has celebrated the marriage of two great civilisations.
As academic Hamid Dabashi brilliantly argues, it is this all-embracing nature of Istanbul in particular and cosmopolitan urbanity and diversity of all modern cities in general that those who attacked the Regina nightclub in Istanbul on New Year’s Eve were looking to target.
Most of the revellers, who had gathered to welcome the New Year with their Turkish friends, had come from across the Middle East and from around the globe, coming from as far as India. Their carefree celebration of a ‘pagan festival’ — in the words of Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) hatemongers — doing away with the notions of the East and West and civilisational conflict went against the limited worldview of the fanatics.
It is not just the fact that they were celebrating a ‘Christian New Year’ that made them potential targets of terrorists; with its unique blend of internationalism and tolerance, Istanbul (and Turkey itself, to a large extent) makes a perfect target for the extremist fringe.
This attack, as Dabashi puts it, is on the culture of tolerance, on the factual pluralism of Muslim countries that is represented in Istanbul. For the vast Ottoman Empire, stretching from the Caucasus in Europe to the Middle East and Africa and Central Asia and ruled from Istanbul, welcomed and sheltered the Jews when they were being hunted like animals in Europe and elsewhere, just as it hosted for long centuries thriving Christian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist and Hindu communities, before it imploded during the First World War.
Indeed, in the words of Dabashi, Muslims have lived alongside the followers of other faiths in successive empires — from the Abbasids to the Seljuks to the Ottomans; the Safavids, and the Mughals. Up until its fateful encounter with European imperialism, Istanbul was the epicentre of a confident cosmopolitan culture. “How could any such cosmopolitan empire be limited to the myopic zealotry of any particular sect of hateful fanatics?”
But it is not just Turkey’s tolerance and welcoming nature that is under assault. The fact that it opened its borders to host more than three million Syrian refugees for the past five years and has actively and consistently taken the side of Syria’s oppressed people against the Baathist regime in Damascus — more than anyone else — makes it uniquely vulnerable. Its open borders have also been exploited by terrorists from around the world as well as the Kurdish insurgents and those loyal to the Syrian regime to target Turkey.
The New Year’s Eve carnage was one of nearly a dozen terror attacks that the country has suffered over the past year or so, with hundreds of casualties, not to mention the devastating effect it has had on its crucial tourism industry and vibrant economy. Turkey finds itself truly in the eye of the storm.
What is more, the country is increasingly isolated from its traditional western and Nato allies after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s veiled accusations that the failed military coup last July against him enjoyed the West’s blessings. He has alleged that his friend-turned-foe Fethullah Gulen, the preacher and leader of the Gulen movement, who is based in the United States for the past many years, enjoys the tacit support of Washington.
While it was only Erdogan’s sheer audacity and force of personality, coupled with the massive popular support that he has enjoyed over the past decade and more may have defeated the coup plotters, the subsequent nationwide crackdown on various arms of the state, including the army, judiciary and the media, hasn’t gone down well with the West.
Ankara has also accused the US of arming and supporting both the Kurdish militants as well as the Daesh terrorists in Syria and in Turkey’s border areas, a serious charge if it is true. There have also been broad hints that the US embassy in Ankara had the advance intelligence about the New Year’s Eve attack, which it chose not to share with the host.
No wonder Erdogan is upset. He has angrily reminded the US and European friends and allies that as an ally and Nato member, Turkey deserves their support and not the terrorists. This even as he has dramatically improved the equation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has incidentally helped in their working together for the much-needed peace and ceasefire in Syria after backing the two opposing sides for years.
What makes Turkey the most vulnerable and truly the front line of this war is its fight against Daesh that it has taken right to its doorstep, deep inside Syria. As the Independent reported earlier, quoting many Daesh defectors, the Istanbul attack is an open declaration of war on the Turkish state by the terror group. There may be many more such attacks in the days and weeks ahead. Even in its message claiming credit for the Istanbul nightclub attack, the group minces no words, accusing Turkey of being “the Protector of the Cross”. While western attention has remained focused on the attacks in Europe and its own vulnerability, some of the worst atrocities have taken place in Turkey.
Right now, the Turkish military is engaged in a major operation inside Syria against Daesh and has been incurring significant losses. Sixteen soldiers were killed last week outside the town of Al Bab and two captured soldiers were burnt alive by the terrorists.
Daesh now appears determined on striking back, taking terrorist activities to the heart of Turkey. Over the past few months, a stream of fighters have been intercepted at the border, while attempting to come into the country from Syria, along with huge cache of weapons.
As a defector told the Independent, battling for survival in Iraq’s Mosul and its de factor capital of Raqqa in Syria, Daesh is particularly angry with Turkey: “It is a Muslim country whose rulers have turned against Islam, allying themselves with the Americans and the Russians. They are seen as the worst of enemies — Daesh has declared war on Turkey.”
The method in the madness is hard to miss in the series of attacks that Turkey has suffered over the past year or two, from the Gaziantep bombings to the cowardly attacks on the Ataturk International Airport, and from the savagery in Al Bab to the shameful targeting of New Year revellers in Istanbul.
This is a war Turkey cannot afford to lose. Yet, look at the callous indifference to the carnage in Istanbul. Veteran Middle East watcher Robert Fisk goes to the extent of terming the western media’s reaction as typically racist. However, those deriving vicarious pleasure out of Ankara’s woes mustn’t forget that it is fighting everyone’s war. If Turkey goes down, they wouldn’t win either.
Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Gulf-based writer. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@AijazZakaSyed
