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Paper no. 839
17. 11. 2003
TERRORIST STRIKES IN ISTANBUL
by B. Raman
It has been reported that Turkish officials suspect that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda might have been behind the twin suicide car bomb explosions near two synagogues of Istanbul on November 15, 2003, that killed 23 people. Though the explosions were targeted to kill Jews doing their morning prayers, they seem to have killed more passers-by, Jews as well as Muslims, than Jewish worshippers. More than 250 persons were injured. Many of the shops in the vicinity of the synagogues are owned by Jews.
2.One of the targeted synagogues (Neve Shalom) was reported to have been partially destroyed and the other (Beit Israel) damaged. A member of the local Jewish community has been quoted as saying that at least six of those killed were Jews, thereby indicating the possibility that more Muslims than Jews might have died though the blasts were meant to kill Jews. Istanbul has an estimated Jewish population of about 20,000, with 17 synagogues. The Neve Shalom synagogue was the scene of an earlier attack in 1986, when Palestinian gunmen killed 22 worshippers and wounded six others during a Sabbath service.
3. The responsibility for the blasts has been claimed by an indigenous organisation called the Turkish Great Eastern Islamic Raiders Front (IBDA-C) , which advocates an Islamic rule based on the Sharia in Turkey and a leftist economic ideology. A telephone call from an individual claiming to be from this organisation is reported to have said: "The reason [for the attacks] is to stop the oppression of the Muslims... Our acts will continue."
4. In the past, there were allegations of its having had links at different times with the intelligence agencies of Greece, the erstwhile Soviet Union and Iran. Though Turkish officials have been treating this organisation as a terrorist organisation and unsuccessfully pressing the European Union to declare it so too, they say that they do not take seriously for the present its claims of having organised the November 15 blasts. It was not known to have the kind of expertise required for this purpose and to have at its disposal volunteers for suicide terrorism.
5. While Turkish officials have been pointing the needle of suspicion at Al Qaeda, some Israeli analysts seem to suspect a possible role by the Iran-backed Hizballah and/or the Iraq-based Kurdish extremist group called the Ansar al-Islam, which the US has accused, with no satisfactory evidence, of having links with Al Qaeda.
6. Before April, 2002, bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF) formed by him in 1998 had not directly attacked Israeli or Jewish targets though the objective of the IIF has been described as waging a jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish people. They had left operations against Israeli and Jewish targets to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), its Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and the Hizballah.
7. In a departure from this practice, elements suspected to have been associated with Al Qaeda or the IIF carried out an attack through the explosion of a fuel tanker outside a synagogue in the Tunisian island of Djerba on April 11,2002, The blast killed 14 German tourists, a French citizen and four Tunisians. Initially, Western intelligence officials had doubts whether this was an accidental explosion or a terrorist stike, but, subsequently, they concluded that this was a terrorist strike.
8. On May 17, 2002, the "Asharq al-Awsat", an Arabic newspaper published from London ,quoted one Abdel Azeem al-Muhajir, whom it described as a "senior military leader" of Al Qaeda living in Pakistan, as claiming that the Al Qaeda group carried out the attack. In an interview to the journal which, it said, was conducted in Pakistan, he said: "The attack was carried out by brothers in the Al Qaeda network."
9. The journal also said that al-Muhajir identified the truck driver who carried out the synagogue attack as Nizar Seif Eddin al-Tunisi. Seif Eddin al-Tunisi means "Sword of the Faith, the Tunisian." His name had also figured in earlier speculation in the Tunisian media. Before this interview, "Al Quds", another Arabic newspaper published from London, had claimed that the attack was carried out by the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites, which had once also claimed responsibility for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
10. In a subsequent report, the Associated Press quoted an Afghanistan-based source as saying that al-Muhajir is also known as Abu Bilal al Muhajir and is a Palestinian of Jordanian nationality. The source said that he was only a middle ranker in Al Qaeda and not a senior military leader.
12. On June 23, 2002, the Al Jazeera TV station broadcast an audio tape purported to be of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, described as the spokesman of Al Qaeda, in which he claimed that the Al Qaeda network was responsible for the Tunisian attack. He said: "The attack was carried out by al-Qaeda network. A youth could not see his brothers in Palestine butchered and murdered... [while] he saw Jews cavorting in Djerba". His use of the word network gave rise to the possibility that the attack might have been carried out by a Tunisian organisation associated with the IIF and not by Al Qaeda itself.
13. American officials were projecting Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) as the probable master-mind of the Tunisian blast, but it is not clear whether his interrogation after his arrest in Rawalpindi in Pakistan in March last has confirmed their suspicion. Tunisian authorities detained an individual in connection with the attack, but further details about him are not known. Last year, they prosecuted 34 persons—31 in absentia—on a charge of belonging to Al-Jamaa wal Sunnah, a terrorist organization linked to Al Qaeda, but there was no claim that any of them was linked to the blast.
14. The Tunisian attack was followed by a car bomb explosion outside a Mombasa (Kenya) hotel frequented by Israeli tourists and an unsuccessful attempt to bring down an Israeli plane carrying tourists home through a surface-to-air missile in November last year. Al Qaeda or Somalian elements connected to it were suspected, but there has been no definite proof so far.
15.The Istanbul explosions are the third instance of direct targeting of Israeli or Jewish people and interests by elements linked to Al Qaeda and the IIF. In the past, while there have been reports of arrests of individual elements linked to Al Qaeda in Turkey, there were no reports or even allegations of any of the terrorist organisations of Turkey having links with Al Qaeda or the IIF.
16. The report on the Patterns of Global Terrorism during 2002 submitted by the State Department to the US Congress in April last stated as follows on Al Qaeda-related activities from Turkish territory: "Till November 15 (2002),Turkish authorities have arrested several suspected terrorists who may be linked to al-Qaida. In August, authorities arrested Mevlut Kar, a Turkish citizen suspected of being an Islamic terrorist, at the Ankara airport. In April, Turkish authorities arrested four individuals associated with al-Qaida in Bursa. Three members of the Union of Imams, a Jordanian group with links to al-Qaida, were arrested in February in Van. The individuals were suspected of planning a bombing attack in Israel. Subsequently, Turkish police arrested Ahmet Abdullah, a courier from northern Iraq, for providing assistance to the Union of Imams."
17. The report stated as follows on the activities of groups not known to be linked to Al Qaeda: "The Government of Turkey continued to take steps against domestic terrorist groups. Turkish authorities arrested several members from the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C)—a virulently anti-US group that killed two US defense contractors and wounded a US Air Force officer during the Gulf war. Although the group did not conduct any attacks in 2002, Turkish officials have expressed displeasure that the group’s leadership is ensconced in Western Europe. The European Union included the DHKP/ C on its terrorism list in May. Turkish arrests also weakened Turkish Hizballah, a Kurdish Islamic (Sunni) extremist group that is unrelated to Lebanese Hizballah. In December, authorities arrested Ali Aslan Isik, reportedly one of the group’s top leaders. The group’s last attack in October 2001 killed two Turkish police officers in Istanbul. '
18. Of the indigenous terrorist groups, the DHKP/C has shown the required motivation for suicide terrorism. In 2001, it had carried out two suicide attacks against policemen, but it is a Marxist-Leninist organisation with no suspected links to pro-bin Laden jihadi groups.
19. Presuming that Al Qaeda or the IIF carried out the twin blasts, they could not have done this without local support or involvement. The IBDA-C could have been an accomplice, but Al Qaeda and the IIF do not generally collaborate with organisations having a leftist ideology. The other section of the Turkish society from which accomplices could have come are the members of the local Chechen and Uighur communities---Chechens from Russia as well as Arab nationals of Chechen origin. The intelligence agencies of Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been amongst the major external financiers of the Chechen terrorism in Russia and the Uighur terrorism in China.
20. Both Chechen and Uighur terrorists were trained in the training camps of bin Laden in Afghanistan before October 7, 2001, and many of them look up to him for inspiration. They would be inclined to co-operate with Al Qaeda or the IIF despite the financial assistance received by them from Saudi Arabia and Turkey in the past.
21. Amongst the possible reasons for the action of Al Qaeda or the IIF in targeting Turkey, one could cite the following:
* Turkey's post-1994 assistance to Rashid Dostum, Uzbek leader of Afghanistan. Turkey gave him shelter when he was driven out of Mazar-e-Sharif by the Taliban after it captured Kabul in September,1996, and gave him financial and arms assistance. In the long confrontation between the Northern Alliance on the one side and the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the other, while Russia, India and Iran backed the late Ahmed Shah Masood, Turkey backed Dostum.* Turkey's active role in the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul to which it has contributed a contingent.
* Its inclination, since reversed, to send troops to Iraq to help out the US.
* Its close relations with Israel and the perceived co-operation between the intelligence agencies of the two countries.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Advisory Committee, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )
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