If read carefully, one can detect some interesting details about the culture in which al-Qaeda grows and the mentality of an al-Qaeda militant. In the interview, Bayrak reveals that her husband was a Palestinian who was born in Kuwait but moved to Jordan with his family before coming to Turkey to study at medical school in İstanbul. This profile fits the image of many of the al-Qaeda militants, who have no place they belong, just like Turks and Kurds in Germany, Algerians in France, Moroccans in Spain or Pakistanis in London who develop sympathy towards al-Qaeda or its affiliate organizations, which attract members from the homeless and the lonely Muslims in this interconnected world. Unlike other terror organizations, like the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or Hezbullah in Lebanon, al-Qaeda recruits from the “homeless communities” around the world. With the typology that al-Balawi’s wife provides, we could argue that the disappointed middle-class Arabs in the Arab world have become homeless thanks to the policies of respected Arab leaders. The latest example of what the Mubarak regime did to the humanitarian aid convoy to Palestine is just one example how Arabs like al-Balawi are being made to feel homeless in their own countries. Thus, the killing of seven CIA agents in Afghanistan once again shows that solving the Palestinian problem is a national security matter for the US and the West.
Second, Bayrak reveals that her husband frequently read the Jihadi forums on the Internet and had very limited connection with the social environment in which he lived. This is another typical aspect of an al-Qaeda affiliated militant’s lifestyle. The important part of the interview came when she underlined that the political discourse around the idea of Jihad in the Arab world has become one of the issues discussed in everyday politics in the streets of the Arab world. In the interview, Bayrak gives a snapshot of social politics in the Arab world. That is the normalization of the Jihadi debate in Arab politics. That needs to be targeted by the policies of the US and the rest of the Western world in order to develop effective counterterrorism policies against al-Qaeda-type organizations. Instead of developing effective policies to pull the Jihad debate out of the Arab streets, the US and the European countries choose to partner with the tyrants of the Arab world and criminalize it and force Arab youths to join al-Qaeda. When we read of the regrets that Mr. al-Balawi was feeling we see the dilemma of Arab society and politics. According to his wife, al-Balawi regretted that he was not doing anything to contribute to the ongoing Jihad. The regret he felt came from the surrounding environment. On the one hand, it is permissible to read and develop political discourse around the idea of Jihad; on the other hand it is considered criminal activity by the Jordanian intelligence agency, so they arrested al-Balawi.
Third, from a tactical perspective al-Balawi deceived the CIA, the Jordanian intelligence agency and the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) at the same time. It is unthinkable that MİT or police intelligence were not aware of the communication between al-Balawi and Bayrak. Bayrak reveals that her husband always said that he was planning to come and build his career in Turkey. Perhaps al-Balawi put emphasis on his plan to come to Turkey to distract the CIA and Jordanian intelligence. Knowing that he had some money from the CIA and Jordanian intelligence, making such a plan would have seemed reasonable for him to do.
I suspect that his wife was well aware of his plan to commit a suicide attack, first because she approves of what her husband did and second because the conversations between her and her husband were not just a regular husband-wife conversation. For instance, they did not talk of their problems, of how to solve those problems, etc. In addition, I suspect that even the interviews that she gave to the press is a part of a PR campaign of al-Qaeda that on the one hand aims to save Bayrak from further investigation and on the other hand reach out to the Turkish public and seek their sympathy for Jihadi ideas. I should admit that the photographs of Bayrak that appeared in the Turkish press and they way she talks was a perfectly planned PR campaign for al-Qaeda.
