Terror showed its bloody face this time on an ordinary İstanbul street, without discriminating between old and young, babies and children, men and women. Unfortunately, Turkey lost 17 of its citizens in this unspeakable terror attack, and 150 more were wounded. Over 15 of them are still in critical condition.It is generally thought that terror attacks convey a bloody message in addition to their aim of terrorizing people and spreading horror and fear among society. The most-circulated questions since the inhuman attacks occurred on Sunday night have been "Who perpetrated this terror attack?" "What was its aim?" and "Why now?"
It is, of course, impossible to immediately find the answers to all of these vital questions that are on all of our minds. However I am hopeful that the evidence and information found in the course of the police investigation will show us which terror organization is behind the barbaric act. The fact that the Turkish police have been successful in solving terrorist assaults in the past and revealing the dark connections behind these attacks gives us hope that they will be successful in unraveling the case this time, too.
However, even if the terror organization or organizations behind the attack are revealed, in countries like Turkey -- which is insufficiently transparent and unsuccessful in deciphering the complex ties between illegal figures and organizations with official structures -- it would not be enough to enable us to learn what the real aim and message of the terrorist acts are. In these cases, a clever analysis of the style of attacks, their timing and their messages could be much more functional.
If we start by analyzing the timing of this latest terror attack, we can easily say that it has occurred at a juncture where three crucial processes overlap or coincide. 1) The trial in the case on the Ergenekon terror organization, which aimed to topple the popularly elected ruling AK Party, has been legally under way since last Friday. 2) The Constitutional Court began deliberating to decide on the AK Party closure case on Monday morning. 3) Military operations against the separatist terror organization the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have been ongoing both in Turkey and abroad (in the form of air strikes in northern Iraq). So the PKK feels squeezed into a corner.
Even if all the factors I have listed above seem very different from one another, the information, testimonies, documents and other evidence in the 2,455-page indictment on the Ergenekon terror organization show that there are close links between Ergenekon and the closure case at the top court; and between Ergenekon and the PKK. The evidence in the indictment confirms that Ergenekon, as a Gladio-like formation with dark ties to deep-state structures, played a major role in the formation of the pro-Kurdish PKK, the religious fundamentalist Hizbullah, Marxist-Leninist terror organization the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP-C) and the fundamentalist Islamic Great East Raiders Front (İBDA-C) -- and it still has the power over them to direct and manipulate.
The first findings have indicated that the explosive material used in making the bombs used in the massacring attacks on Sunday night is RDX, which has been described as the "bomb of secret services." This explosive was also used in past assassinations of Turkish intellectuals, such as Bahriye Üçok, Ahmet Taner Kışlalı and Uğur Mumcu; in terror attacks, like the blast at the 2007 Anafartalar shopping center in Ankara's Ulus district and the one against the Final test preparatory school in Diyarbakır on Jan. 3, 2008. Today, the combination of a terrorist attack and a secret service organization can only point us to Ergenekon.
The evidence listed in the Ergenekon indictment, which has been comprehensively covered in the Turkish media in recent days, obliges us to think that the last terrorist attack is linked with Ergenekon regardless of whether it was perpetrated by the PKK, Hizbullah, the DHKP-C or the İBDA-C. Because I think the attacks aim at deterrence and intimidation of those officials who want to chase the trail of Ergenekon wherever it leads, as well as an easing of the increasing pressure on military operations against the PKK. Moreover, these twin attacks aimed to create pressure on the members of the top court, which is now in the process of closing the ruling party as a way of realizing the Ergenekon mission to topple the ruling party through so-called legal means.
Beside of all the above-mentioned goals, these attacks have aimed to simply change and manipulate Turkey's agenda. It has at least been very successful in diverting the attention of Turkish public opinion and the Turkish media from Ergenekon and the closure case to the terrorism itself. The attacks function very efficiently as a way to black other issues out. Hence instead of discussing Ergenekon and the closure case, Turks are now discussing these wretched terror attacks. In this respect, the twin bombs can be described as "agenda-targeting bombs."
Hopefully, these terrorist acts have no chance of reversing the Turkish people's eagerness to make Turkey a much more transparent and much more democratic country. Because the overwhelming majority of the Turkish people want a more transparent, more democratic regime, the attacks, fortunately, do not bear the potential to deter the Turkish people from these demands. Turkey will continue decisively on the path to more democracy, even if the AK Party is closed and even if the armed and civilian bureaucratic elite try to oblige Turks to opt for a new direction for Turkey. Turkey will succeed in cleansing its intestines of the poisonous factors that cause nausea from time to time.
