4 Factors explaining why Turkey is coming under increasing terrorist attack

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[SIZE=5]Turkey was once a regional exemplar of stability and a major tourist destination. Here’s why that has changed so dramatically
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Turkey was rocked on Tuesday night by yet another deadly terrorist attack. Officials say at least 36 people were killed and more than 150 wounded when three suicide attackers, armed with automatic weapons and explosives, unleashed carnage on those waiting at a security checkpoint to enter Europe’s third busiest airport.

The assault on travelers at Istanbul Ataturk Airport — named for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the country as a secular republic — brings home how far down Turkey has been dragged from its former status as a regional exemplar of stability and a major tourist destination. Terrorist attacks have been rising across the country, with several targeting Istanbul—including a car bombing earlier this month that killed 11 people — bringing violence to a cosmopolitan city of 14 million that straddles the Bosphorus Strait and has historically been considered the meeting place of the European and Asian continents. Tourist arrivals are down by more than a third in the past year. How has it come to this?

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1. The war in Syria

When the Syrian government brutally cracked down on the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, Turkey’s then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — now the President — was quick to call for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, comparing his regime to Nazi Germany. Syria’s bloody civil war has now been raging for more than five years, with a plethora of armed groups proliferating in the chaos. Turkey shares a 500-mile border with Syria — with attendant security headaches — and has been accused of allowing foreign fighters to cross over to join groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). There has been even more movement in the other direction: more than 2.5 million Syrians are now estimated to be living in Turkey.

2. Kurdish insurgency

Turkey’s role in Syria has been complicated by its own long-running battle with an insurgency waged by the Kurdish ethnic group who live across eastern Turkey and in parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran. The Turkish government claims Kurdish militants fighting ISIS are an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy since the 1970s. Turkey’s preoccupation with fighting Kurdishforces in Syria — including with airstrikes — puts it in conflict with both U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters and the Russian-backed Assad regime. Kurdish leaders say this in effect places Turkey on the same side as ISIS in the conflict.

3. ISIS

A rising number of terrorist attacks have been committed on Turkish soil in the past year, killing hundreds of people. The government blames some on a Kurdish rebel group, but — underlining the complex threat the country is facing — officials also believe ISIS is launching attacks. Authorities have already indicated they believe ISIS was behind Tuesday’s airport attack, which resembled the March attacks on Brussels airport that were linked back to the organization. Observers of the militant group say it has in the past chosen not to claim responsibility for attacks it has launched in Turkey.

4. Geopolitics

Tuesday’s attack in Istanbul came just days after Turkey announced it would normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, which had been ruptured since a 2010 incident when Turkish flotilla activists were killed by Israeli security forces while trying to break Israel’s aid blockade on the Gaza Strip. Apparently seeking to end isolation caused by its policy in Syria, Erdogan also signaled a thaw in relations with Russia this week by sending a letter of apology over a Russian warplane that Turkey shot down near the country’s border with Syria. Turkish commentator Mustafa Akyol tweeted after Tuesday’s attack that the timing of the airport attack “might not be an accident,” suggesting that it could be an ISIS response to the deal with Israel. Reports also say Turkey has recently carried out arrests and raids targeting ISIS at the border with Syria, which also could have sparked retaliation.

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Turkey has a porous border with Iraq and Syria. Maybe the Brexit guys were right after all.

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the longest text i can read is only 140 characters long, a tweet

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Nakumbuka Talker flani hapa akisaidia Turkey kupiga kifua after they downed a Russian jet. That was a stupid, extremely reckless move by Turkey, and it was really naive of them to imagine there wouldn’t be consequences. Imebidi Erdogan akunje mkia, haezi shindana na ndovu kunya. I’m sure even Turkey’s western allies, while publicly supporting them, in private told Erdogan to carry his own cross.

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Pretty much sums it up, though I would heavily weigh on the war in Syria as my top choice
Have some Turkish friends around and they paint a bleak future of the country as long as the incumbent is still in power.
Oh, and though unrelated, the deep seated hatred between Fernabache and Galatasaray is as thick, intense and nasty as Man Utd and Arsenal!

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan apologized Monday for the downing of a Russian warplane in November and called for Russia and Turkey to mend a bilateral relationship that has become openly hostile over the incident.

One Russian pilot was killed last year when two Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian Su-24 warplane over Turkey’s border with Syria in an unexpected clash that Russian President Vladimir Putin called a “stab in the back administered by the accomplices of terrorists.” In footage later aired on Russian state television, pro-Turkish rebels fired automatic rifles at the pilot as he parachuted to the ground. The Kremlin was furious, imposing a series of punishing sanctions against Ankara while demanding for months that Erdogan personally apologize.

On Monday, Erdogan wrote to Putin that he “would like to inform the family of the deceased Russian pilot that I share their pain and to offer my condolences to them. May they excuse us.” In a statement, Erdogan’s press secretary said Russia and Turkey “have agreed to take necessary steps without delay to improve bilateral relations,” specifically noting regional crises and the fight against terrorism.

“We had no wish or intention to down a plane of the Russian Federation,” a Kremlin press release quoted the Turkish communique as saying. “I share their pain with my whole heart,” Erdogan wrote, referring to the family of the pilot.

[Turkey and Israel announce deal to repair relations]

The personal apology from one of the region’s most autocratic politicians came on a day of diplomacy that dealt with some of the international tension he has generated in recent years. Turkey on Monday also normalized relations with Israel, ending a six-year rift over the killing by Israeli commandos of Turkish activists aboard an aid ship bound for the Gaza Strip.

Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Russia had ratcheted up pressure on Turkey over the incident.
“Russia has been very aggressive against Turkey, militarily and in intelligence and cyber realms since the 2015 November plane incident,” he said. “This scares Erdogan tremendously. If the joke in Turkey was that Erdogan, the sultan, would never apologize, the answer would be ‘yes, but except to the tsar.’ ”

The Turkish attack on the Russian jet occurred not quite two months after Moscow intervened militarily in Syria to back the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and carry out airstrikes against a broad swath of the secular and Islamist opposition. A rescue operation to save the pilot also ended in disaster, as a Russian marine was killed after rebels downed a rescue helicopter.

At the time, Turkey claimed that the Russian pilot had flown into its territory and bombed rebel positions occupied by Turkmen rebels, whom Erdogan had backed and armed against the Assad government. It was not immediately clear whether Turkey was renouncing those claims Monday.

Russia, which had maintained friendly relations with Erdogan and saw the country as a potential counterweight to Europe, reacted angrily to the incident. It intensified attacks on Turkish-backed rebels in northern Syria and imposed a series of painful sanctions on Turkish imports and labor, as well as on Russian tourism to Turkey, that have cost that country billions.

The Kremlin has insisted for months on a personal apology as well as the prosecution of the alleged killer of the pilot. In another concession Monday, a regional Turkish prosecutor announced that he would prosecute Alparslan Celik, a Turkish national fighting alongside Syrian rebels, for the death of the Russian pilot.

While Turkey and Russia may resume normal relations, they remain on opposing sides of the Syrian crisis, with Moscow backing Assad’s government and Erdogan calling for him to step down.

Russia said Monday that Putin had received the apology, but no reaction was reported.

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Another major factor left out is Tayyip Edrogen…Turkey thought they could use ISIS inorder to bring down Asaad forgeting that one cannot use islamist and put them in the pocket after u r done with them…Turkey is going to be a failed state if this continues

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Man United’s traditional rivals in England ni Liverpool not Arsenal. Lakini Erdogan is a very twisted leader who bites more than he can chew.

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Man United main rival are Liverpool, some may call it the north derby but Sir Alex reaffirmed its as the Derby. On Erdogan he messed up completely because he thought EU and Nato will forever back him and therefore he took may wrong moves in Syria. He forgets any mistakes will directly affect Turkey as they are neighbours. Turkey also is the main corridor for stolen oil wealth from Iraq by ISIS. They are paying the terrorists who in turn bomb and attack them. Just plain stupid.

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The sad bit is many people going to fight for ISIS pass through Turkey.

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Lovely country and its an airport I use every year and will go on using God willing.

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Majority of Europeans still think the Turks are not European enough especially the French and British ironically just because they are Muslims.