Published on South Asia Analysis Group (http://www.southasiaanalysis.org) Home > ISTANBUL BLASTS--Two ISTANBUL BLASTS--Two Submitted by asiaadmin2 on Mon, 09/24/2012-13:14 Paper No.843 21.11.2003 by B.Raman Twin blasts, well synchronised. Both by suicide bombers. Jewish and British targets. Similar to the 1998 twin blasts in Kenya and Tanzaniya carried out by Al Qaeda's suicide terrorists against American targets. 2. These were the reasons cited not only by many British and American analysts, but also by Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, for concluding or suspecting that the blasts outside the local office of the HSBC bank, which has its head office in London, and the British Consulate in Istanbul on November 20, 2003, in which 26 British and Turkish civilians, including the British Consul-General, were killed were carried out by Al Qaeda. 3. These reasons are very weak and show how little Western analysts, governmental as well as non-governmental, understand jihadi terrorism, which has been playing havoc in different parts of the world since the New York World Trade Centre explosion of February,1993. 4. India has been the largest victim of this jihadi terrorism, with nearly 20,000 innocent civilans, Muslims as well as non-muslims, having lost their lives, but they were killed not by Al Qaeda, but by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Jaish-e- Mohammad (JEM) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HUJI), all Pakistani organizations aligned with Al Qaeda in
Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF). They are allies of Al Qaeda, but not Al Qaeda. 5. The blasts in Mumbai (Bombay) on August 25, 2003, in which 52 civilians were killed, were also well-synchronised twin blasts, but those were not suicide terrorism. The blasts were got carried out by the LET through local Muslims, who had their own cause for anger because of the perceived failure of the Government of Gujarat to protect their co-religionists during the violent riots of last year. 6. As I always keep stressing, it is important to keep this distinction between Al Qaeda and the IIF in mind; otherwise, one would tend to go wrong in one's analysis and would keep looking for enemies from outside the country when they are often right in our midst. 7. This is what happened in Bali and Casablanca--it was initially thought that Al Qaeda had carried out the blasts, but it turned out that they were carried out by local elements sympathetic to Al Qaeda for local reasons. 8. This is what has happened at Istanbul too. Initially, Al Qaeda elements from outside were blamed, but the investigation is bringing out that the master-minds and the suicide-bombers were locals and not externally-based. That is, local jihadis looking up to bin Laden for inspiration and possibly trained by the IIF, but not forming part of Al Qaeda, carrying out the terrorist strikes on their own without any directions or co-ordination from Al Qaeda. 9. Only when there is the involvement of Arab suicide bombers would there be legitimate ground for suspicion of direct Al Qaeda involvement. Not otherwise. In the synagogue blasts, it has now emerged that the two suicide-bombers were Turks. 10. It is apparent that the blasts of November 15, 2003, against the two synagogues and those of November 20, 2003 against British establishments were inter-connected. To get a hang of the blasts of November 20, it would be necessary to take note of the progress made in the investigation of the synagogue blasts. As per the version of the Turkish authorities, the following facts have emerged from the investigation made so far: * Both the suicide bombers were Turks, but one of them is believed to have carried a Pakistani passport, the reasons for which are not clear.
* The suicide bombers have been identified by the Police as Mesut Cabuk, 29, who had spent some time in Iran, Pakistan and possibly Afghanistan in recent years and, Gokhan Elaltuntas, 22, who has two cousins presently undergoing imprisonment on charges of terrorist attacks carried out in the early 1990s.Both are from the town of Bingol, about 600 miles southeast of Istanbul. * They had two accomplices Azad Ekinci, 25, and Feridun Ugurlu, also from Bingol, who are believed to have purchased the pickup trucks used in the attacks. Both of them had spent some time in Pakistan. They seem to have run away from Turkey after helping the suicide bombers. Their present whereabouts are not clear. Some reports say they have run away to Dubai, which has been denied by the Dubai authorities; other reports say they have run away to Pakistan. 11. It has been reported that Azad Ekinci had been questioned by the police in the past for his being involved in the activities of the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front ( IBDA-C), thereby giving rise to the suspicion that it might have carried out the explosions of at least November 15, either on its own or with the assistance of Al Qaeda or any of the components of the IIF, such as the LET and the HUM. 12. According to the investigators, Cabuk drove the explosives-packed pickup truck that blew up in front of the Neve Shalom synagogue, the largest in Istanbul. Elaltuntas drove the truck that exploded in front of the Beth Israel synagogue in the Sisli district. The leader of the IBDA-C Salih Izzet Idris,also known as Salih Mirza Beyoghlu, presently in jail since 1998, used to attend the annual conventions of the LET at Muridke, near Lahore, before his arrest. The HUM had trained some members of the IBDA-C in one of its training camps in Afghanistan before that camp was destroyed by a US Cruise missile strike in August,1998. In the middle 1990s, the HUM and the IBDA-C had sent a small joint contingent to wage a jihad against the Serbs in Bosnia. 13. The IBDA-C was established in 1975 by a breakaway faction of the youth group of the then Islamic Salvation Party headed by former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan. It is a strong critic of secularism and Mustafa Kemal Pasha and advocates the restoration of the Ottoman Empire just as the LET advocates the restoration of the Moghal rule in India. Its anger over the perceived British role in the break-up of the empire could explain its motive for attacking British personnel and interests, if it is established that it also had a role in the blasts of November 20. Were the blasts timed, at the instance of Al Qaeda, to coincide with President Bush's high-profile UK visit to embarrass him and Prime Minister Tony Blair? Difficult to answer. In the past, the
IBDA-C had attacked members of the Greek Orthodox community, secular journalists etc, but had not shown till now an inclination to take to suicide terrorism. However, in February 2000, it had claimed responsibility for a quadruple bomb attack in Istanbul, not involving suicide bombers. 14. Sections of the Turkish media have contradicted reports of the involvement of the IBDA--C. They have quoted Police sources as saying that the suspects were really members of a little-known group called Beyyiat el-imam, meaning ``Allegiance to the Imam'', which, it is claimed, was formed in the Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and is reportedly led by a Saudi cleric identified as Abu Musab. He is believed to have taken shelter in Iran after the Taliban was driven out of Afghanistan. 15. According to the media, Ekinci reportedly had flirted with a hotch-potch of Islamic groups, including Hezbollah - a violent Turkish Sunni group, unrelated to the Shiite Lebanese group of the same name. He had travelled to Iran, received jihadi and explosive training in Pakistan between 1997-99 and fought in Chechnya. 16. The fact that neither the Turks nor the British nor the Americans had the least inkling of the goings-on in the world of jihadi terrorism in Turkey and of the preparations for the terrorist strikes in Istanbul speak disturbingly of the inability of their intelligence agencies to penetrate the IIF either electronically or through human sources. While some electronic penetration has definitely been made in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and South-East Asia resulting in some successes, there are other areas such as Iraq and Turkey where they seem to be groping in the dark like the Mumbai police in India. The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India,New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com [1] ) Category: Papers [2] Topics: Terrorism [3] Copyright 2012. All Rights are Reserved. Source URL: http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/paper843 Links
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