FROM LOCAL HIZBOLLAH TO GLOBAL TERROR: MILITANT ISLAM IN TURKEY

Middle East Policy, Spring 2007 by Uslu, Emrullah

On November 20 and 25, 2003, Istanbul was rocked by four suicide bombing attacks in which trucks heavily loaded with explosives killed over 60 people. The November bombers first attacked two Jewish synagogues; five days later, the British Consulate General and the Istanbul headquarters of the HSBC bank were the targets. These dramatic, deadly assaults were unexpected and without precedent. They revealed that radical Islamic terrorist groups in Turkey pose a new and serious threat. Their goals and targets have become global rather than local, and their doctrine now sanctions the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians. In support of their new modus operandi, their members are undergoing a thorough process of radicalization and training. As all of this suggests, these new terrorists generally share the aims, values and ideological orientation of al-Qaeda but are not directly subordinated to the organization.

Indeed, the group that carried out the bombings was typical of the many largely independent local al-Qaeda "franchises" identified in the Middle East today. Credible reports indicate that group leaders received some general funding from alQaeda sources. However, they recruited their subordinates, selected their targets, performed their operational planning, and acquired their vehicles and explosives on their own. They assembled their group on the basis of past organizational affiliations, kinship, tribal ties (to a limited extent) and, primarily, close personal and hometown relationships. Of course, these factors often overlapped. For example, several of the terrorists both had common roots in the radical Kurdish Hizbollah organization (see below) and were natives of the southeastern town of Bingol,1 traditionally a major center of radical right-wing Islamism in Turkey.

Almost all group members by and large had previously belonged to Kurdish Hizboflah and other Turkish right-wing extremist groups, which, in most cases, had been harassed and broken up by the Turkish National Police over the previous decade. Several had fought abroad, particularly in Chechnya, where the extremist Muslim opposition attracted many Turkish militants. Some of its members had trained at alQaeda camps in Afghanistan. (According to police estimates, 450 Turkish militants received terrorist training in Afghanistan.2)

No further proof of the group's independence from al-Qaeda is necessary than the amateurish character of their major operation, whatever its grim results. The assaults were mistimed, so that in the case of the synagogues, the great majority of those killed were Turkish Muslim pedestrians rather than the intended victims, Jewish worshipers.

After the explosions, police found numerous clues that led to the apprehension of most group members, including identity documents the drivers should have destroyed in advance. These errors do not bespeak alQaeda professionalism. Nevertheless, some of the group escaped to neighboring countries over obviously well-planned routes, which suggests continuing ties with elements of alQaeda 's international network. (While they were in Afghanistan, according to police interrogation reports, group leaders were told by their al-Qaeda contacts that they should make an attack against the American Consulate General in Istanbul their first priority.1 After one look at the Consulate General's new heavily guarded hilltop location, the terrorists quickly concluded it was a target well beyond their capabilities).

This paper examines the radicalization process of Turkish Islamists, with a specific focus on the terrorist organization Hizbollah, often referred to as Kurdish Hizbollah to distinguish it from the Lebanese group using the same name. Hizbollah is the largest and most significant of Turkish extremist groups that are currently active. Hizbollah is also of interest in that its members and leaders are predominantly and passionately Kurdish and can be seen as virtually the linear descendants of the participants in the failed Sheyh Said revolt of 1925, a Kurdish/Islamist insurrection that sought to remove the secular Kemal Ataturk regime and restore the caliphate. We seek to answer how and why Hizbollah members join the jihad and become terrorists. Whom do they read, and why? How do they interpret the Quran? What is their view of world events? The data used include police reports and interrogation documents, media reports, and Islamic texts used mostly by the Turkish militant groups.

The paper will also analyze the internationalization of Turkey's radical Islamic movement, a development that begins in the late 1990s. Among the events leading to this transformation, two in particular stand out. First, on February 28, 1997, Turkish Army generals forced the Islamist government of Necmettin Erbakan to resign, in what Turkish scholars refer to as "history's first postmodem coup d'état." Turkey's secular military acted largely because they believed that Islamic movements were spreading rapidly under the Erbakan regime. Then, on January 17,2000, the Turkish National Police cracked down heavily on Hizbollah. Its leader was killed and 2000 Hizbollah members quickly taken into custody. These events influenced some of the more important Islamic terrorists still at large to leave the country, move their operational bases abroad, and shift from domestic to international targets, exporting militants to fight in troubled areas of the Islamic world.