Capture of Istanbul attacker a small victory among Turkey’s security woes

The Reina attack is just one of a number of ISIL-ordered or inspired mass casualty attacks to hit Turkey recently. It is not a one-off or an outlier, but rather a symptom of the situation the country finds itself in today.

A woman lays flowers by a memorial in front of the Reina nightclub in Istanbul on January 17, 2017, a day after Turkish police arrested the suspected attacker. / AFP / OZAN KOSE

BEIRUT // The arrest of the gunman responsible for the Reina nightclub attack in Istanbul was a welcome moment of relief for Turkey after a manhunt of more than two weeks. But with the country vulnerable and attacks increasingly common, this small victory almost certainly does not mark the end of such violence.

Although the Reina attack garnered worldwide attention and sympathy – likely due to its timing in the first moments of New Year’s Day and the large number of foreigners killed – it is just one of a number of ISIL-ordered or inspired mass casualty attacks to hit Turkey recently. It is not a one-off or an outlier, but rather a symptom of the situation the country finds itself in today.

After turning a blind eye to the growth of ISIL for years and allowing fighters to cross its territory to join the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria, Turkey is familiar territory to the extremists, a place where networks have been in place for some time now. Turkey restrained itself from cracking down on the border, likely afraid that it would attract attacks. But by intervening militarily in Syria last summer with the aim of driving ISIL away from its border, Turkey went to war with a group whose growth had been partly enabled by Ankara’s previous inattentiveness.

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ISIL in Turkey

■ With nothing to lose, ISIL shows its hand in Turkey

■ Uzbek man confesses to killing 39 in Istanbul nightclub attack

■ The arrest of the Istanbul nightclub attacker – in pictures

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Confronting ISIL at home would be possible for the Turkish government if it were just ISIL. But these days it is not just the extremists launching attacks in Turkey. Over the past few years, a complicated web of violence has evolved, with the government confronting multiple groups inside the country. Ankara is seemingly at war with everyone, making it harder to crush a single specific threat.

Since July 2015, Turkey has again been at war with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and, as a result, has had to dedicate large numbers of its security forces to recapturing and holding areas in the country’s south-east.

Meanwhile, hardline PKK offshoot the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (Tak) has turned to using ISIL-style mass casualty suicide attacks against civilians far from the country’s Kurdish heartland. In a December attack that received just a sliver of international attention compared to the Reina shooting, a Tak suicide bomber and car bomb struck outside hit an Istanbul stadium, killing 46 people. Tak may be relatively unknown internationally, but to the Turkish government the group represents a threat equal to – and sometimes more pressing than – ISIL.

Since last July’s coup attempt in Turkey, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has carried out a widespread and continuing crackdown against people who his government says are connected to the plot. This too, along with increasing paranoia that there are still plots underway to unseat the president, surely tugs at the attention of Turkey’s security services.

The strain seems to be showing. With the eyes of the world on Turkey, it took Ankara more than two weeks to apprehend the Uzbek man they say was responsible for killing 39 people at the Reina nightclub. His face became quickly known to the world, yet still he managed to remain elusive as he disappeared in Istanbul.

Days after the massacre, a selfie video surfaced showing the perpetrator walking through Istanbul’s famous Taksim Square unsmiling and silent. It was unclear whether the video was shot before or after the attack, but its release seemed to be a taunt aimed at those pursuing him – a smugly defiant statement that with so much violence in Turkey today, perpetrators of terrorism might just be able to walk away after the horrors they have committed.