OSAMA NEEDS TO STOP WATCHING THE BBC AND CNN:

Istanbul's Nightmare Returns (Walid Phares, November 21, 2003, FrontPageMagazine.com)

Let's read the message of yesterday's bombings --  not just the release sent to the wires by the Jihadists inside and outside Turkey, but the substance of it. Why did al-Qaida and its sub-entities aim at the British consulate and a British bank in the former capital of the Ottoman Empire? The geographical setting is clear. Turkey -- or secular Republican Turkey - is a passage for Democracy to the Muslim region. Weakening the Ankara fortress is a must for the radical Islamists. It remains the real and most imminent reason behind the blasts: It is a blow to Great Britain. Unlike the message trumpeted by some journalists, al-Qaida doesn't fight the United Kingdom because of its alliance with the United States, but because of what the British culture and commitment to freedom mean.

Aiming at London from Istanbul, the Jihadists know who their enemies are: President Bush of America and Prime Minister Blair of England. The two leaders have decided to meet amidst raging demonstrations to reset the course of the War on Terrorism. Bin Laden and Ayman al-Thawahiri know very well that after Afghanistan and Iraq, the next stage is a global campaign to support the democratic dissidents in the Middle East. President Bush's latest speech on "Democracy in the Middle East" was a lethal weapon of mass dissemination. Al-Qaida knows this speech, if allowed to germinate in the minds of a thinking people, could harm its control over the masses now pledging their sons -- and daughters -- for a violent jihad against civilization. It is watching students foment political dissent in Iran, intellectuals denouncing fundamentalism in Kuwait and Syrian reformers meeting in Washington, D.C. If the Baathist-Wahabi alliance doesn't break the will of the United States and Great Britain in Iraq, a Mesopotamian tidal wave of anti-terrorism will soon take off. Bin Laden wanted to strike inside the U.S.-British alliance before free Arabs would strike inside his jihad.

Killing British diplomats and British bank employees in Istanbul is al-Qaida's effort to fuel anti-Americanism in London at a time when the two Trans-Atlantic leaders are consolidating their plans (and when tens of thousands of American leftists are meeting to express their hatred of these same targets, Bush and Blair). A reporter for a main TV network illustrated this fall into al-Qaidaís trap. Out of the British capital, the correspondent rushed to conclude that most men and women in the British Isles would punish Blair for pausing with Bush, because this alliance with the President caused English people to be slaughtered in Istanbul. That was exactly what al-Qaida ultimately wanted to achieve: another rift in the Atlantic alliance. Although the bombs hit Istanbul, Osama bin Laden wanted to blow a crater in the U.S.-UK partnership forged on the battlefields of Iraq. What the master of jihad wanted to achieve to turn the West's most powerful weapon to fight terrorism against itself; he wants to defeat the West through their own democracy.

You'd think that al Qaeda would have figured out by now that their campaign has been totally counter-productive. They've even managed to steel Italian spines. In fact, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that a sufficiently lethal bombing in Paris would wake the French up. Okay, that's the outer edge of the realm...

MORE:
-Al-Qaeda reviles Turkey's ties to the West: Though a secular state, religious resentments fester (Peter Goodspeed, 11/21/03, National Post)

There is one chilling realization to draw from yesterday's terror attacks in Istanbul -- al-Qaeda's acolytes are trying to broaden their war with the West and they don't care who suffers.

Yesterday, for the fourth time in less than a week, Turkey was the target.

It is not hard to see why.

Overwhelmingly Muslim, Turkey is a moderate secular state crucially situated at the crossroads of East and West. More importantly, Turkey has moved closer to the West than any other Muslim nation in the world. It is a member of NATO, is seeking to enter the European Union and has close ties with both the United States and Israel.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, Turkey has been on the front lines of Washington's war on terror. Istanbul has provided the United States with military support, tracked suspected financial networks, shared intelligence and, like Canada, participated in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) peacekeeping operation in Kabul.

For al-Qaeda's leaders, Turkey is a model of everything they think a Muslim nation shouldn't be.

-Attacks on Turkey Try to Sever a Bridge Between Islam and West (CRAIG S. SMITH, 11/21/03, NY Times)

With its foothold on the European continent and the bulk of its territory in Asia, Turkey has been the site of sweeping ideological battles before. Once part of the Christian Byzantine Empire, and later the center of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the country in its modern incarnation has tried to finesse its identity by paying lip service to the Islamic world while defining its future among the dynamic economies of the West.

Turkey was the first among Muslim nations to recognize Israel and has developed extensive ties with it since then. It has been a model NATO member and has tried hard in recent years to win the favor of the European Union, which Turkey wants to join.

All of this has made the country suspect among Muslim countries, particularly in the Arab world.

Meanwhile, decades of economic malaise have haunted a generation of frustrated, underemployed youth and turned many toward conservative Islam.

An often brutal effort to force the assimilation of the country's restive Kurdish minority into the larger Turkish population also fed passions among Kurdish youth and spawned a generation of closet separatists with a hardened fringe of fighters.

The religion-inspired wars of the 1990's drew some young Turks north into Bosnia or across Iran to Chechnya and Afghanistan. In those places, terrorism experts say, the young men were vulnerable to the ideological zeal and global designs then coalescing into Al Qaeda.

The war in Iraq may have tipped the balance toward actual terrorism. "Before, the threat was more or less theoretical," said Rifat Bali, a writer in Istanbul.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 21, 2003 9:55 AM