Turkey and Terror: Why the country should brace for more terror attacks in 2017

Turkey enters 2017 facing security crises on multiple fronts. The steady increase in terrorist attacks on a growing number of targets over 2016 suggests that the Turkish government does not have an adequate handle on the unprecedented wave of terrorist activity in the country. On the contrary, its response to date has fuelled further social and political tensions, which has only served to exacerbate the terrorism threat.

One year ago, analysts were already calling attention to several signs that Turkey was set to face a difficult year. The deteriorating relationship with Kurdish separatists, the influx of three million refugees under a controversial deal with the European Union (EU), and porous borders with Syria that left the country vulnerable to attack by Islamic State (IS) all pointed to the potential for an unstable security environment. The reality was much worse than anticipated. Turkey has spiralled from one devastating terrorist attack to the next, perpetrated by emboldened militant Kurdish groups, including the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK) and Teyrebazen Azadiya Kurdistan (Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, TAK), and IS extremists. These groups have succeeded in moving with ease among the local population to execute complex attacks in multiple cities. The year was also punctuated by a violent coup attempt in July, which provoked a mass crackdown on civil society.

The government’s approach to combating the terrorism threat has focused on three main areas:

• Defeating the PKK insurgency through a military campaign on its strongholds in the southeast, which has evolved into an escalating conflict with the wider Kurdish community;
• Eroding the strength of the Syrian Kurdish rebel group, the Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (Peoples’ Protection Units, YPG), through a military intervention in northern Syria; and,
• Eliminating the threat to Turkey posed by IS through a military campaign against the group’s nearest strongholds in Syria and through intelligence-driven counterinsurgency measures against IS cells within Turkey. 

There are three concerns with this strategy. Firstly, Turkish security forces do not have the resources to contain this number of regional insurgencies, particularly in light of the complexity of the Syrian conflict, leaving them spread thin. Reports released during 2016, for example, provided extensive evidence of heavy-arms trafficking between the YPG in Syria and the PKK in Turkey, allowing the PKK to draw from the superior arms strength of the YPG and making it difficult for the Turkish government to isolate these two threat streams. 

The second concern is that the Turkish government’s collective punishment of all Kurdish citizens for PKK activities and the coup attempt threatens to further alienate the Kurdish population. Tens of thousands of civil servants, teachers, politicians, military servicemen, and journalists, suspected of supporting the attempt have been detained or dismissed under the ensuing state of emergency. While the international community has urged President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to emphasise political unity to re-establish stability, his approach instead has been to purge Turkey’s public sphere of all opponents to his leadership, and to use the coup as a disguised justification to expand the repression of Kurdish rights. This is likely to exacerbate the terrorist threat from the PKK and other Kurdish groups.The strategy to combat IS in Syria has also driven intent for retaliatory attacks against Turkey. As IS continues to lose territory in Syria and Iraq, it has sought to return to terrorist attacks on civilians as its primary modus operandi. Cities, such as Istanbul and Ankara, offer attractive and geographically proximate opportunities to achieve this. IS has also demonstrated its readiness to exploit the migration of refugees into Europe to disguise the movements of its own militants. As Turkey’s government struggles to deal with an estimated three million refugees, and likely further inflows, intelligence-based counterinsurgency measures to combat the domestic IS threat are likely to be tested even further.

The government’s ability to counter the terrorism threat in 2017 is contingent on regional dynamics and on its handling of wider political dissent. Until the government broaches a political solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey, and as long as the Syrian conflict along its border continues, the country is likely to remain a target for frequent attacks by regional terrorist groups in 2017.