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| Europe |
| Al-Qaeda in Turkey |
| 2005-08-16 |
| When Sammaz Demirtas, the deputy chief of the Istanbul Police, told a reporter on July 29 that "there are 1,000 al-Qaeda members in Istanbul, all of whom are under surveillance, and we are expecting a terrorist attack soon," the media criticized him. In reaction to growing media criticism, the Turkish National Police Directorate initiated an investigation into him. However, on Aug. 10, the police arrested Lu'ai Sakra, the head of al-Qaeda's Turkish cell, while he was planning an attack on Israeli tourist ships in Alanya. These two events brought the al-Qaeda question under the spotlights of the Turkish media once again. The questions that need to be asked by ordinary citizens as well as intellectuals are: Who are these terrorists that are totally alien to Turkish Islam and where do they come from? What do they want to achieve, and how do they recruit in Turkey? So far, although there are several explanations about al-Qaeda in general, there is very limited information about the pillars of the organization in Turkey. We intend to provide some information about it in this article. It's a well-known fact that al-Qaeda operates under the Wahhabi/Salafi ideology and claims to wage jihad for the "unity" of Muslim Ummah. Its organizational structure consists of three pillars, each of which is organized as a separate entity and operates independently unless necessary for an attack. These pillars are: local organizations, which are associated with al-Qaeda; mujadid organizations that fight in different war zones such as Chechnya and Iraq; and al-Qaeda cells which are believed to exist in most counties around the globe waiting for a suitable time to act. Certainly, with such a comprehensive structure, broad goal, ideological backup, through conducting jihad in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and in Iraq, and the implementation of successful terror campaigns, al-Qaeda attracts many radical Islamists from around the world. For the Turks, however, the Wahhabi practice of Islam was not attractive until recent decades. Historically, The teachings of Muhammed 'Abdul Wahhab (the founder of what later came to be referred to as Wahhabism) are a very particular product of Arabian society during the eighteenth century that emphasized the singularity of God, and condemned and rejected Sufi practices as un-Islamic. In a sense, Wahhabism in the 18th century rebelled against the Turkish version of Islam, Sufi Islam and Shiite Islam and declared jihad against these two larger interpretations of Islam. Politically, the alliance of Wahhab's followers and the al-Saud family rebelled against the Ottoman Empire many times and in the end successfully seceded. For these politico-historical reasons, many Turks believe the Arabs stabbed them in the back and therefore at the formation of the Turkish state the external "other" was Arabs as well as Greeks. Nevertheless, the strict and "puritanical" nature of this interpretation of Islam found adherents worldwide, including in Turkey. What we know today is that there are at least 1,000 Turks who have joined al-Qaeda; they share its ideology and outlook. How it happened is still an obscure phenomenon for those who are not familiar with Islamic transformation in Turkey, but it is clear for Islamists and researchers who focus on Turkish Islamic movements. Al-Qaeda's formation in Turkey is fed by two streams. The first one is related to the trajectory of Islamist transformation in Turkey. After long restrictions of Islamic organizations and associations in the early republican period, Islamists in the 1960s discovered a fast way for the construction of Islamic thought. That was to import ideological doctrines from Egypt and Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries. Before the 1960s, Islamic ideologies and terminologies were so limited that a leading reactionary Islamist Metin Onal Mengusolgu describes those years as follows: "There was only one translation of the Koran by Hasan Basri Cantay, even Tanri Buyrugu (Gods' Order) by Omer Riza had not yet been published. There was one Interpretation of the Koran by Elmalili Hamdi Yazir, which only scholars could understand, and people were not aware of the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammed." Moreover, Ahmet Erturk argues that after Mehmet Akif Ersoy, there was no intellectual endeavor to answer the essential question of "what was the main problem that Muslims confront in the new era." However, he argues, "from the second half of the 1960s Muslims found a way to overcome this intellectual barrenness through translations of Muslim scholars' writings, such as Sayyid Kutp, Mevdudi, Abdulkadir Udeh, Hasan el-Benna, Malik Binnebi, Muhammed Kutup, Nedvi, Muhammed Hamidullah and Fazlurrahman Ensari." With this attempt, Islamists constructed systematic thinking on socio-political issues within the neo-Islamic mindset, which was based on the rejection of the traditional interpretation of Islam. As a result, a new terminology appeared in Islamic discourse and new terms were incorporated into popular discussions: Ignorance (cahiliyye), social justice (sosyal adalet), jihad (cihad), Islamic unification (tevhid-ittihad), sirk, and tagut. As a result, these efforts split radical Islamist from traditional Muslims. As Erturk correctly notes "The new wave of Islamism in Turkey made clear distinctions between Islamists and ordinary conservative people. Whereas conservatism often supports the status quo, Islamism is a reaction to the status quo. For Islamists, political consciousness meant that they should reject the traditional social/institutional/and ideological base of society. Ideologically, the rejectionist Islam was influenced by the "puritanical" religious movement of Saudi Arabia, i.e. Salafism. By the time the Islamists experienced the imported ideological transformation, Wahhabism was imported into Islamic circles in Turkey as yet another ideology under the rubric of the Salafi movement. The significance of this revolutionary reading of Islam, including the Salafi movement, became clear during the recruitment process for the Afghani jihad. These revolutionary Islamists propagated, encouraged, and recruited Mujahids (mujahideen) -- who were not necessarily Salafi at the time they joined the jihad -- for the Afghani jihad. After these Mujahids returned to Turkey, some of them were recruited into al-Qaeda units active in Turkey. Here we see the second stream, which fed the formation of al-Qaeda units in Turkey. The wars in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya, and now in Iraq became the preaching and practicing ground for al-Qaeda ideology. For those Turkish Mujahids who joined the war for different reasons other than ideological ones, such as ethnic reasons, they came to know al-Qaeda warriors in these places and were influenced by them. According to a Turkish police report, there are as many as 1,500 to 2,000 Turkish Mujahids who joined the wars at different times and in different places since 1984. The third element of al-Qaeda strategy in Turkey is to establish connections between the local radical Islamist organizations and al-Qaeda. According to some experts, Kurdish Hizbullah, and the Islamic Great East Raiders Front (IBDA-C) are the two al-Qaeda-associated local groups in Turkey. In addition to these three pillars on which al-Qaeda stands, the strategies of Turkish security forces to fight against al-Qaeda and Salafi organizations were questionable until recent years. For instance, it is interesting to note that in the Feb. 28 postmodern-coup process between 1997 and 2002, in which the best preventive measures had been taken against Islamic threats in Turkey, no media outlet referred to any security report, which indicates the danger of the Salafi movement at the time. The key question which needs to be asked is was there any security report which mentioned a word about the threat of the al-Qaeda or Salafi movements at that time? Even more interesting is the fact that Lu'ai Sakra, al-Qaeda's regional lieutenant, visited Turkey frequently between 1998 and 2000, the time period during which the Islamists were subject to the most intense governmental scrutiny. How did this happen? |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |