Today’s suicide bombing near the famous Blue Mosque in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district, an attack that killed at least 10 people and injured another 15, was likely perpetrated by ISIS, though nobody has directly claimed responsibility. Nobody ever directly claimed responsibility for last year’s attacks in Diyarbakır, Suruç, and Ankara either, but ISIS was probably/certainly behind those as well. The suspect in the bombing is (was, I guess) a Syrian national, and the Turkish government appears to be operating under the assumption that he was working with ISIS.
Assuming it was ISIS behind the attack, this represents a new phase in its operations inside Turkey, and its implications may mean more than those of either Suruç or Ankara, despite the fact that both of those attacks appear to have been considerably more lethal than this one. The Suruç and Ankara bombings targeted crowds of Kurds and leftists, avowed opponents of Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and were designed to inflame tensions between the government and Kurds. We’ve seen that a Turkish government worried about its Kurdish citizens is a Turkish government that turns a blind eye toward ISIS (or, if we’re feeling less charitable, actually aid ISIS in subtle ways), seeing the group as the lesser of two evils, the enemy of its enemy, and those bombings were intended to compound that conflict.
Today’s attack, which may actually be the second time ISIS has carried out an attack in Istanbul in the past couple of months (to be clear, that pipe bombing may well have been set by Kurds or another group rather than ISIS), seems different. This attack didn’t target any Kurds and doesn’t seem to have been intended to further exacerbate Turkish-Kurdish tensions. This just looks like…well, like a regular old terrorist attack, like we’ve seen recently in Paris, San Bernardino, Tunis, Cairo, and Baghdad, just to name a few places. It’s an attack that strikes the biggest city in Turkey and, because most of the victims were German tourists, one that hits Turkey in an especially vulnerable spot (Turkish tourism is already suffering thanks to Ankara’s beef with Russia). Buzzfeed’s Mike Giglio is on to something when he notes what this attack may mean and why it may have taken place:
Until Tuesday, ISIS’s attacks in Turkey had focused on its enemies across the border. The murdered journalists had investigated its atrocities, while it is battling ethnic Kurdish militia in Syria. But the bodies of tourists sprawled near the entrance to Istanbul’s iconic Blue Mosque on Tuesday were a signal that ISIS has set its targets on a bigger fight — one aimed more directly at Turkey. Containing that threat could prove to be the biggest challenge the government has faced amid the enormous turmoil of recent years.
Tuesday’s bombing comes as Turkey is expected to increase its cooperation with Washington against ISIS, possibly helping to clear the militants from a crucial stretch of territory along the border, said Soner Cagaptay, who directs the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. An upcoming visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden may have helped to motivate the attack, he added. “ISIS is acting preemptively to hurt Turkey so Ankara will stand down or at least cool off against the group,” Cagatpay said. “Part of ISIS’ strategy of targeting ‘non-Turks’ is to both divide Turkey and also escape punitive action. Though, this time the second one won’t work. Hitting Istanbul is stupid even from the group’s Machiavellian take.”
That last bit seems uncertain to me. Erdoğan is starting to give in to pressure from the US and other European countries to take ISIS seriously at long last, but it is still the case that ISIS is the enemy of his (Kurdish) enemy. With elections long over and AKP safely ensconced as Turkey’s majority party for the foreseeable future, it may be that Erdoğan will finally allow his government to commit to the anti-ISIS fight for real, and maybe today’s bombing will strengthen his determination to do that. But let’s wait and see.
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The Foreign Exchanges Companion 
