THE morning after the suicide attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk International Airport on June 28th, a grim silence hung over the terminal. Taxi drivers waved down the few shocked passengers trickling out of the bomb-scarred building. In contrast with the long closure that followed the attacks at Brussels’ airport in March, flights had already resumed. Turkey is doing its best to maintain an air of normalcy. But with the prime minister, Binali Yildirim, suggesting that Islamic State (IS) was behind the attack, Turkey may find itself drawn ever further into the war in Syria.
The three suicide bombers who attacked the airport killed at least 42 people and left more than 200 wounded. One struck in front of the arrivals hall entrance on the ground floor. The two others forced their way into the departures hall upstairs, shooting travelers with machine guns. One of them headed back downstairs before detonating his suicide vest. Security-camera footage showed one of the bombers being shot by police, then blowing himself up.
If IS was responsible, the attack is the latest in a wave of bombings by the terror group that has killed nearly 200 people in Turkey since last summer. The jihadists last struck in late April, when a suicide bomber killed two people outside a police station in Gaziantep, in the country’s south. The interior ministry claims to have foiled dozens of other attacks, including a plan to bomb bars and night clubs in Ankara, the country’s capital, on New Year’s Eve. Prosecutors early this week demanded life sentences for 36 people suspected of involvement in an IS bombing that killed 101 people in Ankara last October. In addition to the terror attacks, rockets fired from IS strongholds in Syria have killed 21 people in Kilis, a town near the border.
Apart from the murders of at least five Syrian activists, IS has not claimed responsibility for any of its attacks inside Turkey. Its publications and social-media accounts, however, have vilified Turkey ever since the country decided last year to open its airbases to coalition jets operating against IS in Syria. Turkey launched a belated crackdown against home-grown IS sympathisers in early 2015 and has begun using its Syrian proxies to dislodge the extremists from areas just south of the border. Aside from artillery strikes against the group’s strongholds, however, it has avoided challenging IS inside Syria, preferring instead to wage war against Kurdish insurgents at home. Its fighter planes have remained grounded since last autumn, ostensibly for fear of being hit by Russian missiles.
By targeting Ataturk Airport, one of the world’s busiest, the attackers appeared determined to damage Turkey’s $30 billion-a-year tourism industry. Hotels and resorts are already reeling from a Russian boycott, earlier IS bombings and the war in the Kurdish southeast, as well as attacks by an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Foreign arrivals were down by 35% in the year to May, the largest such drop in decades.
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The days leading up to the attack offered hope of a respite. On Monday Mr Yildirim announced a deal to restore diplomatic relations with Israel after a six-year hiatus (see article). On the same day, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed a letter apologising for the downing of a Russian plane last November. That incident prompted Moscow to impose an embargo on Turkish food products and restrict travel to the country. In a phone call with Mr Erdogan on Wednesday, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, agreed to repair ties and lift the tourism sanctions. It may be too late. For Turkish tour operators, the summer season is lost.
To some in Turkey, the timing suggests that the bombing was a response to the agreement with Israel. Yet security experts find it hard to imagine that the attackers could have planned and pulled off an attack as complex as this one in a matter of days. “It may be that they had this going and decided to accelerate,” says Selim Koru, a researcher at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, a think-tank. If it does take credit for the attack, says Mr Koru, IS is likely to use the Israel deal to paint Turkey as part of what it calls the “crusader alliance”.
If the rapprochement with Israel raises Turkey’s profile as a target for IS militants, the one with Russia frees its hand to go after them. Turkish planes have less reason to worry about being shot down over Syria. More importantly, the attack on June 28th should compel Turkey to crack down harder on jihadists at home and to accept the urgency of defeating IS in Syria, says Henri Barkey, a Middle East expert at the Woodrow Wilson Centre. Doing so may require Mr Erdogan to turn a blind eye to American support for the PKK’s Syrian affiliate, which is the coalition’s most trusted partner in Syria. Turkey’s ruler may now have no choice left but to take the fight directly to IS—or let the Kurds do it for him.