More details on the Istanbul airport attack
I’ve learned over the years that if you want the most thorough coverage of terrorist attacks—even ones in this country but especially attacks that occur abroad—go to the British papers.
The Daily Mail has a lot of details (some of which will no doubt prove inaccurate, as reports on such attacks often are, whether in US or British papers) and many photos, far more than any American paper I’ve seen. The photos are not grisly, but many are very sad, such as the smiling faces of people who were killed, and the anguished faces of grieving relatives.
Here are some details I pulled out, some of which highlight the reason I said in my initial post that it seemed to me that security (meaning: armed guards) had limited the death toll to a certain extent (see also this comment of mine):
Customs officer Umut SakaroÄŸlu has been hailed as a hero for his actions. He was standing guard as a terrorist tried to go through the first set of security.
Realising the danger people were in, it appears SakaroÄŸlu shot at the suicide bomber, who then detonated his belt, killing the customs officer.
However, his colleagues say had he not acted, many more people would have been killed…
Friends and family were coming to terms with the death of Serkan Turk, a 24-year-old physical education graduate who had gone to the airport to meet his mother.
He was killed by the second blast, after he went to try and help those injured by the first.
Here’s Serkan Turk:
More:
Elsewhere, eyewitnesses have also described the moment a hero policeman shot down one of the suicide bombers before he was able to detonate his explosives, giving holidaymakers a chance to escape and saving countless lives.
Among the dead were cab drivers, customs officers, people meeting people, and people waiting for planes, . The site was the international arrivals terminal, or near the entrance to that terminal.
Finally we also have a diagram, although who knows whether it’s correct. I had heard that the third terrorist detonated himself outside the building; this diagram shows him as having been inside. And that very same article offering the diagram also had this to say, which seems to contradict it:
It is believed the gunmen arrived at the airport in a taxi and were trying to pass through the security x-ray machines at the entrance when they were stopped by security officers and carried out their lethal attack – unleashing a spray of bullets against officers.
Two of the attackers detonated their explosives at the terminal entrance after being fired upon by police, while the third blew himself up in the car park, according to a Turkish official.
Well, the one who was running, shooting at people, did not seem to be in the terminal entrance; he seemed to be inside, unless he was in some sort of corridor leading from one terminal to another. The above quote also conforms with what I’d previously heard, which is that the third terrorist was outside the building, further away than the others.
At any rate, here’s the diagram:
From the Turkish president:
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged an international ‘joint fight’ against terror after the attack, the fourth deadly bombing in Istanbul this year alone.
He said: ‘For terrorist groups, there is no difference between Ä°stanbul and London, Ankara and Berlin, Ä°zmir and Chicago or Antalya and Rome.
‘If all countries, all humanity will not join their forces, every terrifying things in our minds will happen one by one. I hope this Ataté¼rk Airport bombings will be a milestone, a turning point of the battle against terrorist groups around the world.
‘If states, as all humanity, fail to join forces and wage a joint fight against terrorist organisations, all the possibilities that we dread in our minds will come true one by one.’
I have to say I agree with him. I also think that, if the evidence of the post-9/11 years and particularly the Obama years is any guide, much of the Western world has lost the will to fight the fight with fortitude and resolve. And unity? What’s that?
It’s a terrible thing, and we forget that the US is not always uppermost in the minds of terrorists. Their aims are often more local or regional than global.
I am betting there won’t be a lot of FB avatar colorings over this one. There’s no positional moral advantage for most Americans on this one, so they’ll let it ride.
I think the FB colored profile pic is getting old. Even Orlando did not generate the numbers that Paris or Gay marriage did. We are becoming complacent. I think back to the HORROR of James Foley’s decapitation and I think people reacted with the same sense of dread to the Paris incidents. I think Obama has achieved his goal of persuading his loyalists that this is not an existential threat and it is more about bigotry and guns than anything having to do with Islam. It’s very depressing.
I have often been in queue of over a hundred people, waiting to go through the TSA station in the airport. Nary a cop in sight. We cannot carry a concealed weapon on to an airplane, so we have to line up like sitting ducks, with no ability to shoot back.
Sooner or later.
Erdogan has selectively supported jihad factions, and pined for the return of the Ottoman Caliphate. Playing with fire is never a good idea, and the innocent are often the victims. Kerry claims attacks of this nature are a sign that ISIS has been degraded and their actions are a sign of desperation. Leadership standards have been degraded, not jihadists, witness a choice of hrc or djt.
Meanwhile we wait for news of the arrival of grandchild number 6 William Oliver, named for our daughter inlaw’s father. There is joy in this troubled world. Take it where you find it.
Indeed, Erdogan is perfectly fine, thank you very much, with Hamas shooting missiles, rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians, digging tunnels to attack Israeli civillians, killling and maiming Israeli civillians, and vowing to destroy the State of Israel.
Yes, he’s perfectly fine with that. As are many in his party and in his country.
Erdogan is a sleaze. On a trip to Germany, he spoke to Turks there telling them not to assimilate. I don’t really know what the Turkish imams are preaching to them in the mosques. I do know that some Germans are working closely with assimilated Turks to find ways to counter radicalization within the enclaves.
I think Erdogan came to power by playing to the less educated, more tribal people from Anatolya who were moving into Istanbul for economic reasons. He is trying to sell himself as the strong man who will restore the caliphate. After this attack, he doesn’t look so strong, so he is trying to regain ground.
I notice that Tel Aviv and Jerusalem weren’t on his list.
I certainly wasn’t indicating I have any admiration for Erdrogan.
But I agree with his sentiments as expressed in that statement.
Well, snap out of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x-fkSYDtUY
The photos in the DailyMail were the best I’ve seen also, Neo. What struck me right away was that, in all the photos, most men were wearing short sleeved shirts…except the suicide bomber who was wearing a black, long-sleeved, zipped-up puffy jacket.
Istanbul had a high of 84 and low of 72 yesterday. Anybody walking around dressed the way the suicide bomber was should have been pulled aside by security and asked to unzip his jacket.
London Trader:
“I notice that Tel Aviv and Jerusalem weren’t on his list.”
There’s that sense of it, but notice too that Erdogan’s “list” was fellow members of NATO in this sense of it:
http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/Turkey/turkey-erdogan-042103.htm
Neo:
“I also think that, if the evidence of the post-9/11 years and particularly the Obama years is any guide, much of the Western world has lost the will to fight the fight with fortitude and resolve. And unity? What’s that?”
In this case, unity is restored foundationally by setting the record straight in the political zeitgeist that President Bush’s decision for Operation Iraqi Freedom was correct on the law and facts.
Particular to this case, setting the record includes clarifying the principal purpose of OIF, among its several principal purposes, of solving the Saddam regime’s world-leading “regional and global terrorism” (Iraqi Perspectives Project), that included Islamic terrorism, including “considerable operational overlap” (IPP) with al Qaeda, that breached UNSCR 687 to establish casus belli for OIF.
The direct relevance to anti-ISIS counter-terrorism is that enemy propagandists have convinced many in the West, including many of its leaders, of the diametrically false narrative that Saddam opposed Islamic terrorism and the Iraq intervention caused AQI (whose Surge-defeated remnants subsequently reconstituted as ISIS, with the complicity of the Assad regime, in the fecund conditions of the Syrian civil war, and then invaded into a post-US Iraq that was critically weakened by Obama’s premature disengagement of the vital US-led peace operations, which had caused Maliki’s turn and Iran’s encroachment, which betrayed the Iraqi Sunnis who had chosen Iraqi nationalism with the Anbar Awakening under vital strong-horse American leadership).
In fact, the Iraq intervention directly combated the world-leading “regional and global terrorism” (IPP) of the cartel-like Saddam regime, al Qaeda “considerable overlap” (IPP) alliance, and had evidently defeated AQI until Obama chose to deviate course from Bush with Iraq and in the post-Bush Arab Spring. Obama’s course deviation from Bush that withheld vital strong-horse American leadership facilitated the formation of ISIS in the terrorist-exploited disintegration of the Arab Spring. Obama and his fellow travelers, of course, justified their terrorism-enabling course change from Bush with the false narrative of OIF.
In other words, Bush’s counter-terrorism strategy, including and especially the Iraq intervention, was the correct counter-terrorism formula “to fight the fight with fortitude and resolve” (Neo). By the same token, the Obama-led rejection of Bush’s counter-terrorism strategy has been the rejection of the correct counter-terrorism formula.
The rejection of the correct counter-terrorism formula is the cause for “much of the Western world has lost the will to fight the fight with fortitude and resolve” (Neo).
Reviving the “will to fight the fight with fortitude and resolve” (Neo) requires reviving the correct counter-terrorism formula, which requires reviving Bush’s counter-terrorism strategy – which requires vigorously setting the record straight in the political zeitgeist that President Bush’s decision for OIF was correct on the law and facts and, by the same token, vigorously discrediting any purveyor of the demonstrably false narrative of OIF, including Obama, Clinton, and Trump, who has contributed to misdirected the West, especially America the leader of the free world, from the correct counter-terrorism formula instated by Bush after 9/11, including and especially the Iraq intervention.
Oops. Fix:
…
Neo:
“I also think that, if the evidence of the post-9/11 years and particularly the Obama years is any guide, much of the Western world has lost the will to fight the fight with fortitude and resolve. And unity? What’s that?”
In this case, unity is restored foundationally by setting the record straight in the political zeitgeist that President Bush’s decision for Operation Iraqi Freedom was correct on the law and facts.
Particular to this case, setting the record [straight] includes clarifying the principal purpose of OIF, among its several principal purposes, of solving the Saddam regime’s world-leading “regional and global terrorism” (Iraqi Perspectives Project), that included Islamic terrorism, including “considerable operational overlap” (IPP) with al Qaeda, that breached UNSCR 687 to establish casus belli for OIF.
The direct relevance to anti-ISIS counter-terrorism is that enemy propagandists have convinced many in the West, including many of its leaders, of the diametrically false narrative that Saddam opposed Islamic terrorism and the Iraq intervention caused AQI (whose Surge-defeated remnants subsequently reconstituted as ISIS, with the complicity of the Assad regime, in the fecund conditions of the Syrian civil war, and then invaded into a post-US Iraq that was critically weakened by Obama’s premature disengagement of the vital US-led peace operations, which had caused Maliki’s turn and Iran’s encroachment, which betrayed the Iraqi Sunnis who had chosen Iraqi nationalism with the Anbar Awakening under vital strong-horse American leadership).
In fact, the Iraq intervention directly combated the world-leading “regional and global terrorism” (IPP) of the cartel-like Saddam regime, al Qaeda “considerable overlap” (IPP) alliance, and had evidently defeated AQI until Obama chose to deviate course from Bush with Iraq and in the post-Bush Arab Spring. Obama’s course deviation from Bush that withheld vital strong-horse American leadership facilitated the formation of ISIS in the terrorist-exploited disintegration of the Arab Spring. Obama and his fellow travelers, of course, justified their terrorism-enabling course change from Bush with the false narrative of OIF.
In other words, Bush’s counter-terrorism strategy, including and especially the Iraq intervention, was the correct counter-terrorism formula “to fight the fight with fortitude and resolve” (Neo). By the same token, the Obama-led rejection of Bush’s counter-terrorism strategy has been the rejection of the correct counter-terrorism formula.
The rejection of the correct counter-terrorism formula is the cause for “much of the Western world has lost the will to fight the fight with fortitude and resolve” (Neo).
Reviving the “will to fight the fight with fortitude and resolve” (Neo) requires reviving the correct counter-terrorism formula, which requires reviving Bush’s counter-terrorism strategy — which requires vigorously setting the record straight in the political zeitgeist that President Bush’s decision for OIF was correct on the law and facts and, by the same token, vigorously discrediting any purveyor of the demonstrably false narrative of OIF, including Obama, Clinton, and Trump, who has contributed to misdirect[ing] the West, especially America the leader of the free world, from the correct counter-terrorism formula instated by Bush after 9/11, including and especially the Iraq intervention.
Irene:
Maybe he would have been pulled over by security had he gotten to security. He wasn’t even at the first security checkpoint when the first battle with police occurred. I assume he just pulled out a gun and shot the security guard at the outset (this occurred outside the airport at the taxi arrival stand), but perhaps there was some exchange of fire.
I’d like to know these details because I think they’re important in terms of understanding what security was in place and how it was breached. But he was not in the airport when the whole thing began.
In Israel I’ve heard they start their security before the airport, on the road into it. But they are a much smaller country and there’s only one big airport, Ben Gurion. To give you an idea of the comparative figures, Ben Gurion served about 13 million people in the year 2012.
The Istanbul airport is the 11th busiest in the world and served about 61 million people in 2015. For more perspective, Logan in Boston, which is only the 17th busiest airport in the United States, serves about 2 and a half times as many people as Ben Gurion.
You see the dilemma. The sort of screening that Israel is able to put in place is much more problematic at larger airports in larger countries. From what I can see, Istanbul has more security than most airports in terms of number and placement of armed guards.
Yes, the details are important. The way the DM wrote it, it made it sound like he did get into the terminal.
Irene:
I think your confusion may have come because you may not have realized that at Istanbul the security begins before the passengers enter the airport. The first security checkpoint is in front of the entrance, which is where it all began.
The DM article refers to the first security checkpoint but I don’t think it clearly states where that checkpoint was. I’m still not totally sure how far it is from the entrance doors and how far it is from the taxi stand where people are dropped off.
Wherever there is a perimeter, there is a target. It’s not the terminal building, or the passenger lounges, or the parking lot.
It’s wherever there are lots of people and if it’s two miles from the terminal where the folks are lined up, there’s your target.
Here are a couple of articles on point for this post
https://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2016/06/29/willful-blindness-and-radical-islam/
http://www.timesofisrael.com/horrific-turkey-attack-shows-why-airport-security-worldwide-is-a-deadly-farce/
Maybe Erdogan should rethink his buying of oil from ISIS.
‘If states, as all humanity, fail to join forces and wage a joint fight against terrorist organisations, all the possibilities that we dread in our minds will come true one by one.’
They should have thought about that before intentionally delaying the agreement and refusal to allow A US division into the north of Kurdistan in 2003.
Turkey, by supporting terrorist infiltration of the EU, is merely being bitten by their rabid allies.
Gun Used in Paris Terror Attack Possibly Linked to Fast and Furious
One of the guns used in the November 13, 2015 Paris terrorist attacks came from Phoenix, Arizona where the Obama administration allowed criminals to buy thousands of weapons illegally in a deadly and futile “gun-walking” operation known as “Fast and Furious.”
A Report of Investigation (ROI) filed by a case agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tracked the gun used in the Paris attacks to a Phoenix gun owner who sold it illegally, “off book,” Judicial Watch’s law enforcement sources confirm.
-=-=-=-=-
“Agents were told, in the process of taking the fully auto, not to anger the seller to prevent him from going public,” a veteran law enforcement official told Judicial Watch.
It’s not clear if the agency, which is responsible for cracking down on the illegal use and trafficking of firearms, did this because the individual was involved in the Fast and Furious gun-running scheme.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A mainstream newspaper reported that a Muslim terrorist who planned to murder attendees of a Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas last year bought a 9-millimeter pistol at a Phoenix gun shop that participated in the ATF’s Fast and Furious program despite drug and assault charges that should have raised red flags.
‘If states, as all humanity, fail to join forces and wage a joint fight against terrorist organisations, all the possibilities that we dread in our minds will come true one by one.’
the problem is that its the states that fund and use them so that war is not declared on the state doing so (with or without others)…
Russia’s been running the islamic thing since 1920s, hitler did for a bit, but once he was gone, there was a big thing, and they even trained their people, gave them semtec by the ton, gave them intelligence, and more..
so… what ya gonna do? Declare war on Russia, or play pretend fighting over state operatives pretending they have no fidelity to anyone? Cui Buono??
Resolve?, actually the answer may be simpler. Islamic terrorism is hardly new. The west was subjected to centuries of it in the form of Barbary piracy which included slaving attacks on Britain. The reason it was never combated was more or less the same reason as today, it would cost more lives and treasure to defeat the creeps than they take. The US was an exception in the Barbary Wars because tribute to the Barbary pirates were costing the US around 15% of its budget. Put it this way, would any Western power want to increase its defense spending, draft men into its army, risk political upheaval in order to defeat an enemy that takes fewer than a 100 lives a year? Almost no one is affected by terrorism. Higher war time taxes on a somnolent population, whose collective memory extends around two weeks, would draw an angrier reaction than a 200 casualties every three months in terrorist attacks.
ATF ordered gun shop owners to sell to people who could not pass background checks, since they were threatening the gun shop owners.