ISTANBUL — On any given day, the heart of this city’s historic district, where the monuments of three empires — Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman — collide with a mix of majesty and tranquillity, is a bustling center of tourism, one of the world’s most visited places.
Mixing among German tourists on Tuesday morning, not far from the celebrated Blue Mosque, the authorities said, was an Islamic State operative from Syria in his late 20s, wearing a vest of explosives and determined to kill as many people as possible.
The attack left 10 tourists dead, all foreigners, and like other terrorist strikes in recent months in Paris; Beirut, Lebanon; Mali; Egypt; and Baghdad, it resonated far beyond Turkey as civilians were again cut down while going about their daily lives.
“Today, Istanbul was hit,” said Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, in a statement. “Paris has been hit. Tunisia has been hit. Ankara has been hit before.”
She continued, “Once again, international terrorism is showing its cruel and inhuman face today.”
The attack at a center of tourism here underscored what security and political analysts say is an inevitable and grim byproduct of the fight against terrorism and the self-declared Islamic State: Attacks against so-called “soft targets,” while few in number, are likely to continue with chilling regularity.
Tuesday’s bombing came as the Islamic State faces increasing pressure from an international military coalition — of which Turkey and Germany are members — that has accelerated attacks on the group’s oil infrastructure and has recently driven it from one of its key cities in Iraq, the provincial capital Ramadi.
“It’s clear that they’ve diversified their strategy and are determined to target more soft targets outside their areas, that is, in Syria and Iraq,” said Daniel Benjamin, a scholar at Dartmouth and a former coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department during President Obama’s first term.
Emergency workers and a dead body near the Blue Mosque in the Sultanahmet district in Istanbul, the site of a suicide bombing on Tuesday. Deniz Toprak/European Pressphoto Agency
He added, “There is a paradoxical situation where they seem to be inflicting more pain while at the same time they are suffering setbacks.”
As the bomber struck on Tuesday morning in Sultanahmet, the heart of Istanbul’s old city, workers in Baghdad were still clearing away the wreckage and blood from an Islamic State attack Monday night on a shopping mall that brought with it the return of old fears for the city’s residents. Almost daily for years, the city faced the type of attack that hit Istanbul.
Ahmed Saadawi, a prominent Iraqi writer, received a top Arabic literary prize in 2014 for his novel “Frankenstein in Baghdad,” which delved into the effects such random violence can have on a society, by breaking down social bonds as fear prevails. Iraq is an extreme case, and in previous years, the violence led to all-out sectarian conflict.
But in Turkey, Europe, the United States and elsewhere, the rising anxiety about terrorism is eroding empathy and compassion while stoking xenophobia and intolerance.
“When fear controls a society, it will distract and confuse people’s minds, and it will erase the lines between enemies and friends,” Mr. Saadawi said. His honored novel, he said, is largely about fear: “How it makes people scared to walk in the streets, thinking, who is the enemy? Who is the friend?”
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, did not immediately claim credit for the attack Tuesday, but Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said it appeared that the attacker — whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan identified as Syrian — had connections with the terrorist group.
For Mr. Erdogan, the participation of a Syrian is likely to complicate his government’s cooperation with the European Union in stemming the flow of migrants from Turkey’s shores to Europe, while also steeling his resolve to keep Syrians out of Turkey altogether.
The country has already effectively shut its southern border with Syria to new refugees. Last week, it instituted new visa regulations for Syrians arriving by air, a decision that stranded hundreds of Syrians at the airport in Beirut.
It is unclear if the bomber looked specifically for Germans to kill. “By targeting Germans, ISIS seems intent on creating an anti-refugee backlash in Europe, hoping to fuel already rising anti-Islam sentiments on the Continent,” said Soner Cagaptay, an expert on Turkey at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Members of the Istanbul Medical Chamber association placing carnations near the blast site.Yagiz Karahan/Reuters
For Turkey, the attack was the latest spillover from the Syrian civil war. In October, two suicide bombers who the authorities say were working for the Islamic State struck a rally in Ankara, the Turkish capital. Nearly 100 people were killed in a crowd of mostly Kurds gathering to demand an end to the conflict between Turkey and Kurdish militants in the southeast.
Tuesday’s attack, while less deadly, was by some accounts more resonant, as it seemed unconnected to Turkish domestic politics and designed to deal a blow to the country’s $30 billion tourism industry.
As the Syrian civil war metastasized over the last five years, Turkey, in its determination to see Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, ousted, supported rebel groups, offering its territory as a transit route for fighters and weapons. Turkey has faced heavy criticism from its Western allies, including the United States, for enabling the rise of the Islamic State.
Only recently, analysts say, has Turkey seemed determined to clamp down on the group, conducting raids against cells in Turkey and building a wall on a portion of its southern border with Syria, opposite territory controlled by the Islamic State.
Many critics say that those efforts came too late and that in recent years the group was able to build up networks in Turkey that are now targeting the country as retaliation for the recent clampdown.
“It’s very difficult to stop suicide bombers, especially if you have allowed an infrastructure to grow in your country,” said Mr. Benjamin, the scholar at Dartmouth and former American counterterrorism official.
The explosion in Sultanahmet occurred close to the German Fountain, a gazebo-style structure that commemorates a visit by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1898. The blast left several bodies around the base of an Egyptian obelisk that was carved around 1490 B.C. and was brought to the city in A.D. 390 by the Roman emperor Theodosius.
The Germans reported that at least eight Germans died, while the Turkish government put the number at nine. The other tourist who died was Peruvian, according to news agencies. At least 15 other people were wounded, including nine Germans, along with citizens of Norway, Peru, South Korea and Turkey. The suicide bomber also died.
More than three hours after Tuesday’s explosion, a group of waiters stood in shock outside a nearby restaurant.
“I don’t know what to say — I guess we were expecting this, but not an explosion this big,” said one of the workers, who gave his name only as Ibrahim, his eyes fixed on the Blue Mosque, an early-17th-century landmark.
On a usual day, the restaurant would be busy with customers, with lines forming outside.
“Tourism had already dried up after last year’s explosion, but after this, it’s game over,” said Ayse Demir, 36, a shopkeeper at an arts and crafts shop, referring to an attack at a police station that killed an officer. “No one is going to risk their lives for shopping and history.
Ceylan Yeginsu reported from Istanbul, and Tim Arango from Baghdad. Sewell Chan contributed reporting from London, Victor Homola from Berlin and Patrick Boehler from Hong Kong.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/world/europe/explosion-in-istanbul-tourist-district-kills-at-least-10.html?_r=0
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