When No One Is Truly Safe

Caf

er Yilmaz was at work in his bakery on a broad boulevard in Istanbul's modern new financial district at about 11 a.m. last Thursday when a tremendous bang shook down the building's windows and walls. Across the street, yellow smoke poured from the 18-story headquarters of the British-owned HSBC bank, where a pickup truck packed with homemade bombs had just set off a mighty explosion. "That first moment was not at all like you would imagine from the movies," Yilmaz says. "No one was screaming or running. If you had slapped me, I would probably have just stared blankly at you."

Twelve minutes later, in the city's historic Beyoglu district, Victoria Short, wife of the British consul general, stepped across the narrow street from her husband's office to pick up milk for his coffee. She paused to chat with the shop owner as a green catering van sped up the narrow street, smashed into tall wrought-iron gates at the corner of the walled consulate compound and blew up.

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The nearly simultaneous blasts sent waves of horror through the crowded streets of Turkey's largest city. Glass exploded from windows, cars burst into flames, debris and choking smoke filled the streets. Stopping an insistent woman from moving closer to the carnage, a police officer told her, "Sorry, beyond this you will be walking on bits of people." Inside the consulate, the body of Short's husband Roger, 58, a career diplomat, was buried under a six-foot pile of wreckage. A rescue worker, cloaked in dust as he frantically dug, reported, "We're not pulling anyone out intact."

The twin bombings took the lives of at least 32 people, almost all Turkish citizens, and wounded more than 450. That was shock enough for the country, but the attacks came on the heels of similarly synchronized blasts just five days earlier at Istanbul's two main synagogues, assaults that had killed 25 and injured more than 300, also mostly Turks. Said Semih Idiz, a veteran columnist for the Aksam newspaper: "It's our 9/11."

Coinciding dramatically with President George W. Bush's state visit to Britain, the violence served up a taunting reminder that his war on terrorism is far from won. Indeed, Turkey appeared to be the newest front in a wave of terrorism strikes that have spread across the Muslim world in the past six months from Iraq to Morocco to Saudi Arabia to Indonesia, making this Ramadan holiday a bloody season. Fearing the campaign was not over, London and Washington issued broad warnings of possible imminent attacks against British and American interests abroad. In Muslim countries, the chosen targets have symbolized mainly Western and Jewish interests — Jakarta's J.W. Marriott Hotel, Casablanca's tourist sites and Jewish centers, residential compounds for foreign workers in Riyadh, Istanbul's synagogues and British offices. But a second assault in Riyadh Nov. 8 was on a compound housing mainly Muslims and Arabs. And the locale of all these strikes may contain a grim message for Muslims: Beware, anyone who cooperates with the West — the danger extends to you.

Rather than being defeated by the U.S.-led war on terrorism, Islamic militants seem to be methodically widening their holy war against the U.S. and its allies. Turkey made an obvious target. Even under the current Islamic-party government, democratic Turkey has remained staunchly secular and pro-Western. It was the first Muslim nation to recognize Israel, and cultivates extensive ties with the Jewish state. Long a faithful U.S. ally and member of NATO, Turkey aspires to join the European Union. Although its populace bitterly opposed the war in Iraq and its Parliament refused to let the U.S. deploy soldiers from Turkish soil, the government has been mending ties with the U.S., even offering to send peacekeepers to Baghdad (which the Iraqi Governing Council refused to accept).

The terrorists' strategy, says an adviser to Morocco's King Mohammed VI, is to create chaos aimed at undermining moderate Muslim governments. In February, Osama bin Laden, in a tape, labeled Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Yemen and Pakistan countries "enslaved by America" and thus "the most eligible for liberation." Having already tried to hit in Jordan in 1999 and successfully attacked in Yemen in 2000, terrorists, since the message went out, have struck the three others. But a former U.S. counterterrorism official says that much as terrorists like to hit targets with such high symbolic value, they plan first with an eye to operational success. "Going after Turkey because of its relationship with Israel or the U.S. is secondary or tertiary," he says. "They went after Turkey because there were available targets. They act where they can — and then go for a message."

From Washington to London to Istanbul, politicians and experts were quick to lay the blame on bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Officials noted that last week's bombing spree bore all the hallmarks of the group's operational style: using suicide bombers to launch multiple attacks almost simultaneously at soft targets. An obscure militant group even invoked bin Laden's name in claiming responsibility.