Reply #66: A Republican thing? [View All]

Might I suggest that its a Islamist thing? Or do you really believe that Islamists in Turkey stand down during Democratic administrations?

Well, just in case you're wondering, here is some of what went on in Turkey while Democrats were in the White House:

. . .

But the arrest and trial of dozens of Islamic terrorists did not dissuade more extremists from continuing to attack Turkish intellectuals fighting for the secular state and values. In July 1993 they set on fire a hotel where a cultural festival was taking place and 37 intellectuals were burned to death. (28) Aziz Nesin, one of Turkey's leading literary figures, was the main individual target of the fundamentalists. He was accused of intending to publish Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses." A trial opened against the suspects of the massacre involved only 20 participants of a much bigger group of those responsible. (30)

The fight of the security authorities against the radicals continued during 1994, when 659 members of Hizballah were caught, some of them responsible for murders of activists in exiled Iranian opposition groups. In January, four members of the Islamic Movement in Istanbul were arrested for their part in the killing of a Mojahedin-e Khalq activist, the Shah's ex-bodyguard and a member of the Kurdish opposition, KDPI.(31) In October, a six-man Hizballah team was arrested while preparing to assassinate, on orders from Iranian intelligence, a woman of Armenian descent guilty of employing "only" Muslim women in her brothel! They were also involved in the assassination of Iranian dissidents. (32)

This same year IBDA-C was responsible for 90 terrorist incidents, including five bombings in various cities. (33) A prominent cinema critic and writer, Onat Kutlar, was killed in December by a bomb attack carried by IBDA-C aimed "at spoiling the colonialist Noel celebrations." (34)

In 1995, attacks continued. IBDA-C may have been responsible for a bomb attack in January on the building of the Ataturk Association and the attempted assassination in June of a prominent Jewish community leader in Ankara. (35)

One of the most controversial terrorist activities of Hizballah in southeast Turkey has been the liquidation of dozens of pro-PKK activists, journalists, intellectuals and politicians beginning in the fall of 1991 and throughout 1992 and 1993. It has been widely assumed that this was the work of some splinter group. The amount of immunity it enjoyed from the security authorities due to its anti-PKK nature, earned it the name "Hezbol-contra." (36)

. . .

http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/1997/issue4/jv1n4a2.html

It is worth noting that much of the Islamist terrorism in Turkey has been sponsored by Iran.