The Attack at the Reina Night Club and the Aftermath

President Erdogan, pointed out particularly the discriminative statement in the social media after the terrorist attack in Ortaköy, "Not anybody’s life style in Turkey is under a systematic threat. We will never let this happen. We have not given any opportunity for this in the period of our 14 years of rule time. If anyone claims contrary of it he is obliged to put it out with concrete examples." (Source: Aljazeera)

President Erdogan, who appears almost every day on television, made this statement while the meeting right after he appeared for the first time after the attack in Reina nightclub. As you can tell from the explanation he made, "the way of life of anyone is not under systematic threat".

How did the attack on the nightclub affect the "lifestyle" debate?

Attack on the Night Club:

A nightclub was attacked on Ortaköy in Istanbul at 01:15 am on New Year's Eve. The attack was carried out by a long-barreled gun by a person whose identity has not yet been revealed clearly. 39 people have lost their lives.

The attack was undertaken by ISIS.

According to the information given by Reuters, ISIS used the phrase: "Turkey has learned that spilling innocent blood with artillery and air bombardment, will lead into fire at their home", referring to Operation Euphrates Shield.

ISIS had previously undertaken a car bomb attack in Diyarbakır/Turkey on November 4, 2016 where 12 people lost their lives, but the government announced that the attack was carried out by a PKK-affiliated group which is called TAK, and not ISIS. ISIS hadn’t undertaken any of the attacks in Turkey beside these. This is also an interesting point.

Among the people who lost their lives in the attack, 25 of them are men and 14 women. 38 of these people’s identities were identified. From these: 11 of them were Turkish citizens, one of them was both a Turkish and Belgian citizen, 7 of the foreign nationalities were from Saudi Arabia, 3 were from Lebanon, 2 were from Tunisia, 2 were from India, 2 were from Morocco, 2 are from Jordan, 2 are from Iraq, and the others from Kuwait, Canada, the Jewish entity, Syria and the Russian Federation.

Thus, in Turkey in just a year and half, a total of 35 bomb attacks, 513 people lost their lives. Over 2000 people were injured.

Condemning Race:

This attack (which took place in the first minutes of 2017) entered in a flash the agenda of the whole world. Countries that have massacred hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Chechnya and many other countries; "They went into a rage of condemnation for the attack on Reina." America made 4 separate statements about the issue and offered "support". Likewise the Jewish entity, Russia, Iran and NATO made statements condemning the event. Even Murat Karayılan, head of PKK, claimed that "they were not involved in such an attack, and said that they don’t attack civilians".

Social media:

Even before the perpetrator was known, they started to make news that the kind of attack on the nightclub was pointing to the type of action which ISIS would do. Then it was alleged that someone with a "Santa Claus" outfit had done it.

Then, a number of activities and explanations especially the statements of the Religious Affairs that has been going on for about two weeks have begun to come up.

Afterwards, it was claimed that the tweet of a famous fashion designer before the bomb attack would lead to an "Alawite-Sunni" conflict. Again, a video was shared of the famous fashion designer insulting Turkey.

After the event; persons who were calling people in a coffee shop to protect secularism were reported to the Interior Ministry. The Interior Ministry requested to denounce persons that perform such actions by sharing those persons from their social media account. Those who made the call in the coffee shop were arrested.

Again after the attack some of the people shared their thoughts from their social media accounts by saying; “what were they doing there”, “İt was a good kind of an act”. Such discourses have also been discussed extensively. Although the Presidency of Religious Affairs made the first statement in condemning the event, Criminal proclamation has been done due the Christmas sermon that has been read a week ago.

British Press:

After the attacks in Turkey, only the "undertaking organization" or "the organization that was proclaimed" was previously accused. Now, especially England and America are being blamed. This issue has also received a lot of reactions to the Embassies via social media. Thus following the attack the British Ambassador of Ankara, Richard Moore had to reply and said; "There is no evidence that this attack is England."

On the other hand, the British press was more interested in the fact that the real cause of this attack was the foreign policy of Turkey.

The British Times Newspaper said, "The timing of the last attack may be linked to the ceasefire prepared by Russia and Turkey that is announced in Syria. Radical Islamists are angry at Turkey, due to Turkey being ignorant about the arms delivery to ISIS shortly before, now puts its weight on the fight against ISIS.

Independent said, "Turkey is facing the risk of a big collapse, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, paid for the attacks like dominoes effect, now Turkey has been added to this chain.”

Financial Times put forward that the attacks on the big cities in Turkey will speed up!

British Telegraph edition: "Turkey, once represented as a model for Pakistan, is now on his trace today. In times of crisis, people seek a strong leader who can solve their problems. And what if the country is already in power when the terrorism created chaos in the country? Ambitious government has grown the threats.”

The Independent's Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk wrote an article about the attack on the nightclub. In the article; "A person who can bomb the Kurds claiming that he has bombed ISIS, and who doesn’t want anyone to interfere with any of his 'internal affairs' while he is deploying troops to Syria and Iraq, is obviously walking on a very dangerous road. You will see explosions in the backyard as you interfere in Syria, as Pakistan finds Taliban walking to Islamabad while interfering in Afghanistan. "

As in Turkey, the secular-conservative conflict, which President Erdogan uses abundantly, was pointed as a threat towards the government "nationalists". The government made hard statements on those who provoked them, saying that they wanted to make a "secular-anti-secular" conflict. Therefore, it is seen that Turkey is trying to establish perception through exact lines and reach its targets through action in this attack as it is after every explosion.

Result:

Thus, this action undertaken by ISIS has become a “life style” debate In Turkey. Through ISIS it turned to an attack against AK Party government and all the Muslims. More than the motives behind the actions "life style" debates were made. Muslims who enjoin what is right, and forbid what is wrong were accepted as corruption. The Muslims who invited people not to celebrate Christmas were treated as if they were inviting to terrorist actions. The government instead of responding to this attack, carried out different arguments to close the "security vulnerability". Today, President Erdogan made this statement after four days of silence, as if the provisions of Islam are being applied, he explained that "the life style of any person in Turkey is not under systematic threat".

And the actual terrorists who exploded a total of 35 bombs in a year and a half even started are still sitting in their seats and already started to make plans for the next action...

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Osman Yıldız