International Terrorism

Presentation on "Conflict and International Relations: The Impact of Terrorism and Extremism on the Middle Eastern International Politics Agenda" as invited speaker in the Middle East session, 14 April 2021, at the congress "Beyond the West: Politics of the Global South" organized by the Political Science and International Relations Studies Association (NECPRI) and held online 12-14 April 2021.

The Expanding Terrorist Threat in Africa
Extremist groups provide a stipend to live on, health treatment for the recruit's family, status within the community and a sense of purpose. Extremists find a ready and willing audience in regions where the government is ineffectual and corrupt.

The paper examines the process of securitization of Islam in Central Asia within three sectors, namely, military, political and societal. It argues that securitization is not merely a speech act, it also is an associated political process that affects the adoption of laws related to traditions, freedom of conscience, religious associations, public organizations, political parties and security policy. The article presents the methods that were used to construe various notions of Islam as a threat. The prerequisites of this policy are deconstructed and analyzed, along with its consequences for the political system and the reproduction of authoritarianism in the states under scrutiny. The theory of securitization is presented in the beginning of the article. The second part examines the military sphere, where Islamic radicalism is portrayed as a threat to the security of the state, population, territorial integrity and military potential. The next part examines the political sphere, where Islamic radicalism is said to threaten the sovereignty of the state, its institutions, and the stability and sustainability of the social order. The final part of the paper focuses on the discourse and practice within the societal sector, which touches upon issues in which Islamic radicalism threatens collective identity, language, and culture.

Islam phobia is one the glaring issue of contemporary world. At one side Muslim are alleged for terrorism on the other hand they are experiencing Islamophobically motivated terrorism by the west. Terrorism and Islam-phobia both caused each other, they both are the flip through view of each other .However tis paper will examine the Islam-Phobia its causes and effect along with contradiction related to Islamic jihad and terrorism to better understand the relationship b/w Islam phobia and terrorism. And then will discuss how it cause Islamophobically motivated terrorism.

This poster addresses the employment of the Armed Forces in homeland security tasks. Unconventional conflicts – hybrid, asymmetric, and transnational conflicts which involve state and non-state actors such as insurgents or terrorist organizations – are among the trend topics of defense and security.  Since jihadist terrorism broke out in in Europe, security has become a main concern, occupying the front pages of newspapers and the agendas of governments. Therefore, the debate on the employment of the Armed Forces in homeland security tasks became central.

The primary responsibility for protecting life and property and maintaining law and order in the civilian community is vested in police forces; supplementary responsibility is vested by statute in specific agencies other than the Ministry of Defense. Military forces may be used to support law enforcement agencies. In emergency situations, the Parliament may authorize the use of the military as a police force on home soil.

Police departments are much larger in major metropolitan areas and much smaller than the average in rural areas, but in catastrophic attacks that affect large areas in several states simultaneously, there will not be enough police officers to do what has to be done. Since lateral reinforcement is not feasible when all adjacent areas are involved, the only source of augmentation for local departments will be from the Armed Forces.

Subsidiary operations of the Amy in support to civil authorities – e.g. military aid in the event of a catastrophe – are one of the ordinary duties of the Army, whose main mission is to ensure security and defense of the territory. Although the readiness of use for the defense of the territory is reduced, the maintenance and development of this important primary mission is to guard the long-term, in anticipation of events imponderables in the military and security policy.

In Western liberal-democracies the executive power is limited in the use of the military in domestic security operations because of legal norms. Police is in charge of internal security, with the Army acting as ‘reinforcing force’ only in conjunction with the first. Subsidiary operations of the Army in the field of homeland security have increased over the past few years and in many countries  is currently underway a political debate to evaluate the allocation of the Army direct powers in policing. It is a political decision, which must take into account both the changing environment in which the Armed Forces operate and the threat of international terrorism manifested in disruptive manner at the beginning of the new millennium. Legislative and cultural obstacles should be overcome to achieve this goal.

L’idée d’une coopération entre les pays pour mieux faire face aux menaces terroristes est désormais claire et pourtant, dans l’histoire moderne, pendant la guerre froide, les actes terroristes ne constituaient pas un sujet de consensus, tendance apparue avec les attentats du 11 septembre et la dynamique de coopération au sein de l’ONU contre le terrorisme. D’une part, la résolution 1373 - 2001 du Conseil de sécurité a mis en place des instances chargées de lutter contre ce phénomène, appelant à renforcer la coopération et l’échange d’informations, à mettre en place aussi un système d’alerte rapide et à appliquer des conventions visant à prévenir le financement d’activités terroristes. D’autre part, l’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies a adopté en 2006 une stratégie globale de lutte contre le terrorisme, visant à être multifonctionnelle : réduire et éradiquer la propagation du terrorisme et renforcer les moyens dont disposent les États Membres pour garantir le respect des droits de l’homme et la primauté du droit dans la lutte contre le terrorisme. Le contrôle est donc devenu une obligation et, d’autres organisations internationales et régionales entendent suivre la même approche, la Communauté économique des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest est dans le même cas.

On 28 January 1982, Consul General of the Republic of Turkey in Los Angeles Kemal Arıkan was assassinated by the crossfire of two terrorists in the morning hours while he was in his vehicle stopping at traffic lights close to his residence. The “Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide” (JCAG) claimed responsibility for the assassination.

The fundamental inability of the international system to agree upon a definition of 'terrorism' has caused one of the major problems for countering terrorism. The 'invention' of 'terrorism' as a fundamentally political term involves moral judgment and the infusion of this political concept into defining terrorism is inherently problematic. It exists as a framework for explaining incidents which are deemed by those of effective in world politics to involve illegitimate and unacceptable political violence. 'Terrorism' is a deeply subjective concept involving an assessment of the motives and intentions of perpetrators for rhetorical reasons used in a careless and pejorative way rather than being technical term for a specific form of violence. Such international inability causes disruptions and new challenges especially for Turkey to counter terrorism in the cases of PKK/PYD and FETO/PDY terrorist organisations. The inclusion of these organisations as non-state actors in the international system with new methods such as "proxy war" and "creating parallel state" pushes national authorities to update their countermeasures to struggle with terrorism. Without cooperation and consensus in the international system, it is a bitter reality that terrorism gains power, capability and opportunity to attain its aims. Especially US, western states and Russia provide wide range of political, economic and military support for these terrorist organisations in order for their state interests. Their political and military activities create safe haven for PKK/PYD in Syria and for FETO/PDY in different parts of the world. Therefore, terrorism has became much worse challenge for the international system more than ever. In this paper, absence of international definition of terrorism will be argued with its influence over the practice where Turkey defines PKK/PYD and FETO/PDY as terrorist organisations but US, western states and Russia (here only for PYD) do not. Such dispute is worth to evaluate how it provides power, capability and opportunity for terrorism against Turkey.

Two decades after the Global War on Terror was launched, the terrorist organizations that rallied around the Salafi-jihadist ideology are defeated. Their malicious plots are proactively disrupted, their most recognized leaders are eliminated and they are forced to operate from hideouts, following the defeat of the ISIS. However, the ideology is surviving by far more followers today, than in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that prompted the war on terrorism. Through effective use of the internet platforms, these terrorist organizations recruited and indoctrinated a large number of supporters, who can operate semi-autonomously without a need for strict organizational hierarchy of the past days. In the last several years, a number of restrictions were introduced against the violent extremist content on the internet, but these measures pushed the terrorists to the dark web, where it is nearly impossible to regulate the content or monitor the data traffic, due to privacy and anonymity features. In the face of these new realities, it is high time to rethink and recalibrate the war on terrorism and allocate more resources to fighting the terrorist groups on digital platforms, especially on the dark web, which offers an unprecedented array of new opportunities for terrorist engagements. The new counter-terrorism strategy should be about chasing the terrorists on the dark corners of the internet, versus the mountains of Afghanistan or deserts of Syria.