Turkey's terrorism challenge

Last Saturday was a sad day globally and in Turkey. While twin attacks in the center of Istanbul killed 44 people and wounded more than 150, a suicide attack on a military base in Aden killed 48 and wounded at least 40 and, the next day, a bomb attack at Cairo's Coptic Cathedral killed 25 and wounded another 49.

 Although terrorism has become the 21st century's curse on humanity, and most countries around the world have been affected, the latest attacks indicated again that the threat of terrorism is geographically coalescing into a triangle made up of the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

According to the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2016, a comprehensive analysis of the impact of terrorism for 163 countries prepared by the Institute of Economics and Peace, 29,376 people lost their lives as a result of 12,089 terrorist attacks globally in 2015. This was despite a 10 percent drop in the number of attacks and terrorism-related deaths. The number of terrorist groups carrying out attacks reached 274, but just four of them - the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Boko Haram, the Taliban and al-Qaeda - were responsible for 74 percent of all the deaths. The global economic cost of terrorism, on the other hand, reached 89.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2015.

Obviously, terrorism is not a new phenomenon and has been with humanity since ancient times. But one of the more important aspects of the latest wave of terrorism since al-Qaeda hit the United States in 2001 is its transnational character. With the rapid advance of communications and transportation technologies, the world has become a playground for a new type of networked terrorist group and its affiliates or basic sympathizers who don't necessarily have a hierarchical...