Egypt, the void in Turkey and IS

Yesterday in Turkey, an official day of mourning was proclaimed in memory of the 305 people killed in a terrorist attack in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and flags at public institutions were lowered to half-mast.
This was a fitting reaction.
This day of mourning was correct, and not only so as not to remain silent in the face of the bloodiest act of terrorism in Egypt’s history, but because the identity of the assailants and their victims is of close interest to us.
However, it is one thing to proclaim mourning and another to truly mourn. Making do with lowering flags to half-mast is simply an outward display.
Faced by an incident that has brought sadness to the world, the need arises to mourn, focus our thoughts and discuss.
Hence, let me make an attempt to do what behoves us.
By general consent, even if IS has not directly claimed responsibility, the attack was staged by this organisation against those who had assembled for Friday prayers at the Al-Rawda Mosque where Sufis of the Sunni sect pray in the town of Bir Al-Abd. One reason for this is that the terrorists were seen to be carrying IS pennants, and a second reason is that IS has previously targeted Sufis, whom they have “takfired”, i.e. proclaimed to be enemies deeming them to be outside Islam, in other countries such as Mali and Pakistan alongside Sinai. In short, we are not encountering a new phenomenon. I would like to make an aside here and suggest that, if you overlooked Tayfun Atay’s article entitled “Sufism, Salafism, IS, Turkey” published in yesterday’s Cumhuriyet, you read it without fail. Atay, having said, “The basis that lends self-legitimacy to IS’s act exists in Islamic history,” adds with reference to the IS crowd, “Historically, socially and social anthropologically, we must call them Muslim. (...) We must notice the wars, the people who have been killed, the murders committed and the massacres staged on behalf of religion.”
I continue. The world was in any case aware that IS had sufficient strength to enable them to visit terror of sensational proportions on Sinai.
IS’s roots in Sinai stretch to the radical Islamist group known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis. This group proclaimed its allegiance to IS in 2014 and assumed the name of “IS-Sinai Province”.
The death on 31 October 2015 of 224 passengers and crew after a Russian passenger plane that had taken off from the Sinai tourism centre of Sharm El Sheikh had been struck down in the middle of the peninsula was its bloodiest act of terrorism prior to last Friday’s mosque attack. IS claimed responsibility and Egypt was also obliged to acknowledge this incident as a terrorist attack months later.
There are records of 1165 terrorist attacks in Sinai over the 2014-2016 period following General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s seizure of power in the coup he staged in July 2013 in which he deposed the Muslim Brotherhood. With the strengthening of state authority in Sinai expected as a natural consequence of the coup, the exact reverse has happened.
The increasing strength of Salafist-jihadist terrorist organisations like IS is a manifestation of radicalisation in Egyptian society.
Sociological and political reasons for this, such as the culture of brokering peaceful solutions and national reconciliation being very weak and the extreme polarisation that inclines society towards violence, were in any case present in Egypt.
Additionally, an anger and disappointment caused by the extremely oppressive nature of the el-Sisi regime in conjunction with the inadequacy of the Muslim Brotherhood may have made IS appear attractive to some people.
The coup has led to greater conflict, and conflict to greater radicalisation.
Nevertheless, none of these factors is sufficient to account for what motivated IS to stage the massacre at the Al-Rawda Mosque.
IS takfired Sufis but had not attacked a mosque in Egypt until today.
What can be the factor that now inspires IS in Sinai to massacre 305 people worshipping at a mosque? Was this the endeavour to show that, following the ending at last of the “IS caliphate” in Syria and Iraq, IS maintains its strength and presence in many other places in the world? According to certain international terrorism experts, this is so.
If this presumption is entertained, the need arises to bring Turkey into the equation.
IS, after all, has a presence in Turkey.
Conditions also exist in Turkey that turn the pious into Islamists, radicalise Islamists and are capable in the end of turning some of them into Salafist-jihadists.
There is violent polarisation and there is no culture of reconciliation, or it is very weak. And, to top it all, social engineering is underway that is paving the way for Islamist radicalisation in the form of a distancing from secularism and a religification of education.
The undeniable ideological and moral collapse suffered by the AKP and the Fethullahists, who were once in a power alliance, has presented Salafist-jihadists with a political void that that they may try to fill and gain advantage from.
When all this is contemplated along with the defeat that IS has tasted in Iraq and Syria and bloody reaction to this that the organisation has staged in Sinai, does this not require us to feel a modicum of concern for our country?
As I said, “Mourning is thinking” and, given that you have proclaimed mourning, these are the thoughts I have come up with.