​Turkey starts New Year with old nightmare

TURKEY - In Brief 02 Jan 2017 by Atilla Yesilada

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Violence cast a dark shadow on New Year’s Eve in Turkey as a lone gunman killed 39 and wounded 65 in the famous night club Reina of Istanbul. The assailant is still at large and believed to be affiliated with ISIS. The assault is a serious economic and sociological blow to Turkey. The first half of the year may be wasted by fending off a simultaneous assault by multiple terror outfits. The culprit took a taxi, carrying a machine gun to his destination, killed and wounded 100 people in 5 minutes and then disappeared into the dark of the night, making a mockery of the very visible New Year’s security measures taken by the police. The attack must have been planned months in advance and probably aided by local networks. While no organization has been named as the responsible party, the MO is very ISIS and given that it has been circulating threats to strike back at Turkey for laying siege to its Syrian stronghold al Bab, it makes sense. The attack killed at least 15 foreign nationals, destroying Istanbul’s reputation as the region’s entertainment capital. Even before the incident, occupancy rates in Istanbul hotels were as low as 20% and room prices in five star hotels at less than $100, so I imagine the New Year’s Eve massacre could be the death knell of the local tourism trade. Given my assertion that terror incidents will continue through the year, I expect no recovery in tourism in 2017. The big and scary question is whether this incident would discourage local restaurant and shopping mall trade. Beyond economic sabotage, the attack on Reina cleverly drove a wedge between Turkey’s increasingly hostile conservatives and secularists. The comments in social media calling ...