While president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan`s record is blemished by the army killing of civilians in the culturally Kurdish south east of the country, his words on Wednesday addressing the muted international reaction struck home for many grieving people.
The bombs that went off in Istanbul today could have gone off in any city in the world, in any airport.
I want everyone to understand that, to the terrorists, there is no difference between Istanbul and London, Ankara and Berlin, Izmir and Chicago.
Unless we come together as all countries and as all people, and fight against the terrorists together, all possibilities that we can’t even dare think of right now will come true.
There is a growing sentiment in Turkey that attacks in their part of the world don`t attract the same amount of attention as those in the West, even when they`re carried out by the same extremists.
The recent spate of violence began in the summer of 2015, triggered by backlash to the increasingly authoritarian Turkish state, renewed calls for Kurdish independence, and a fresh wave of Islamic extremism born from the instability of the Syrian civil war.
Tuesday`s attack in Istanbul is the deadliest of 2016 so far. In total, more than 195 people have been killed in the space of just six months.
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