Bloomberg quotes Rafik Hariri Center Nonresident Fellow Aaron Stein on Turkey’s anti-terror operations and whether the government could have done more to prevent the bombing in Ankara:
Since that election, Turkey has detained 3,362 people in anti-terror operations, almost all of them for connections to the Kurdish separatist movement, according to a report by the state-run Anadolu Agency on Wednesday. Thousands more have been arrested in the past two years for membership in groups ranging from the Kurdish PKK to FETO, a name the government has given to what it says is a terrorist group run by U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, once an ally of Erdogan. FETO is not accused of violence: it’s accused of trying to overthrow Erdogan by launching a corruption probe into his government.
“Tracking terror suspects takes tremendous manpower hours and close coordination amongst the security services,” Aaron Stein, a non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, said by e-mail on Wednesday. “I think any country’s security forces would find it difficult to target three groups at once. The evidence suggests that there were numerous missed opportunities to apprehend people associated with the Adiyaman cell.”