TURKEY'S THE TARGET?

Eric Muller wonders whether Turkey was really the target of the bombing today.

The target was Jews, praying in synagogues. That was no more an attack targeting Turkey than the July 1994 attack on a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires was an attack targeting Argentina.

If the attack wasn't just an attack by an anti-Jewish group pure and simple and was instead the product of al-Qaeda types, then it should be pretty clear that the target wasn't simply Jews: Turkey is the prime example of a successful secular majority muslim state; and, more importantly, according to Paul Berman (whose excellent Terror and Liberalism I got around to reading this week) and others, for bin Laden, Ataturk's abolition of the Caliphate in the 1924 was a defining event in the historical account of the assault on the supposedly true principles of Islam. Berman notes that this destruction was so fundamental as to merit mention in bin Laden's October 7, 2001 videotape. See this account of the message of the tape. It's worth understanding that context, since it is probably the context within which the attackers themselves understand the bombing.

MORE: Sorry: Prof. Muller was comparing today's attacks with last week's, actually, and he was wondering whether Turkey was the target of those attacks, but my point still stands.