While thousands of Turks edged through this city’s trendiest districts, glimpsing the devastation left by four deadly bombings last week, thousands of others streamed into mosques in humbler quarters – where the view of the attacks looks markedly different. “It can’t be Al Qaeda because they wouldn’t launch an attack that would hurt Muslims,” says Suleyman Gencturk, a young man who blames the bombings on Israel and the US. Mr. Gencturk sells religious CDs in Fatih, a working-class neighborhood which has a more devout character than the upscale areas where suicide bombers killed 57 and wounded hundreds more. Here, men in skullcaps and women wearing headscarves – officially discouraged by Turkey’s secular state – are far more prevalent than in the shell-shocked neighborhoods of Beyoglu, Levent, and Sisli, where the pace is more European than Middle Eastern. Full Story
About OODA Analyst
OODA is comprised of a unique team of international experts capable of providing advanced intelligence and analysis, strategy and planning support, risk and threat management, training, decision support, crisis response, and security services to global corporations and governments.