The attack on Istanbul\u2019s Atat\u00fcrk airport has elevated anxiety and despair to a new level in Turkey.<\/p>\n
For the families who lost loved ones, life will never be the same. People caught up in the horror of the triple suicide bombings and those who survived with injuries, the physical and mental scars will last for many years.<\/p>\n
For politicians and, surprisingly, for many others in the country, it only took a day of official mourning to go back to business as usual.<\/p>\n
Barely two days after the carnage at the airport, the inauguration<\/a> of a landmark road bridge over the Marmara Sea took place with more than the usual pomp and ceremony.<\/p>\n The Istanbul airport massacre brought an outpouring of sympathy and solidarity worldwide. It also generated more comment and analysis than any other atrocity committed in the past year in Turkey.<\/p>\n Perhaps the assault on the third busiest airport in Europe was too close to home, or else, Tuesday\u2019s triple suicide bombing showed how vulnerable soft targets, such as civilian transport hubs, and random people have become.<\/p>\n As the details emerged, it became clear how complex and widespread the ISIS threat in Turkey is, and how quickly it has turned into home-grown terrorism engulfing the entire country.<\/p>\n Following the Istanbul attack, Aeron Stein, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council, wrote in Foreign Policy<\/a> about the history of al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Turkey in great detail and how they have been operating \u201crelatively openly in numerous Turkish cities despite being under surveillance by Turkish intelligence\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cTurkey did nothing about the jihadists in its midst until it was too late\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Roger Cohen<\/a>, \u00a0of the New York Times, was more blunt. He claimed that ISIS had been \u201can object of ambivalence and President Erdogan has played a double game\u201d.<\/p>\n Behlul Ozkan of Marmara University referred to the Istanbul airport attack in Huffington Post<\/a> as \u201cthe gravest national security crisis in the history of Turkey\u201d, commenting on how Turkey\u2019s Syria policy has come back to haunt it.<\/p>\n Similar views were expressed inside the country, too.<\/p>\n