On September 6, one year will have passed since the terrorist attack on the Neveh Shalom synagogue in Istanbul took the lives of 21 innocent people. One month has passed since the guerrilla assault on a small village in Mardin province killed 31 people, 16 of whom were children. As we reflect on these tragedies and mourn the loss of blameless lives, we should not lose sight of perhaps the most disturbing lesson of that incident: Terrorism, like many a deadly virus, is disturbingly adaptive. Even though the Istanbul attack has not been solved officially, evidence amassed so far points to a new and unlikely coalition of murderers - Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese Shiite, and Iranian - whose particular union appears to have been catalyzed by the continuing crucible of the Lebanese civil war. Farther behind this union and perhaps others like it, however, lurks the shadow of the Soviet Union.
It is not surprising that such a development should show its ugly face in Turkey. Aside from being a bridge between Europe and Asia and a bulwark of democracy standing before its northern, eastern, and southern neighbors, Turkey has been for decades a testing ground for new and malevolent forms of terrorist violence. In the Western media, regrettably, Turkey's responses have garnered more attention over the years than have the attacks that brought them forth.
Over the last two decades, international terrorism has been one of the most talked about, thought about, studied about, written about, and worried about topics within the public purview. Terrorism has raised a novel and perplexing threat to the health and even the longevity of Western liberal civilization, creating excruciating problems for the governments that preside over it.
The mixed but generally flaccid reactions of Western governments to international terrorism, which has virtually always been directed against open, democratic, technologically advanced Western societies, have contributed to the evolution and diversification of terrorism. This is one reason why scholars can find no rest in their continuing debate over the definition of terrorism and why all definitions that aim at fixing an "ideal type" will leave something to be desired. For all practical purposes, terrorism is no longer one phenomenon but a continuum of many, and analytically it is still a moving target.
Maximum shock tactics
In the late 1960s, when international terrorism made its dramatic entry into world consciousness through the midwifery of the violent of conflicts of the Middle East, the problem was simpler. Terrorism in those days was the weapon of weak, anomic groups who sought media attention and used maximum shock tactics to goad opposition status quo forces into counterproductive repression. For this purpose, the random murder of pure innocents worked best, for the "senselessness" of it all produced the desired anxious outrage in media-saturated Western publics and the desired frustration and panic in targeted governments. Such activities are still a part of the terrorist repertoire, but no longer the main part. By attracting the sponsorship of a number of authoritarian and would-be totalitarian states, terrorism has metathesized into a form of low-level proxy warfare. Terrorist groups benefit from this arrangement because it provides protection, financial and logistical support, and greater status - even if it occasionally compromises their independence. States sponsoring terrorism gain
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