After the church attack: ISIS sleeper cell or dead cell?

Tuncer Murat Cihan lost his life in the attack on Sunday’s mass at the Santa Maria Italian Church in Sarıyer District and the eyes of the world turned towards Turkey. Immediately afterward, speculations, allegations, and question marks about which organization might have carried out the attack appeared in the headlines one by one: ISIS. 

The organization soon announced that it had claimed responsibility for the attack. Thus, discussions and concerns about whether the sleeper cells in Turkey were mobilized again started to be voiced again. Since its establishment in 2014, ISIS has been the perpetrator of 12 attacks in Turkey, including the attack on the Santa Maria Italian Church. Of the 34 suspects detained in the operation organised by the security forces, 25 were arrested. So, are our worries over, have we been reassured?  

No.

Is ISIS reviving again?

Masum Gök from 10Haber wrote about the acquittals in the ISIS trial about a month ago. Gök pointed out that one of those acquitted yesterday was arrested in the church attack. 

Timur Soykan from BirGün also brought to the agenda that the arrested people had a residence permit and were even driving a pirate taxi. 

In Turkey, people on trial for ISIS are usually released with a judicial control condition at the end of the process. In other words, we never know how many ISIS members are among us and we continue to live our lives believing that they are “sleeping” or “dead” cells. For now, there is no clear answer to the question of whether ISIS is reviving in Turkey, but I think the file that would give the best idea would be journalist Hale Gönültaş’s series “ISIS File in Turkey” published in Artı Gerçek. 

Let us examine to what extent ISIS is “dead” or “sleeping” in the rest of the world. Founded in 2014, ISIS is the successor of the Salafist jihadist organisation Tawhid wa Jihad founded by Abu Musab al Zarqawi. It started as the Islamic State of Iraq, became the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and then said, “We have crossed the borders drawn between the Islamic States by dirty hands to limit our movement. This is the state that Sheikh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi built the way to”, this organization, which declared itself the Islamic State, was successful until 2019, when it weakened.

To establish a Sharia state based on the Salafist interpretation of Islam, ISIS followed a five-stage roadmap in its organization and progress. This road map caused skepticism towards the perception that ISIS would be defeated when the territories they had captured were taken back. Likewise, following the stages of hijrah, unification, destabilizing the “infidels”, consolidation, and caliphate, the organization managed to establish a strong structure in every place they captured at the time. This was mostly applied in the field of education. 

One of the first things ISIS did in the regions it controlled was to establish schools where it imposed its education system. In these schools, which had been the subject of much news before, it had come to the agenda that children were brainwashed and even given lessons on how to become suicide bombers. At the point when ISIS realized that it was losing its power, it started to concentrate its already well-used propaganda tools on children. It tried to reach young children through applications with games in which they listened to Islamic songs calling for jihad against non-believers.

So why did I tell you all this?

Their position in Africa has not declined

ISIS was on the international media agenda before the attack on the Santa Maria Italian Church. Foreign Policy, citing senior US officials, reported that Washington had decided to withdraw its troops from Syria. Following this claim, debates began on whether ISIS was over or not, and whether the withdrawal of US troops would help the organization to regroup. 

Those in the US who want the troops to return home are of course right, but it should be added that their view of ISIS is shallow, such as “the moment they lose territory, they are finished”. Although ISIS lost 95 percent of its large area of influence in Syria and Iraq in 2017, it is worth noting that the situation, especially in Africa, has not deteriorated much.

According to BBC Monitoring data, the number of attacks undertaken by the organization in 2023 dropped by 53 percent compared to 2022. Meanwhile, there is a serious decline in the attacks undertaken by the Khorasan branch of the organization in Afghanistan. While this is indeed a major setback, it is worth noting that the organization is still causing major losses where it is active. 

The organization, which currently has about 10 branches in Iraq and Syria, has lost its effectiveness. However, the schools established by the organization in the regions under its control raise concerns in terms of their influence on the younger generations. It should not be forgotten that the organization uses brainwashing institutions under the name of “education” as a propaganda tool very well.

It was written that the main goal was to conquer Istanbul

Especially Turkey, which sentences ISIS members to a maximum of seven years in prison and then releases them with judicial control, should not forget. 

If you remember, in the video published by ISIS on 29 April 2019, in which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appears, Turkey was shown as a “province”. If we go back a little further, we can also recall the magazine Konstantiniyye published by ISIS in Turkish in 2015.

In the preface of the magazine, it was written that the main goal was to conquer Istanbul. ISIS’s aggression against states where Sharia law is not applied has been realized not only through armed attacks but also through the rhetoric it spreads. 

Therefore, it seems more reasonable to characterize ISIS cells as dormant rather than dead.