The Change Mariner

Blasts in Turkey trace new pattern: Attack Economic Targets

CSMonitor:

"... For Al Qaeda, we can understand why Turkey makes sense. It is the only well-functioning country in the Muslim world, and the Islamists who lead the government are trying to take Turkey into the European Union," says Soli Ozel, a political scientist at Istanbul Bilgi University. "The extremists want to make sure that this experiment doesn't succeed."

After the weekend synagogue bombings, authorities tightened security at Jewish establishments and for other religious minority groups such as Greek and Armenian Christians.

But Thursday's bombings fired what some feared is a first shot at political and economic targets, causing panic and a skid in the Istanbul stock market.

In response, Turkish officials can be expected to launch a crackdown on fringe groups with connections to extreme Islamic groups that may have been overlooked in the past. Virtually all acts of terrorism Turkey has experienced over the past few decades has linked to Kurdish separatist groups - not Muslim fundamentalists.