Where are the causal links in the Paris attacks?

The terror attack in Paris on the staff of the magazine Charlie Hebdo is an act whose destructive power was kept as high as possible. The impact of the message to be conveyed this way was likewise aimed to be as strong as possible. While the act was carried out with great composure and professionalism, as if on a film set, the shared footage of it displays the savagery of the perpetrators, but it also raises questions about how this savagery could be committed so easily, for so long, in the middle of Paris.

Nevertheless, as if the destructive power of the act and the message to be conveyed had not been sufficiently understood, chain attacks and hostage incidents continued at different points on the second day of the act. Especially because of the hostage incidents, yesterday the world media broadcast live from Paris throughout the day, making everyone feel terror inside their own home, in all its horror and all its liveliness.

The events, which have continued for two days, give the impression that France is practically in the midst of a war. No one can claim that France, either as a state or as a society, is pleased with such an image. These are not the images France deserves. It is very hard to understand how a few terrorists, swaggering about, were able to hold the whole great French state hostage in this way for a few days.

Another point that is hard to understand about this attack is that France was the target of such an attack despite some of its recent policies that were very warmly received by Muslims. In particular, France's stance on the recognition of the State of Palestine was received with great sympathy by all Muslims, while Israel had regarded this step by France as a hostile attitude toward itself. On Syria, too, France's stance was an approach that felt warmer to general Muslim public opinion. Even though the approaching elections indicate that the far right in France also shows a certain tendency to rise, it is not at all hard to foresee that such an attack will not strengthen that far right further but, on the contrary, will weaken the hand of Hollande, who is in power, considerably.

Essentially, the possibility that behind this attack lies a will to influence the elections in France is also not one to be dismissed. It may be recalled that the street protests begun by Maghrebi youths in the Paris suburbs in 2005 led to the strengthening of the French far right. The French right, which rose with these protests, brought Sarkozy to power. We can easily say that the latest Paris acts, too, increase the inclination toward the rising far right.

In today's world, especially in Muslim lands experiencing complete chaos, it is of course impossible to say that there are no people who would be provoked and engage in acts of violence on the grounds that they insulted our Prophet. But both the professionalism this act contains and its PR, which is not confined to the perpetrators alone, and the logistics that followed, far exceed the capacity and horizon of this "provoked Muslim." That the gunmen used in the events fit the profile exactly is in any case in the nature of such acts. How much the act resembles, in type, the Council of State attack here in Turkey!

There too, a Vakit newspaper reader who had been provoked against a prohibitive decision the Council of State had made against the headscarf, a "religionist" profile had been carefully prepared, but the catching of the attacker in the act eliminated the effect this profile was expected to create.

With the Paris attack too, an explosion of Islamophobic sentiment must have been aimed at. This event takes place amid an Islamophobic trend that was already on the rise. It appears very clear that it will strengthen and accelerate this trend. Already, in many cities of many countries of Europe, attacks on mosques and a palpable difference in the behavior of the police and other citizens toward Muslims have begun.

But it is interesting that, before the Islamophobic discourses we expect to develop in Europe, a far heavier Islamophobic discourse in Turkey or the Islamic world began to be expressed on the occasion of this event. The assessment that Prof. Dr. Nilüfer Göle made to Ruşen Çakır in the shock of the event is an example that must go on record precisely in this context.

Ruşen Çakır, once touched, heard a thousand sighs from Göle, an assessment full of sighs and laments that confused all the connections entirely. She quickly tied the event to the AK Parti, but how she tied it is not understandable. This is not terror, it is now sheer barbarity, says Göle, thereby trying to show how much she has grasped the gravity of the event. Is that all? What need is there to be a professor of sociology to make this assessment?

Evidently she cannot establish a causal link between events. The causality she cannot establish she ends up establishing, while she is at it, by expressing all her "good feelings" toward the AK Parti. Now, whether it fits or not... She has thus approached precisely the emotional atmosphere that terror targets.

Dear lady, you are still in the shock of the event; wait a little, try to understand what lies before and behind it, then express your feelings again, if we said this, would it perhaps do any good?

Islamophobia, like all other racist discourses, works first by having causal links crushed and knotted under emotions.