The Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front (İslami Büyükdoğu Akıncılar Cephesi in Turkish, abbreviated IBDA-C) is an Islamic terrorist organization which follows the Büyük Doğu ("Great East") ideology of Necip Fazıl Kısakürek(1905-1983), a well-known Turkish author, poet and Islamist ideologue. The group's self-proclaimed goal is to create a Sunni Islamic federate state in the Middle East and re-establish the Caliphate. They are notably hostile to Shia, Alevi, Christian and Jewish
interests. IBDA-C carries on his pro-Islamic legacy with a newly-born
radicalism that wishes to restore religious rule to Turkey of whose
government it finds "illegal" with an added willingness to commit acts
of terrorism^[1].
On July 9, 2008 IBDA-C attacked the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
Accordings to reports, a vehicle drove up to the police checkpoint
where three gunmen were dropped off. One of them reportedly "approached
a policeman while hiding his gun and shot him in the head." This
sparked a gunfight between the three gunmen and police officers. All
three gunmen were killed. In total, three policeman were killed during
the gun battle. No injuries were reported from the staff inside the
consulate.History


IBDA-C was founded in 1970 by Salih Izzet Erdiş, aka Salih Mirzabeyoglu. The group moved from rhetoric to violence in the 1990s, culminating in a series of 90 bombings and attacks in 1994.
IBDA-C was founded in 1985 as a breakaway faction of the National Salvation Party, at the time headed by Islamic fundamentalist Necmettin Erbakan,
who would become Turkey's first Islamist Prime Minister in 1995.
Despite Erbakan's success, his more recent Welfare Party was banned by
Turkey's courts in 1997 and Erbakan was forced to step down after
violating Turkey's secular constitution.
Salih Izzet Erdiş, a spiritual follower of Kısakürek, was captured
on Dec. 31, 1998, and sentenced to death in April 2001 for "attempting
to overthrow Turkey's secular state by force." His lawyer, Ahmet
Arslan, maintained that his client was no more than "a man of thought,"
arguing that there was a lack of concrete evidence supporting the
charges. Erdiş's death sentence was later commuted when Ankara
abolished the death penalty in August 2002.
In August 2003, Erdiş claimed responsibility for his crimes and
attributed his actions to "mind control", seeking help from the
Forensic Medicine Institute in Turkey. But any quest Erdiş may have had
for clemency was denied in March 2004, when a Turkish court issued
Erdiş a 20-year prison sentence for using handmade explosives and
weapons in a riot against authorities at Metris Prison.
Although Erdiş remains in prison, IBDA-C has continued its
activities, being most heavily active in the Istanbul region, attacking
bars, discotheques, and churches. Members of IBDA-C don't operate under
any defined hierarchical structure, and carry out actions in small
independent groups that are united behind their common goals and
ideologies.

Doctrine


The Great East Islamic Raiders Front comprises Turkish Sunni Jihadis,
a contingent roughly defined as those who are willing to take up arms
for the faith of Islam. Viewing Turkey's secular regime as "illegal,"
IBDA-C wishes to destroy the secular state and constitutional system
and replace it with religious rule and law, first in Turkey, and then
throughout the world. The group has gone about asserting these goals by
inflicting armed terror primarily on civilian targets. IBDA-C shares
ideological ties with al-Qaida.
Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, whom IBDA-C borrows its core ideology from,
advocated a return to "pure Islamic values" and the restoration of a
universal Islamic caliphate in the Muslim world. His system of thought,Büyük Doğu,
an absolutist ideology promising to bring Muslims closer to success and
salvation, with the central idea that truth is only accessible through
the practice of Islam. He also argued that the secular nature of Turkey
was responsible for the state's inability to ward off what he saw as
Western Imperialism. Kısakurek was seen as the pioneer of "ideal
Islamic society" by the founders of IBDA-C.
The attacks in 2003 provide the strongest implication of ties
between IBDA-C and al-Qaida, although the exact nature of their
cooperation remains unclear. Al-Qaida may have acted merely as an
outside support base, or possibly in tandem with IBDA-C in terms of
planning and execution. Some, on the other hand, assert that IBDA-C had
no involvement at all; contradicting reports from the Turkish media
solely credit al-Qaida with the attacks, implying that IBDA-C did not
have the means to carry out such a sophisticated act of terrorism.
Indeed, IBDA-C showed no willingness to exercise suicide terrorism
prior to November 2003. Regardless of whether or not IBDA-C actively
participated in these particular attacks, the attention received
provided the group with a heightened level of international infamy, as
they were previously not well known at the global level.
Despite al-Qaida's
similar aims and superior stature as an international terrorist
organization, IBDA-C views itself as the quintessential Islamic
revivalist movement toward which all others should dedicate their
resources. In addition to committing terrorist attacks, the
organization also produces propagandist literature put out in
bookstores and on the Internet, which has the potential to attract new
members, including those from other countries.
In December 2003, the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, reported that
the group could count on as many as 600 supporters in Germany. In
another report regarding the possible German contingent, a Turkish rail
worker claimed, "Istanbul was nothing. The major butchery is yet to
come." Although IBDA-C is thought to have supporters throughout Western
Europe, the group has not performed any significant terrorist attacks
there since their alleged actions in Istanbul. The number of extremist
supporters actively participating in IBDA-C's terrorist plots is not
known, but thought to be small.
IBDA-C has kept relatively quiet in 2004, although seven members of
the group were indicted in June for the murder of a Turkish cult
leader, Col. Ihsan Güven and his wife. Burak Çileli, one of the
defendants, is said to have described Güven contemptuously in IBDA-C
literature, calling him a "pervert," a "Jewish sympathizer," and
"pro-American." The accused were apparently angered that the murders
were not immediately reported by the press, claiming that they also had
plans to attack a TV talk show host and columnist named Savas Ay in
order to heighten publicity for their organization.
IBDA-C is not an organization to be taken lightly, but it can
perhaps be said to have a dubious future as its leader, Erdiş, sits in
prison, and the group has no clearly defined hierarchical structure. By
the same token, the lack of organized centrality makes the group more
elusive and difficult to eliminate, much like al-Qaida. IBDA-C will
continue to be a threat if it is able to sustain external spheres of
support, especially from other terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida.
After Erdiş's arrest and subsequent conviction on December 29, 1998,
followed by the detention of many lower-ranking figures in the group,
IBDA-C's activity seemed to quiet down. However, IBDA-C burst back into
the headlines when it claimed responsibility for the dual synagogue
bombing in Istanbul on November 15, 2003, which killed 24 and injured 255, as well as a subsequent attack on the HSBC Bank and British consulate on November 20, 2003 (see 2003 Istanbul bombings). The second claim called the bombings a joint attack with Al Qaeda; the authenticity of the claim is disputed.
On November 29 police in Istanbul announced the arrest of a yet-unnamed man they stated had admitted to giving the order to suicide bombers to attack Beth Israel synagogue on November 15.

[edit] Designation as a Terrorist Organisation


The organisation is listed among the 12 active terrorist
organisation in Turkey as of 2007 according to Counter-Terrorism and
Operations Department of Directorate General for Security (Turkish police)^[2]. In December 2001, IBDA-C was labeled an "illegal organization" by the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
It is also one of the 48 groups and entities to which European Union's Common Position 2001/931/CFSP on the application of specific measures to combat terrorism applies^[3]. In April 2003, the U.S. Department of State (DoS) designated the group as a "terrorist group" in their annual Patterns of Global Terrorism report.

Human Resources


According to information provided by the Intelligence Resource Program of the Federation of American Scientists based on the 2003 Patterns of Global Terrorism report the strength of the organisation in terms of human resources remains unknown^[1].
A study carried out by the Counter-Terrorism and Operations
Department of Directorate General for Security over a sample of files
about people convicted of being a terrorist under Turkish laws
including 200 militants from the organisation and the four other
currently active Islamic organisations (see reference 1) 2,5 % of the
members are aged 10 to 14, 72,5 % 15 to 24, 17 % 25 to 29, 6 % 30 to 34
and 2 % 35 to 64. University graduates make up 22,5 % of the members,
high school graduates 40 %, secondary school graduates 14 %, primary
school graduates 19 %, literate non-graduates % 2,5 and illiterates
1,5 %^[4].

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b} Great East Islamic Raiders–Front (IBDA-C)
   
2. ^ TÜRKİYE'DE HALEN FAALİYETLERİNE DEVAM EDEN BAŞLICA TERÖR ÖRGÜTLERİ: http://www.egm.gov.tr/temuh/terorgrup1.html
   
3. ^
   Council Common Position 2008/586/CFSP updating Common Position
   2001/931/CFSP on the application of specific measures to combat
   terrorism and repealing Common Position 2007/871/CFSP, Official Journal of the European Union L 188/71, 16.07.2008. Available from the WWW:http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2008:188:0071:0076:EN:PDF
   
4. ^ Zaman. 25.12.2007. "Dikkat: Hangi yasadışı örgüte kimler üye olur?". http://www.iyibilgi.com/haber.php?haber_id=47595
   

See also

• Hezbollah (Turkey)
  
• Islamic Terrorism
  
• List of terrorist groups
  
• List of illegal political parties in Turkey
  

External links

• http://www.teror.gen.tr/english/turkey/islamic/organisations/ibdac.html
  
• http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=102