Turkey attack raises familiar question on airport security

Associated Press

LONDON

The deadly terror attack at Turkey’s largest airport has posed an all-too-familiar question to security officials: how to protect passengers and bystanders from such carnage?

The attackers arrived via taxi like many other passengers to Istanbul’s busy Ataturk Airport on Tuesday night. Unlike others, however, their journeys ended in a wave of bloodshed that killed 42 people and wounded hundreds of others in an attack that security analysts say was nearly impossible to stop.

Major U.S. airports have heightened security in the wake of the Istanbul attack. The State Department did not recommend outright that Americans should not travel to Turkey, but said Wednesday that they should be “situationally aware” while in the country.

“Whether you kill nearly 50 people in or outside of the airport is really just a matter of semantics,” said Matthew Henman, managing editor at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. From an economic and security standpoint, it would be unfeasible to entirely prevent an armed attack without severe cost and disruption – especially at a busy airport like Ataturk.”

Airports around the globe have been bolstering security since the 1970s after terror attacks. Israel was one of the first to take steps after attackers in 1972 killed 26 people and injured 80 at Lod Airport, now Ben Gurion Airport. Airport security was also strengthened at many points around the world following the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, and in 2006, when British and American intelligence agents uncovered a plot to smuggle liquid explosives through security in an attempt to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners.

The latter resulted in precautions which still prohibit passengers from bringing certain quantities of liquids and gels through security. The most recent attack occurred in March when three coordinated bombings rocked the Brussels Airport in Zaventem and the Maalbeek metro station. In those attacks, claimed by the Islamic State group, 32 were killed and more than 300 wounded.

In Israel’s case, a generous state budget allows for some 2,000 personnel to work exclusive in airport security roles, and many of those workers are undercover, according to Pini Schiff, CEO of Israel Security Association, one of Israel’s top aviation security experts. Passengers are also checked via radar, cameras and other equipment well before they enter the airport and laws allow for ethnic profiling, he said.

“In the Turkey case, it seems authorities were completely caught by surprise,” Schiff said. “It appears this attack took weeks to plan.”

CIA Director John Brennan said the attacks bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group and warned that the group wants to conduct similar attacks in the United States. The Turkish government blamed IS, but the group didn’t immediately claim responsibility.

Brennan credited effective homeland security measures and intelligence for the fact that the Islamic State group has been unable to attack America directly – the Orlando and San Bernardino shootings were carried out by radicals inspired by the group but not under its control – but he believes the group will keep trying to penetrate American defenses.