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s Turkey seems to have had its plate full with a barrage of terrorist attacks perpetrated by the Islamic State (IS) movement and a Kurdish separatist group in the past couple of years, the recent rise of what the Turkish government named the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), which it then blamed for launching the recent failed putsch, has authorities scrambling to fend off the new threat.

While the IS attacks have been mostly aimed at civilians in touristy places, the Kurdish attacks have mainly targeted the police and military personnel on an almost daily basis for decades.

The most notable one this year was the attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport on June 28, when more than 40 people were killed and more than 140 others were injured in a coordinated assault. Turkish officials have accused IS for orchestrating the attack.

Turkey’s proximity to the epicenters of a string of protracted gory conflicts in the Middle East has put it in an intricate position.

Terrorists are lured into Turkey, where secularism thrives, even as its Western allies and regional rivals have often cast suspicions on the country.

For example, Turkey is an ally of the United States and a NATO member. They are bound to protect Turkey from threats and they have listed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as a terrorist organization, but the allies
have allegedly armed the PKK to battle against the expanding IS, which has claimed some parts of Iraq and Syria.

“Tell me which problems plaguing Turkey we cannot resolve? We have IS, a Kurdish insurgency and 3 million Syrian refugees on our soil. Yet we can still uphold democracy, rule of law and security,” Levent Murat Burhan, the deputy undersecretary for multilateral affairs at the Turkish Foreign Ministry, said recently.

“Now we are fighting a new enemy called FETO, which is a more complicated and perturbing one as they want to take down a democratically elected government,” he said.

FETO is headed by cleric Fetullah Gulen, who currently lives in exile in United States and has long lead a charitable movement that established schools in many countries. Turkish authorities have accused the organization’s alleged members of being behind the July 15 failed coup that left 283 people dead and more than 1,500 injured.

Following the incident, all quarters in Turkey have united and launched a wave of cleansing against alleged FETO members and sympathizers in the judiciary, police, military, civil service, the education system and the mass media.

Turkish police have so far arrested an estimated 32,000 people in connection with the coup and a further 58,000 have been sacked from their jobs.

“It may seem that we already have our plate full with problems, but it is our strong state institutions that produce rule of law and transparency that enable us to fend off these threats,” Mehmet Akarca, the director general of press and information at the Office of the Prime Minister, said recently.

Despite the threats, popular places in Istanbul, such as areas around Sultan Mehmet and Taksim Square, remained bustling in early October with an endless flow of both local and international crowds until late at night amid the intense presence of many armed security personnel.

The number of foreign visitors to Turkey dropped 38 percent in August and the country is still reeling from the aftermath of the terrorist attacks and the coup.

That also explains the heavy presence of military and security personnel in bustling areas of Istanbul and Ankara.

With more than 510,000 active military personnel, Turkey has the world’s ninth biggest military staff, just below regional rival Iran and above Indonesia, which ranks 14th with about 395,500 active personnel. Turkey also employs more than 272,000 police officers, less than Indonesia’s 430,000.