In this essay for The New Yorker, written the day after a suicide attack at Istanbul's Atatürk International Airport killed forty-one people, Elliot Ackerman, drawing on his own years living in Istanbul, reflects on the bombing and its place within Turkey's deepening cycle of violence.

Why the Arrivals Hall

Ackerman, who passed through Atatürk Airport often while living in Istanbul, considers why the attackers, believed to be linked to ISIS, chose the airport's largely uncrowded arrivals hall rather than the more heavily trafficked departures area, and pictures the small, international gathering of travelers who typically pause there.

A Sixth Attack in a Turbulent Year

Ackerman places the bombing within a year that had already seen five other major attacks in Turkey, claimed variously by ISIS and the P.K.K., and describes the resigned reactions of Turkish friends growing accustomed to the violence.

A Country Growing Used to Violence

Ackerman connects the airport attack to a broader erosion of public life in Turkey that same month, including a raid on a Istanbul record-store party during Ramadan and the tear-gassing of an Istanbul pride parade, as President Erdoğan's government faces rising hostility from secular Turks.

Read the Original Article

This essay originally appeared in The New Yorker.

Read “The Arrivals Hall at Atatürk Airport” at The New Yorker →