This paper is devoted to analysis of the terrorist attack in Istanbul on January 12, 2016. An important element in the study of terrorism implies possibility to analyze the representations of the problem in the public consciousness. Globalization of virtualized world creates a new social field called the global information space. It leads to creation of another postmodernist concept in sociological imagination. It is associated with the formation of a "post-human" that implies a person living in a post-modernist society whose social interactions are almost unthinkable without the threat of terrorism. The concept of international terrorism is the concept of a globalized society, as acts of aggression that do not have a single starting point, localized in space and time because training camps for terrorists can be almost anywhere in the world. Globalization has made terrorism spontaneous, unpredictable and impersonal, and, most importantly, not tied to any particular locality.
Relevance of the topic is clear. This terrorist attack has shown that the object of a terrorist attack is not an individual, organization or political elite but the state as a whole. This terrorist act occurred in Istanbul's historic district, terrorist committed suicide blasting with an explosive device on the Sultanahmet Square. It killed 10 people and injured 15. Most of the victims were tourists, mainly from Germany and Norway. The event took place in the city center, at the Obelisk of Theodosius, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the city. According to preliminary data, terrorist came from Syria as refugees. He detonated an explosive device at a tram stop when the tour group passed by. This act of terrorism is, in fact, is a specific act of communication between terrorists on the one hand, and public authorities of Turkey on the other hand. Society is not a separate element of the system, it acts only as a resonance medium. Also “the Turkish government now firmly believes this was an attack by the so-called Islamic State” (BBC, 2016).
Accelerated pace of globalization has also increased the variability of the provisions of the stratification of social strata in the global society, which clearly revealed a negative social phenomenon in the form of conflict and terrorism. In this context, social stratification has played a key role in the development and safety of different societies. This shows that the initial cause of the violence and the terror was just stratification. Social differences become social stratification when people are hierarchically arranged in a measurement of inequality. Now we can see a constant development of the forms and methods of carrying out terrorist activities, networking and exchange of experience between terrorist groups, including through the Internet. Turkish society transformation processes occur, manifested in the growth of ethnic and religious intolerance.
Social constructionism considers the processes of formation of people of social phenomena. A constructed social reality of terrorism is a permanent, dynamic process; the reality of people playing in the process of its formulation and interpretation of knowledge about it. The study of terrorism is important at all levels of social analysis: to understand the mechanisms of solidarity in the group, terrorist strategies, the dynamics of the group and its activities. The principal feature of terrorism is the vagueness of the subject and object of social action, which is manifested in the socio - political and geographical uncertainty. Social control is a mechanism for maintaining social order, based on the verification of actually achieved results of operations. In Turkey, the actions of both local and central authorities in an attempt to prevent a terrorist act meant a lack of coordination between the authorities of different levels, weak state control over the territory, social fragmentation and weak social cohesion of communities. Also “the bureaucratization of modern police institutions is at an unprecedented high level” (Deflem, 2004, p. 75). The modern terrorism has a new feature, it endures the conflict beyond the initial area in other countries from Syria to Turkey. Media in this regard, provide globalization terrorist attack: reports of a terrorist attack in one particular country gets the headlines of the entire world community.
The sociological imagination focuses on the study of the processes leading to the understanding and definition of a terrorist act. Crime as a kind of social rejection is a behavior that is seen as socially dangerous and contrary to the norms of criminal law legislation. We can come to the conclusion that the conflict of interests and positions of the various political forces, including extremist, is happening today in the global information space. The activities of modern terrorism in the information space appears as a struggle to build a new global identity. Now terrorists are less certain tasks, they receive financial support and information intelligence nature from anonymous private sources. Modern terrorism is characterized by anonymity: both in terms of the agents, and in terms of the goals of a terrorist act.
In terms of deviance we need to consider processes of terrorist behavior, as well as a set of social control measures aimed at countering the development of terrorism. Deviant behavior means committing acts which are contrary to the norms of social behavior in a particular community. The main types of deviant behavior are, above all, crime, alcoholism and drug addiction, as well as suicide, prostitution. According to Emile Durkheim, the probability of deviations of behavior increases significantly at what is happening at the level of society the weakening of regulatory oversight (Ericson, 1962, p.307).
Nowadays terrorism is a complex social phenomenon, which represents a threat to the stability of many countries of the world. Violation of any structure, including the social, entails a process perturbation, return the system to an equilibrium state, which is necessary to eliminate the causes of the disturbance. An extreme way of eliminating the causes of violations of the system is precisely terrorism. Terrorism arises and develops as a result of the interaction of many factors that are historical, ethno-psychological, political and other roots. Thus, the most important features of terrorism is a claim for social acceptance of violence. Terrorism is not simply going beyond the normal public law and order, and its destruction, the terrorist act itself is recognized as a fair procedure under public law, as well as a court order, it is a claim to a parallel justice.
References
BBC News. (2016). Turkey: 'IS suicide bomber' kills 10 in Istanbul Sultanahmet district. Retrieved 8 March 2016, from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35290760
Deflem, M. (2004). Social control and the policing of terrorism: Foundations for a sociology of counterterrorism. The American Sociologist, 35(2), 75-92.
Erikson, K. T. (1962). Notes on the sociology of deviance. Social problems, 9(4), 307-314.
