Preventing Terrorist Recruitment through Early Intervention by Involving Families

PREVENTING TERRORIST RECRUITMENT THROUGH EARLY INTERVENTION BY INVOLVING FAMILIES

By Ahmet S Yayla @ahmetsyayla

JOURNAL FOR DERADICALIZATION

ISSUE NO. 23 - SUMMER 2020!

ABSTRACT

Preventing terrorist recruitment is one of the most effective and less lethal methods of countering terrorism, and yet it is often overlooked. This article describes a program designed and administered by the author to prevent terrorist recruitment through early intervention, by promoting the involvement of the families of potential recruits in their children's activities and in a counterterrorism program that was developed and implemented in Sanliurfa, Turkey, for four years, from 2010 to 2014. The article details the concept and structure of the program, provides insights on how it was developed and administered, and presents the data, an analysis, and the findings. In addition, this article reports on the outcomes of the program and offers insights into why the youth in Sanliurfa were struggling to break their ties with terrorist organizations.

Please read more here: https://journals.sfu.ca/jd/index.php/jd/article/view/365

PDF: https://www.academia.edu/43442939/Preventing_Terrorist_Recruitment_through_Early_Intervention_by_Involving_Families

Keywords: Terrorist Recruitment, Prevention, Radicalization, Family Involvement, Early Intervention

 Introduction

The Prevention of Terrorist Recruitment Through Early Intervention by Involving Families Program was developed and implemented by the Sanliurfa Police Department’s counterterrorism and operations division in Sanliurfa, Turkey. The first phase, the pilot program, was implemented in 2010 and 2011. Its main objective was to prevent terrorist recruitment and radicalization through early intervention during the initial stages of the terrorist recruitment process, by involving the families and parents of potential recruits, seeing that they communicated with their children before the police did and monitored them under the guidance of the team.

During the first phase in the first year of the program, the families of 371 university and high school students were visited to inform parents about their children’s association with known terrorist recruiters or entities and to counsel them on how to help their children cut their ties with terrorist organizations or people associated with terrorist entities. This article provides details of the Sanliurfa prevention program, analyzes the first year’s findings, and offers insights into the outcomes of the program, including why the youth in Sanliurfa were struggling to break their ties with terrorist organizations.

Purpose of the Program

The purpose of the program was to prevent terrorist recruitment and radicalization. It aimed to identify societal and individual signs of radicalization, in order to take early steps to thwart radicalization and terrorist recruitment by promoting interactions with the parents and family members of susceptible youth in Sanliurfa, Turkey. For the purpose of the Sanliurfa program, interaction refers to involving the families and parents of potential terrorist recruits to promote constructive communication with their children before the police do, with the assistance and guidance of the team.

The program was designed to reach out to and engage young people and their families who were under the threat of terrorist recruitment and radicalization, to convey the message that “violence is not a solution,” and to reinforce parents’ objections to the radicalization and recruitment of their children. The expected outcome of the program was the successful dissuasion of terrorist candidates by their families, with professional and psychological assistance.

Reaching out for this program meant:

·      establishing initial contact with the families of vulnerable youth,

·      initiating a positive communication context,

·      building mutual trust by explaining “the fact that the program is offering assistance to families to help save their children from the hands of terrorist organizations,” and

·      reassuring them that they faced no prosecution or investigation.

 Concept and Structure

I developed the Preventing Terrorist Recruitment through Early Intervention by Involving Families Program when I was first assigned to the City of Sanliurfa as the chief of counterterrorism and operations in Turkey in 2010. The Sanliurfa program was not developed as a research project; rather, it was implemented as an intervention and prevention program to counter terrorist recruitment.

Sanliurfa is one of the largest provinces of Southeastern Anatolia, with over two million residents. In addition, after 2010, when the conflict started in Syria, over 400,000 Syrian refugees crossed the border to live in Sanliurfa.

Sanliurfa is unique from the perspective of counterterrorism for a few reasons, including its demographics, history, and the current conflict in the region, in Syria in particular. Sanliurfa shares 139 miles of border with Syria, which is a critical issue when it comes to border movements between Turkey and Syria. The city historically has had ethnically mixed demographics; Turks, Kurds, and Arabs have lived there together for centuries. However, in the modern era, terrorist organizations have been very active in the city, including the PKK—which was first established there—the Turkish Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and its affiliates, and ISIS. These groups operate there for two main reasons. The first is that the city serves as a base for recruitment and logistical and other operational support. The second is that Sanliurfa stands right at the border and furnishes ample opportunities for terrorists to cross between Turkey and Syria. It has been labeled the end-point of the so-called “Jihadi Highway,” which alludes to the flow of ISIS foreign fighters through the city on their way to Syria.[1]

I designed the prevention program as part of our ongoing efforts to counter terrorism in the city by reducing the number of youth who were being approached or recruited by terrorist organizations. In the beginning, the concept of the pilot program was to address counterterrorism by preventing the radicalization and recruitment of youth through the involvement of their families, and by giving the youth a second chance to re-think and assess their affiliations with terrorist organizations if they had not yet committed a violent crime in the name of a terrorist organization.

The concept was a new phenomenon in 2010 and involved several stakeholders, including the Central Counterterrorism and Operations Department in Ankara, the general chief of the Sanliurfa Police Department, the governor, the attorney general of Sanliurfa, district attorneys, the mayor, and the director of the Sanliurfa Education Department. The first step in running the pilot program was to present it to the general chief of the Sanliurfa Police Department. After obtaining the police chief’s approval, I held a meeting with the governor, explaining to him what our plans were and asking for his administrative approval and financial support. After obtaining his approval, I presented the program to the Central Counterterrorism and Operations Department in Ankara to get the approval of the counterterrorism czar for all of Turkey, as counterterrorism activities are centrally coordinated in the country.

Once the Ankara phase was completed, the main task was to get the judiciary on board, because I had to work with the prosecutor’s office in order to be able to promise our subjects that we (the counterterrorism division) were not going to open any investigations and that there would be no arrests or official recordkeeping. I first visited the attorney general (the head prosecutor) of Sanliurfa and presented the concept to him in detail; he approved of the pilot program in principle and arranged a meeting with all the district attorneys who were involved in counterterrorism investigations. They were briefed on the program details and the proposed concept of not bringing any judicial charges if a participant had not been involved in any violent activities.

Once I had the judiciary on board, I arranged meetings with the governor, the director of the Sanliurfa Education Department (who worked under the governor), and the Mayor of Sanliurfa to discuss their cooperation and support and layout plans, because our future preventive and educational activities would involve different departments and their different structures, and I knew I would need their assistance at certain points. 

It was quite challenging to bring all the stakeholders to the table and have them accept the concept of preventing terrorist radicalization and recruitment through family intervention, but in the end, I garnered all of the bureaucratic, judicial, and administrative approvals the counterterrorism division needed to launch the pilot program.

The financing was mostly provided by the Central Counterterrorism and Operations Department in Ankara and the Sanliurfa Police Department; the Sanliurfa Governate contributed as well to the overall budget. We were also able to use various government facilities and means of transportation free of charge. The administration and implementation of the pilot program were assigned to the Counterterrorism and Operations division in Sanliurfa, and as the chief of that department, I ran the program.

This program is an example of a “mesosocial prevention (general and specific) and intervention” program under Koehler’s classification[2] of “three distinct methods of counterterrorism.” It can be classified as such because of the involvement of local crime prevention activities and federal and state action plans. It is a “mesosocial intervention” program because of the involvement of families, in keeping with Koehler’s notion of a “family support” counterterrorism model.[3] 

In the past, other scholars have administered programs with the involvement of family members and friends in efforts to counter terrorist recruitment through Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) or deradicalization. While programs have varied across countries and target populations, as explained by Horgan and Braddock,[4] their concepts have usually been similar: to reduce the risk of involvement with terrorist organizations. Koehler and Ehrt consider the approach adopted by the Sanliurfa program to be a “first line of defense,” engaging families, friends, and colleagues in countering radicalization “without implying the use of emotional relationships for intelligence gathering or policing.”[5]

Several other researchers, including Ranstorp and Hyllengern,[6] Sikkens and her colleagues,[7] Vidino,[8] Gielen,[9] and Koehler,[10] have studied the concept of early intervention through family counseling in countering terrorism and the role of families and friends in different forms of counter-radicalization/terrorist recruitment and deradicalization programs. Most of the programs studied, like the Sanliurfa program, focused on countering radicalization and terrorist recruitment with the help of family members and friends.

Similar programs focusing on individual disengagement from different terrorist groups were also administered in different regions and cities in Turkey. For example, while I was working at the Ankara Police Department Counterterrorism and Operations Division between 2005 and 2010, we ran a similar program, where we targeted students and vulnerable populations as a whole, without explicitly reaching out to individuals or their family members.

Another large city in Turkey, Adana, ran a similar project[11] via its Police Department. While Sanliurfa and Adana project had similarities, the main differences between the two programs involved the objectives and methods. The Sanliurfa program targeted every individual who was approached by, or had connections with, any terrorist organization adopting a “wholesome” approach in an attempt to reach every vulnerable person. Additionally, the Sanliurfa program did not focus on deradicalization efforts unless requested by the family members or prospective recruits who were participating in the program.

Please read more here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342475949_Preventing_Terrorist_Recruitment_through_Early_Intervention_by_Involving_Families

[1] Deborah Amos. (2016). A Smuggler Explains How He Helped Fighters Along 'Jihadi Highway.' NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/10/07/354288389/a-smuggler-explains-how-he-helped-fighters-along-jihadi-highway [10/07/2019].

[2] Kohler, Daniel. (2017). Structural Quality Standards for Work to Intervene with and Counter Violent Extremism. Retrieved from https://www.konex-bw.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/20180202-FINAL-KPEBW-HandbuchExtremismus_A4_engl_04I18_web.pdf [05/27/2020].

[3] Ibid.

[4] Horgan, John and Kurt Braddock. (2010). Rehabilitating the Terrorists? Challenges in Assessing the

Effectiveness of De-Radicalization Programs. Terrorism and Political Violence 22(2):267–91

[5] Koehler Daniel & Ehrt, Tobias. (2018). Parents’ Associations, Support Group Interventions and Countering Violent Extremism: An Important Step Forward in Combating Violent Radicalization. International Annals of Criminology 56(1-2):178-197

[6] Ranstorp, Magnus. & Hyllengren, Peder. (2013). Prevention of Violent Extremism in Third Countries:

Measures to Prevent Individuals Joining Armed Extremist Groups in Conflict Zones. Stockholm: Center

for Asymmetric Threat Studies (CATS), Swedish National Defence College.

[7] Sikkens, Elga., van San, M., Sieckelinck, S. et al. (2018). Parents’ Perspectives on Radicalization: A Qualitative Study. Journal of Child and Family Studies 27, 2276–2284 & Sikkens, Elga., Sieckelinck, Marion, et al. (2016). Parental reaction towards radicalization in young people. Child & Family Social Work 22(2):1044-1053.

[8] Vidino, Lorenzo. 2014. CSS Case Study: Foreign Fighters: An Overview of Responses in Eleven Countries.

Zurich: Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich.

[9] Gielen, Amy-Jane. (2015). Supporting Families of Foreign Fighters. A Realistic Approach for Measuring the

Effectiveness. Journal for Deradicalization 2(Spring):21–48.

[10] Koehler, Daniel. (2016). Understanding Deradicalization: Methods, Tools and Programs for Countering Violent Extremism. Oxford and New York: Routledge.

[11] Bastug, Mehmet, F. & Evlek, Ugur, K. (2016). Individual Disengagement and Deradicalization Pilot Program in Turkey: Methods and Outcomes. Journal for Deradicalization. 8(Fall):25-45.