NATO Funds the “Building Terrorism Resistant Communities” Project Developed by a Turkish National Police Major

NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme has approved the grant for the workshop titled “Together Against Terrorism: Building Terrorism Resistant Communities.” The workshop will take place on September 26 and 27 2008 in Washington, D.C.

The project was developed by Turkish Police Major and Ph.D. candidate Sıddık Ekici and Lindita Caci, consultant from Canada.

Submitted papers (if deemed suitable) will be published in the NATO series book.

Major Ekici states that the NATO workshop will explore the means to find out how communities can respond most effectively to terrorist attacks in cooperation with law enforcement agencies and terrorism experts.

He argues that terrorist attacks have changed so much in variety that we need to think of the unthinkable. We witnessed the largescale terrorist attack on the United States, which for a long time was the unimaginable, but it happened. On the other hand, these large scale attacks should not make us forget the small versions of terrorist attacks, because a constant small scale terrorist attack in a metropolis can create similar shock, fear and economical loss to the community as well. Thus, community preparation is vital to maintaining a safe community through early detection of related threats and applying new methods to include the community in the protection process.

Eventually, the threat of terrorism provides a unique opportunity to create partnerships with citizens, other government organizations, and other law enforcement agencies. Thus, the community as a whole needs to be incorporated and prepared for such threats and attacks.

The workshop is being cosponsored by the Turkish Institute for Security and Democracy (TISD) in Washington, the University of North Texas (UNT), the College of Public Affairs and Community Service at UNT, the Department of Public Administration at UNT and the International Studies Major.