Headlines in Review.

Analysts fear Al-Qaida may attack Turkey

Experts are worried that Turkey will soon be hit by an al-Qaida-orchestrated terror attack.

In November 2003 Istanbul was hit by a terror attack that targeted two synagogues, a British bank and the British consulate, killing more than 50 people and injuring 700 others.

Turkish security officials arrested Loai al-Saqa, a Syrian man who was later convicted as the key perpetrator behind the bombings; he received the order to attack from Osama bin Laden.

But nothing much happened since then.

Nevertheless, Turkish security officials have been increasingly worried recently; over the past few months, they on repeated occasions arrested terror suspects.

"In Turkey, terrorism comes from several different currents," Berndt Georg Thamm, a terrorism expert in Berlin, told United Press International in a telephone interview. "For one, we have the Kurdish terrorism of the PKK; then there are Islamist groups, like the Islamic Jihad Union, which originated among the Turkic people in Central Asia, but enjoy support inside Turkey; and thirdly, and this can't be denied -- there is al-Qaida, which with small cells has gained a foothold in Turkey."

Turkey, with its 80 million Muslims at the border with Europe, plays an important role for militant Islamists determined to create a "global caliphate," Thamm added. Circles critical of the pro-Islam government of Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan say Ankara is pursuing a creeping Islamization of Turkey to demolish the tradition of constitutional separation of church and state first proclaimed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.