Terrorism is an old phenomenon. Regardless of ethnicity, religion, social status or geographic location, almost all communities are increasingly being challenged by this threat. Religiously, politically or otherwise motivated individuals fuel terror organizations. Despite such a fact, the human factor in counter terrorism has received low attention. In other words, it might be possible to reduce terrorism through understanding why individuals join terror groups. Therefore, policy makers, law enforcement agencies and especially counter terrorism professionals must try to understand the causes of individual memberships to terror organizations. Although their communities tender more options for self development and the enjoyment of life, they should be concerned about what makes the terrorist organizations appear so attractive to some? A question that needs to be answered as earliest possible. Once we manage to slow down or, if possible, stop the recruitment processes; then the armed forces that counter terrorism will not keep fighting an endless sequence of recruitment of new terrorists and terrorist organizations will be destined to liquefy naturally due to lack of staff. Hence, the traditional militaristic and offensive approaches must be supplemented by such means that will reduce the number of new recruits and not have States' armed forces be in constant combat situations with terrorists that result with more fatalities and losses of lives.

This book presents the proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, “Countering Terrorist Recruitment in the Context of Armed Counter-Terrorism Operations” held in Antalya-Turkey, in May, 2015. The narrative of achieving the desired result is not an easy task, but is worth putting a great effort in it. The goal of the workshop was to enable sharing of existing ideas and to develop new ones for tackling the recruitment process of terror organizations in order to support ongoing and possible future armed counter terrorism operations. The workshop also served to seek the possibility to divulge how offensive and non-offensive counter narratives can be made function in synchronize to achieve long term reductions in terror incidents.

The book contains 18 articles on the topic.

In their article titled “The Role of NATO and Other International Entities in Counter-Terrorism,” Huseyin AKDOGAN, M. Alper SOZER and Ali CAN, with an actual focus on NATO, discuss the roles of international organizations such as the UN, EU and OSCE. They argue that the transnational terrorism needs international cooperation to struggle with it. Basically the article explains the roles of aforementioned international organizations' and NATO's role in countering terrorism.

Kamil YILMAZ and Sıddık EKICI in their article “Religion Abusing Terrorist Groups (RATs): How Do They Abuse Islamic Religious Scripture?” draw the attention to how terrorist groups can be made powerless through revealing their lies in using exploited religious textures to recruit people. The purpose of their article is to explore the role of Islamic narratives that such groups construct via twisting the true meanings of relevant verses in the Quran and the hadiths of the Prophet Mohammed while they also provide the actual format of the Islamic narratives and suggest to use the correct religious textures for theological counter narratives as part of counter terrorism.

Larry D. White in his article “Dual Citizenship based on Jus Soli: Dealing with the Pseudo-Homegrown Terrorist” presents how dual citizenship or citizenship through birth creates challenges in countering home grown terrorism and terrorist recruitment. He concludes his article with regulatory and legal suggestions on how to deal with the problem.

İlhan Kaya in his article titled “Marginality as A Site of Youth Kurdish Resistance” talks about policies enacted by Turkey to melt all differences in the nation for a united and intact State. However, he argues that the State disregarded several rights of Kurds which eventually ended with the alienation and marginalization of the Kurds. Kaya further contends that the Kurds commenced various forms of resistance which also includes armed struggle. He notes that there is the need to understand the margin and experiences of those who have been alienated in order to stop ethnic conflicts.

Abraham David BENAVIDES, Laura M. KEYES, and Brittany PULLEY, in their article “Understanding the Recruitment Methods and Socialization Techniques of Terror Networks by Comparing them to Youth Gangs: Similarities and Divergence” take us to a point where they indicate that there are similarities between gang membership and terrorist recruitment techniques and that such an understanding will enable us to thwart terroristic recruitment schemes through applying prevention techniques used in US gang memberships.

Abdel Rahman ALZOUBAIDI, Doina PRODAN-PALADE and Sıddık EKICI take the problem discussion to another level, the digital world in their article “Terrorist Recruitment and Counter Measures in the Cyber World.” They mention that the cyber world is integrated into the reality. Their article aims to underline the vital tools for terrorist recruitment in the cyber world and it introduces also some of the legal instruments and practices to counter terrorism.

Eddy LYNTON J., Greg GULLION, and James L. WILLIAMS in their article “Countering Terrorist Recruitment: Social Media, Cyber Terror, and Peaceful Platforms” reveal the social media as another powerful side of the cyber world. Hence, they argue that several States are willing to constrain social media while they draw more attention to how terrorist organizations use the internet as a platform for their purposes and that the internet has become the primary communication mean for many.

In another article about the digital world “Cyber Terrorism: Motivation and Method on Global Scale and the Situation in Turkey” Kamil YILMAZ, Murat GÜNEŞTAŞ and Oğuzhan BAŞIBÜYÜK seek to understand what ‘what motivates individuals and groups in using cyber space for terrorist purposes’ and ‘what kinds of methods they use to achieve those purposes.’ For this they also refer to a case study from Turkey and end their article with some policy recommendations.

Ruslan ZHOLDOSHBAEV, in his article titled “Assessing the Risks of Cyber Terrorism in Central Asian countries” is concerned about the uncontrollable nature of internet which he counts for the benefit of terrorist organizations. On the other hand he sees the same environment as a risky one for the youngsters who surf on the internet without protection against ideological violent groups attempting to affect their minds for change towards violence in Central Asian countries.

Velizar SHALAMANOV and Zlatogor MINCHEV introduce the increased importance of the CIMIC aspect of the C4ISR capability for the deployed NATO troops. In their article named “Terrorist Organizations Recruitment Success Reduction in Support to NATO's Operations: CIMIC IT tools.” They state that C4ISR is a tool to help in two directions (information sharing to prevent terrorist recruitment and receiving situational awareness from civilian authorities (local police and others)) and emphasize its increasing role in protecting NATO troops and collaborations with civilian authorities.

On the other hand, Hakan DEMIRBUKEN in his article “Drug Money Flows and its Links with Terrorism Financing: The Case of Afghanistan” touches on the financial income from illicit opium of terrorist organizations. He refers to the Afghanistan case study to exemplify how and through what kind of means illicit opium dealing became a massive income for terror organizations, while he also touches at money transfer systems to escape the official banking systems.

Diab M. AL-BADAYNEH and Khawla ALHASAN look into the case of radicalization and de-radicalization of the Arab youth in consideration of religious behavior in their article “Religious Behavior and Radicalization Among Arab Youth: Implications for Terrorism Recruitment and De-radicalization.” They provide several significant findings on radicalization and suggest de-radicalization means for the university students. Teun VAN DONGEN in his article “The Case for Tailored Interventions in the Preventive Approach: Lessons from Countering Jihadism in the Netherlands and the UK” suggests that socio-economic factors has been mentioned to play role in radicalization. He further notes that radicalization is actually caused by many factors and also recommends changes in preventive measures based on case studies from the Netherlands and UK. Mainly he advises that these measures should target individuals who are mainly targeted by terrorist groups instead of groups.

Ştefan STĂNCIUGELU et al. in their article named “Antiterrorist Public Discourse: Does it Really Matter for the Civil Population? seek answer to two main questions: 1. How much human factors matter when talking of the acceptance of the different groups to terrorist messages for recruitment? and 2. What to be done by the policy makers in order to develop effective counter-terrorist measures – other than the immediate and physical force based ones? and some sub-questions in relation to counter-terrorism. The article aims to provide definitions on the matter and end with a comparative analysis concerning the structure of the terrorist message and the structure of the counter-terrorist public discourse.

Sudha ARLIKATTI touches on a different but a very important topic that needs to be kept in mind in counter-terrorism in her article titled “Counter Terrorism and Human Rights: Missing Perspectives from Muslim Children and Youth in the USA.” Sudha is concerned that terrorism impacts human rights and thus counter terrorism means may do so as well. She emphasizes that States need to work in tandem and secure human rights in their counter efforts. Therefore, in her article, she focuses on Muslim children and their lost perspectives in counter terrorism strategies and prevention and intervention programs.

Matenia SIRSELOUDI in her article “Violent Jihadi Radicalisation in Europe and Conflicts in the Muslim World” discusses the impact of conflicts in the Muslim World in relation to violent Jihadi radicalization in Europe. She contends that political conflicts in diaspora community's countries of origin, are reflected on them in Europe. This reflection may appear in the form of contributing to radicalization processes in Europe. She bases her analysis upon empirical data from the TERAS-INDEX project and the experiences of Germany and concludes how the problem may develop in the future.

Mitchell F. RICE provides a counter narrative in his article “Policing Culturally-Linguistically Diverse Communities in an Era of Terrorism: Improving Community Policing as a Counter-Terrorism Strategy at the Grassroots Community Police Level.” He pushes for community policing as a useful counter terrorism approach which necessitates the police and citizens of the community to work together on addressing criminal issues. The togetherness of police, the community and their shared understanding of the problems enable joint undertakings to tackle problems. Briefly, his article addresses and explores means to improve community policing as an effective counter terrorism strategy.

In the final article of this book, Richard WARNES too emphasizes the importance of community engagement in their article “Beyond Procedural Justice: The Significance of Personal and Community Relationships in Countering Terrorist Recruitment.” Richard argues that the Procedural Justice Model has been useful in the fields of sociology and criminology to build trust, develop legitimacy and establish institutional authority. Hence, it could be utilized in counter-terrorism for the recruitment of sources for ‘Human Intelligence’ (HUMINT) and for the development of more effective counter operations both on the national and international levels.

Eventually, the book significantly upholds the fact that counter terrorism too needs sensitivity and that just a bold offensive narrative will NOT solve the problem but defer its effects. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that all States realize that policies developed for countering may actually be feeding the terrorism phenomenon. Hence, States must perform in detail policy analysis and understand whether their policies reduce or further increase terror incidents and recruitments to protect their communities and ease their armed counter terror operations.

Approaches that consider human rights, engage the community and avoid blaming a religion or its followers, an ethnicity, a geographical location have become a vital understanding in counter terrorism. Such sensitivity prevents the justification of acts of terrorist organizations.

The book will be of interest to anybody involved in planning, executing and developing prevention programs and policies in relation to both armed and non-armed counter terrorism operations.