Terror shadow hangs over global travelers at Istanbul’s Atatürk airport

Barely 48 hours after terrorists killed dozens at the entrance to Istanbul Atatürk Airport last week, a global traveller passing through the bustling hub would hardly know that such horrific attacks had taken place, save for the occasional X-ray screener wearing a small black ribbon to mourn the dead. Any additional security inside Atatürk’s cavernous international transfers terminal was discreet. There were no signs of soldiers or police on patrol with automatic rifles or dogs. Turkish authorities trusted in heavy security outside the terminal to allow for business-as-usual inside. Streams of travelers poured out of escalator banks into a football-field-sized international transfer terminal. They jabbered on iPhones in a multitude of languages, drank Starbucks coffees and crowded the duty-free shops. An animated din bounced off high walls, the cacophony of people getting on with their lives despite the certainty that extremist killings will happen again. Turkey promotes its 61-m-passenger-per-year airport as a symbol of globalisation, “a bridge between East and West,” according to a Turkish Airlines in-flight video. Two days after the attacks, the bridge was jam packed. The crowded terminal was a reminder that we still live in an era defined more by globalisation than by global terror. But you still had to wonder: would the free movement that is a hallmark of globalisation someday be curtailed? The bomb attacks were Turkey’s fourth this year, and were followed by two more horrendous attacks, at a cafe in Bangladesh and in a commercial district of Baghdad.<br/>