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New Day

Terror in Turkey. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired June 29, 2016 - 06:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: The casualties in the terror attack in Istanbul's airport, the numbers rising this morning. Turkish officials now say 41people are dead, and the number of those injured now 239. Officials in the U.S. are not taking any chances, ramping up security at airports across the country after that attack.

CNN's Justice Correspondent, Evan Perez, live in Washington with more.

Evan, good morning.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Victor.

You can expect to see more visible security at U.S. airports and train stations as U.S. officials review what can be done to prevent such an attack here. Now, the homeland security department says there's no known credible threat to the United States. We don't know which terrorist group is responsible for this attack, but the immediate suspicion falls on ISIS. U.S. intelligence officials have warned recently that as ISIS loses some of its territory in Iraq and Syria, you can expect the group to launch cells to carry out more attacks.

Here's Bret McGurk, the top U.S. envoy on the effort to defeat ISIS, describing the pressure the group is under.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRET MCGURK, SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ENVOY FOR THE GLOBAL COALITION TO COUNTER ISIL: ISIL's leaders are either in hiding or being killed now at a rate of one every three days, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's main deputies, terrorists named Haji Imam and Abu Sayyaf, killed by U.S. military forces. ISIL's territory is shrinking, losing nearly 50 percent of territory once controlled in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria over the last 18 months.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: Now, the deadly attack on this airport with the security screening outside the terminal shows how difficult it is to secure any of these so-called soft targets. Terrorists used AK-47 style rifles to attack the outer perimeter security, and at least one of them got a few yards inside before blowing himself up. After the Brussels attacks, U.S. officials made moves to improve security at airports here, but it's not clear what, if any, changes could be made after this attack, Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you very much, Evan, appreciate it. We'll come back to you later in the morning.

The deadly attack in Turkey the latest in a string of attacks this year, if you think about it. Is this the new normal for the West? We're going to talk to the former ambassador to Turkey and Iraq next.

BLACKWELL: The deadly attack in Istanbul is just the latest in a string of terror in the last few years, several of them in Europe. How big is the threat to the West, and how should counter-terror officials respond? Let's discuss now with former U.S. Undersecretary for Political Affairs and Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns. Mr. Ambassador, good morning to you.

NICHOLAS BURNS, UNITED STATES UNDERSECRETARY FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS: Good morning.

BLACKWELL: So Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, Orlando, now Istanbul. Are the people who are watching here in U.S. and in Europe expected now to just live with this? Is this the new normal?

BURNS: Well, it's certainly the new normal for the people of the Middle East. There have been 14 terrorist attacks in Turkey alone over the last two years. That's where the threat is greatest. Obviously, we're feeling it as well, given the Orlando attack, San Bernardino, and the attacks in Western Europe.

I think, Chris, it does point to the fact and a lot of people have been saying this for a number of years. We, in the west, in Europe, and the Arab world, are in a long fight with radical Islamic terrorist groups, some of them emanating from Al Qaeda, some from the Islamic State, splinter groups in the horn of Africa. It goes all the way across the Pan-Sahelian belt from East Africa to West Africa. It may be decades, frankly, before this scourge, and there are many of them, is defeated.

BLACKWELL: You mentioned the challenges there in Turkey. They certainly, over the last year, have seen several of these from Istanbul to Ankara and other places as well. There have been some criticisms of President Erdogan from his friends, I should say, that he's not doing enough, especially in fighting off ISIS, protecting that porous border. What do you think, is Erdogan doing enough, and how will this likely change his stance?

BURNS: Well, for a long time, the Turkish government was clearly not doing enough because the Islamic State was using a very porous Turkish border to get fighters in and out of Syria, and that was the major problem in Syria. Turkey has done a little bit more to close down that border but not completely. So the Turkish government, which has a long history of counterterrorism operations, has to now focus more on shutting down that border and going after the Islamic State operatives that are in the country.

Turkey is a victim of terrorism. It's not creating the terrorism, but everybody has to be in this fight. And Turkey now, in a way, is being targeted by two different brands of terrorism. One is the Islamic State, and most people probably think that they were the author of the attack at the Istanbul airport but also by Kurdish terrorism as well, and I think there have been eight attacks by the Kurdish terrorists over the last two years.

BLACKWELL: We've heard from both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, both condemning the attack in Istanbul. There is a new Quinnipiac poll this morning. Actually, it came out just a couple of minutes ago. It finds that most voters believe that Donald Trump would be most effective against ISIS by 13 points here. You are a Hillary Clinton supporter. Why do you think most voters side with Trump in this poll?

BURNS: I'm disappointed in the poll. I think Donald Trump's proposals really don't make a lot of sense. He keeps talking about using one blunt instrument and that's massive military power. Obviously, using our military and forming a larger, effective military coalition is part of the answer against the Islamic State, but President Obama has taken the fight to the Islamic State in Iraq. We need to focus more on Syria. I think Secretary Clinton has a much more comprehensive and much more effective way at looking at this.

We've got to have military action, intelligence cooperation, judicial cooperation, and she stressed in her statement last night, it has to be a comprehensive proposal. Donald Trump only talks about using massive military power. Our own military will be the first to say that can't be the extent of what we do. It has to be a much more sophisticated, much more long-term approach. I think Hillary Clinton, I hope by the end of this campaign, will have convinced Americans that she has the better answers than Donald Trump, because I think she surely does.

BLACKWELL: Ambassador Nicholas Burns, thanks for being with us on NEW DAY. As you say this fight could take decades, unfortunately. Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Alright, Victor, imagine having been at Istanbul Airport and witnessing the terror. We'll speak to a passenger who was inside the international terminal when the explosions went off. He'll tell us where he hid and what happened.

CUOMO: We know especially after Brussels, what just happened in Turkey seems like more of the same. But Turkey is a specific place. If ISIS did this, it means something unique, and the timing of this is very important as well. So let's bring back Michael Weiss.

We're standing here on our map of the world. We want to look at the region, why Turkey matters. First, give us a take on timing. The idea we heard Phil Mudd say, usually it's just about opportunity. But this is Ramadan, and there is a specific aspect to Ramadan you can explain to us about why martyrs especially would think this is a good time to attack. Why?

MICHAEL WEISS, AUTHOR, "ISIS: INSIDE THE ARMY OF TERROR": The last ten days of Ramadan are the holiest in the entire Islamic calendar. Every Ramadan, it doesn't matter if you're al Qaeda or Islamic jihad or ISIS, there is a marked uptick in terror attacks. It's seen to be, you know, glory unto the Islamic nation. But also, let's be honest, Muslim countries have their guard down. People are fasting, security services are lagging a little bit behind. The ISIS spokesman, Abu Mohammad al- Adnani, in reality, he runs all of Syria for the organization. Every Ramadan, he comes out and says the same thing, "This is the time to strike at the infidels that."

CUOMO: Which used to be seen as counterintuitive. If Ramadan is the holiest time, you think you'd be the least evil at that time, but that's not the practical thing.

WEISS: Just to give you an example, I was in Aleppo in 2012, during Ramadan, at the tail end of it. I can tell you I didn't hear any gunfire because the regime had actually relaxed its counterterrorism or its counterinsurgency campaign against the Syrian rebels, who had just taken Aleppo City.

CUOMO: Alright, so this is the time to be on alert, now through July 5th. If this is the most holy time, it could be the worst time as well.

Let's look at Turkey. Turkey matters geographically, but it also matters politically, especially for ISIS. This is the one place where they don't like to be too aggressive. Why?

WEISS: Well, they're looking to do several things at once. Number one, keep the border open. There's one border crossing in particular, Bab al-Salama, which essentially feeds and funds and re-supplies the entire so-called Caliphate, formerly Fallujah, all the way to Western Aleppo.

Number two, the Kurds in Turkey, those at the line of the PKK, the Kurdish Sand Workers Party, are now the vanguard fighting force on the ground in Syria against ISIS. The minute ISIS lost Kobani, they decided to really go after these PKK-aligned Kurds. They're very geo- politically savvy, ISIS as an organization. They know that what they can't take through force of numbers and firepower on the battlefield, they're going to try and extract through weakening vulnerabilities or sensitivities in this coalition.

CUOMO: Hold on. Do you think that this is if it is ISIS, this is ISIS playing to its advantage or is this their response to losing territory, somewhat of an act of desperation?

WEISS: In some sense, it's both. It's a tactical shift. A lot of the terror attacks in 2015 that I counted up inside Turkey by ISIS were waged against PKK-aligned targets. Why were they doing this? They knew this was going to prompt a response by the PKK against the Turkish government, which would further distract Turkey from a war it doesn't want to even wage against ISIS and put all of their resources and manpower into fighting the PKK.

Now what we're seeing is look, a Brussels, Paris-style attack, an international soft target. At least 10 to 13 foreign nationals have been killed from all over the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq. This is a new shift for ISIS in terms of how they're approaching the Turkish question.

CUOMO: The geographic question, again, let's go back to the map. Here we are. We're standing in the water, don't worry. When you look at what's happening, there's all this talk about them losing. There's your legend on the map. You can see where land is, where they're active, what's been taken away. Do you see support for the proposition that they are losing territory? That's what ISIS needs to be a Caliphate. And that they are in trouble in terms of the war on the ground? Politically, here, in the election right now, you would think they're getting stronger and stronger.

WEISS: There's no question that their Caliphate has shrunk. In Iraq, it's estimated they've lost about 50 percent of the territory they controlled as of June 2014. In Syria, it's between 20 percent and 30 percent. They just lost Fallujah, which strategically matters because that was their launch pad for terror attacks in Baghdad. We're talking about an area that's only about 50 kilometers away from the Iraqi capital. Symbolically, it's important because this was always the Sunni's sure the hornet's next of the Sunni insurgency.

The Pentagon is worried they pulled out of Fallujah a little too precipitously because they're waiting to see what happens and they want to come back. Leave Iraq to one side. Syria, they're about to lose the city. That is the main territory in Northern Syria they need. These are the guys who plan attacks like Turkey and Paris and Brussels. If they lose Northern Aleppo, it comes down to and the River Valley. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

CUOMO: Right. Because you take the easy parts first away, then it gets harder over time. Michael Weiss, thank you very much for helping us understand so much this morning.

For the thousands who witnessed this Turkey terror attack, this is just the beginning for them. The emotional scars are going to be there way after any physical scars heal. We're going to talk to somebody who witnessed this and where they are today, emotionally and psychologically, next.

CAMEROTA: We do have an update for you on our breaking news. The numbers keep rising. Forty-one people killed, at least 239 injured in the terror attack at the Istanbul airport. We want to bring in an eyewitness, Thomas Kemper of the Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church. He was in the airport in the Turkish Airlines lounge when the blast went off. Mr. Kemper, thank you so much for being here. How are you doing this morning?

THOMAS KEMPER, UNITED METHODIST CHURCH: Thank you for having me, and I'm still tired and in shock. It was a very scary moment when the bombs went off and everybody started running. We went into all directions and people came back, scrambling all over each other. Then we all tried to hide somewhere in the lounge.

CAMEROTA: Yes, we've heard. And we're seeing video now of the moments after the blast went off, where it does look chaotic. Were you getting any instructions, or were you just running helter-skelter?

KEMPER: No, we were just running. There was no instruction. We ran in one direction, and somebody said, "No, the terrorists are over there." Then you ran in the other direction. So then we started to hide. I went into the kitchen of the lounge in some back room and tried to hide behind some boxes because you have all these images of the terrorists coming and trying to kill you while you were hiding. It was very tense and very scary.

CAMEROTA: We can only imagine. You were hiding in the kitchen. Of course, you had images of the terrorists coming in. We did see just that scenario in Orlando in that nightclub recently. Were you alone? Tell us what was happening in that kitchen for the minutes you were in there.

KEMPER: Yeah, because you have the stories and you saw Orlando and Paris. You think now they are coming for you kind of. It's a very scary and frightening, terrifying moment. So I was in the kitchen with somebody who was probably Chinese. We couldn't understand each other. We had no language. But we were there hiding. Other people were trying to break the glass, trying to get out of the lounge, and hiding in other places. It went on for at least 30, 40 minutes until some staff came and calmed us down. We were all together in the lounge.

CAMEROTA: Oh my gosh. So terrifying. We now know that sadly, the numbers have risen. Forty-one people, at least at this hour, were killed there. Two hundred thirty-nine injured. Where do you think the most casualties were from what you saw?

KEMPER: I think the most casualties were definitely in the arrival hall. When they took us out, we had to walk through the destroyed arrival hall last night. So we walked through it and saw the destruction there, which was very, very heavy. So I guess that's where most people were killed.

CAMEROTA: Oh my gosh. It's so just terrible to think of. As we said in our intro, you are a man of faith. You run a Christian ministry. What are your thoughts this morning in terms of your faith and in terms of reaching out to people from other faiths?

KEMPER: Yeah, I was I tweeted even from the lounge last night. I think this is a moment which should deepen our solidarity with all people who suffer from violence and terror. These people in many parts of the world suffer every day and every night, not just one moment. I felt strongly about it. The people around me, many and most of them were Muslims.

I talked to a young Muslim lady. She was in her hijab. She was crying and crying. I talked to her and said, "What's going on?" She was a young woman here from Istanbul who had just been to the airport to see off her friend. Then, the bomb went off, and she just ran. Now she was inside the airport with no possible they didn't let her out. She was just crying.

I was with a family from on the bus. We were almost sitting on each other's lap. They were from Somalia who live in Holland and were going to Mogadishu. The man said, "This happening now here in Istanbul." I felt this was common humanity among us, whatever our faiths. We need to reach out and take our hands and change this and reconcile. This is the only way forward.

CAMEROTA: I mean, of course, most of the victims in most terror attacks are Muslim. What do you say to the people who believe that this is part of their faith, committing violence like this? KEMPER: Can you say that again? I couldn't hear you.

CAMEROTA: What about people who claim that they're doing this in the name of their faith? As a man of faith, how do you square that?

KEMPER: I think none of the Muslims I talk to would say these people have done it in the name of my faith. I think they are people who have been totally misled and are being used. These young people who probably were the killers here, brainwashed. It is very sad and very striking. We need to set examples that humankind can stand together and can build these bridges. I think that's the important thing to do.

CAMEROTA: Yes, Mr. Kemper, thank you for that message.