Attack on a secular lifestyle?

The terrible massacre by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on a nightclub in Ortaköy last week has triggered Turkey's most traditional debate on "secular versus conservative" lifestyles. 

Some argue that the statements about New Year's celebrations made by Diyanet, the Religious Affairs Directorate, triggered the attack. According to them, the rift between the secularists and the religious is the reason behind the massacre. In doing so, however, they -consciously or unconsciously - fuel this rift even further.

Some others do not relate the attack to this issue and think that there is no threat directed at the secular lifestyle in Turkey at all. 

These two groups also have their own extremes. While one extreme defines those who lost their lives in the nightclub as "infidels," the other extreme wants its lifestyle to be imposed on all of society.

As we are sucked into this cultural vortex, we are missing the point that the very same debate is actually being made on a much larger scale around the world. 

First of all, ISIL did not make its only New Year's/Christmas attack in Turkey. The terrorist organization has carried out 15 similar bombings in the past. The Christmas market attack in Berlin two weeks ago was the most recent one. 

Yet ISIL's attacks on "Western" or "modern" values are not limited to the concept or period of New Year's.

 They are much more far-reaching. The terrible massacre at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo two years ago - grounded in the controversy over a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad - is one of them. These kinds of attacks triggered the debate about whether they were targeting Western values such as freedom of expression. The Paris attacks in November 2015, which...