The Effects of the Pandemic on the Expansion of Terrorism

The global pandemic has provided unique opportunities for extremists and terrorists to mobilize and re-establish themselves as more powerful actors in the security landscape. While the risks of disease and societal disruptions have hampered some of their activities, as an asymmetric enemy, terrorists tend to adapt to unstable conditions to exploit uncertainty to advance their goals. This raises an important question: how can terrorist groups exploit domestic or international emergencies to advance their goals? The present study, which is based on a descriptive-analytical approach with deductive reasoning in this area and a look at the extremist actions of terrorists, draws a preliminary picture of how COVID-19 has affected the contemporary terrorism situation and introduces ten different ways in which the pandemic can affect the terrorism landscape in the short, medium and long term. The results indicate that terrorists have acted to increase sensitivity to extremism and increase the level of incitement of anti-government attitudes by engaging in social activities and even reconsidering bioterrorism. It was also found that pandemics have helped strengthen the performance of terrorists and, in addition to weakening government responses to strengthen security platforms, they have organized their destructive goals by creating parallel and popular groups and taking advantage of the weakened state platform to expand their destructive goals.