Terrorism Analysis Platform takes a multidisciplinary and mixed methods approach, including qualitative and quantitative methods, to generate comprehensive data and analyses of terrorism-related events. In this manner, TAP assesses the knowledge accessible in publicly available sources. While acquiring data from verbal, written or electronically transmitted materials, TAP utilizes high-quality software technologies to enable timely and efficient data collection.  

For each attack data, the information is available on the date and geo-location of the terrorist incidents, the tactics used and the target type, the number of casualties, and the terrorist group that responsible for the incident. Likewise, for each operation data, the information is available on the date and geo-location, security environment, security agency, operation unit, operation target type, operation type and the number of casualties.

TAP emerged as a database aimed to generate data regarding the domestic terrorist activities in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. However, it turned into a global project which now seeks to generate data regarding terrorist incidents across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America & the United States, Central Asia & the Caucasus, Europe & the Balkans.

For domestic terrorist incidents, the sources can be divided up into two different categories. Initially, the public notices released on a daily basis by the Interior Ministry and the National Defense Ministry of Turkey about the PKK related terrorist attacks and counter-terrorism operations in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria are used as primary source. 

The Interior Ministry shares unclassified data about the terrorist activities of the domestic terrorist organizations in Turkey on a daily basis. These include the PKK, DHKP-C, DEV-SOL, DAESH, FETO, THKP-C, YPG, ASALA, JCAG, and a variety of terrorist organizations which have been systematically conducting terrorist attacks in Turkey. The Ministry also shares debriefings about counter-terrorism operations (CT) conducted by the security forces in urban and rural areas of Turkey. The illustration of the patterns of domestic and cross-border CT operations is one of the unique characteristics of TAP, so much so that, no other event database collects data about CT operations regarding the PKK and other terrorist organizations. 

The National Defense Ministry is another state institution that TAP benefited as primary source. The Ministry shares unclassified data about the terrorist incidents and its CT operations in Northern Iraq and Syria, where Turkey conducted four cross-border military operations against DAESH and YPG, on a daily basis. 

Our third source in data collection is the formal reports that are released by the Turkish Parliament and other relevant state institutions.

In addition to the primary source, TAP has also benefited from a secondary source to check terrorism-related events shared by the government institutions and to closely follow the terrorist attacks which are claimed for responsibility by different terrorist organizations.  In this context, the TAP data collection team systematically collects terrorism-related events from Turkish newspapers.These include Milliyet (1970-present), Hürriyet (2000-Present) and Yeni Şafak (1999-present). 

TAP also provides data for international terrorism. For that purpose, TAP has collected a great variety of primary and secondary resources to further pursue terrorism-related events. A plenty of reports released by prominent think tanks, worldwide databases such as Global Terrorism Database (https://start.umd.edu/gtd/), RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents (https://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/terrorism-incidents.html), Uppsala Conflict Database Program (https://www.ucdp.uu.se), the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (https://acleddata.com) and open-source daily terrorist activities particularly in the MENA region are cataloged.

Please note that we do not provide the complete sources that we have benefited for the service of third parties.