The Future of Terrorism

Year 2025, Volume: 2 Issue: 1, 1 - 12, 28.08.2025

Mehmet Erkin Kara

https://doi.org/10.26650/hupej.2025.2.1.1637600

Abstract

The dramatic rise of terrorism has accelerated after the 9/11 attacks, and it has comprehensively affected the world within the public eyes and academic world. Although every human being uses the term terrorism and knows what a terrorist’s methods are, most of them cannot explain properly the meaning of terrorism or the theory of terrorism. Evaluating the modern history of terrorism is very difficult to categorise too. Furthermore, there are a lot of definitions and descriptions of terrorism in the academic world. However, there is no prominent consensus about its definition and description in the international community. However, David Rapoport’s academic article “The Four Waves of Terrorism” has been accepted as the most respectful analysed theory which is about history of modern international terrorism in the security and terrorism studies literature. According to his theory, terrorism waves emerge, peak, and recede in a wavelike pattern. The first wave began with anarchist terrorism, and they have been currently going on with the fourth wave of terrorism, which is a religion wave. Numerous studies were conducted after his four waves of modern terrorism theory. Most of them have searched for the fifth waves that may be seen in the future. But they have not been as influential as David Rapoport’s four waves of terrorism theory. From this perspective, this study aims to add a new accessible approach for the fifth wave of terrorism. Thus, it simply seeks to fulfil this need.

Keywords

Terrorism , Theory , Theory of terrorism , Wave of terrorism theory , The fifth wave of terrorism

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