Survivors of Terrorism - A Study on How Survivors of the Terrorist Attacks Perceive their Attackers

Abstract: The growing number of victims as the result of increased terrorism has caused areal concern. Because many of the victims ends into mental disorders, the scholarships in this regard has increased. However, it is rare to find scholarships focusing on the attitudes held by the victims produced in line with the sufferings caused by terrorism. As usually in circumstances such as in post terrorist acts, the survivors produce negative attitudes due to the bad experiences triggered by the event which may thereby begin another cycle of violence directed towards the enemy. Therefore, to understand and to minimize the possible productions of such attitudes by the victims, actually serves the central aim of Peace and Conflict studies, which is to stop violence and promote peace. Thus, considering this issue, this research aims to understand how the survivors of terrorism perceive their attackers. In line with the aim, this study includes an interpretative case study to interview the survivors of terrorism and analyze the possible construction of enemy image in the lenses of theory enemy image. The study concluded that most of the participants consider the outgroups as different from the ingroup, especially based on religion and the outgroups are usually represented as ‘others’, the analyses confirms that participants create an enemy image, because there is not only one enemy in form of ethnic group therefore the construction of enemy image towards one group may vary in relation to the other group