In an ideal world for compliance officers, the finances of individuals plotting mass casualty attacks would exhibit enough anomalies to draw attention to their plans before they could carry them out, assuming such plans were made at all.
Among the many challenges of identifying terrorist funds is the fact that they can be hidden in plain sight, according to Colin P. Clarke, an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation who studies the subject.
Turkey's vulnerability to illicit financiers has grown over the past year, in part due to its deepening economic relationship with Iran and turmoil along its southern border, say policy advocates.
Banks will find it difficult to identify the proceeds of illicit crude oil sales linked to Islamic State, the blacklisted terrorist organization now controlling a handful of Iraqi and Syrian oil fields.
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