Turkish media outlets report that more than 400,000 websites registered under Turkey’s Internet country top-level domain ".tr" are experiencing problems. Since Dec. 14, the computer servers of government agencies and private entities, including the country’s three largest Internet service providers, have suffered systematic cyberattacks. Most Turkish banks and their credit card terminals could not perform any transactions on Dec. 25, and as of Dec. 29 the virtual onslaught was continuing.

According to the Ankara-based Network Information Center, which administers the registry of sites under the “.tr” domain, the cyberattacks against Turkey are of the distributed denial of service (DDoS) kind. In a DDoS scenario, hackers take over multiple computers remotely, send continuous requests to overwhelm the targeted server and deny it the ability to fulfill its duty — be it providing news stories, banking services or video-streaming.

The DDoS attacks have had a noticeable effect on Turkey’s Internet speed. According to Akamai Technologies, one of the world’s leading content delivery network companies, Turkey’s average Internet connection speed was 6.2 megabits per second (Mbps) in the third quarter of 2015. While that figure pales in comparison to world leaders South Korea's and Sweden’s 20.5 Mbps and 17.4 Mbps, respectively, three Turkish technology experts told Al-Monitor that their country’s average connection speed has fallen well below 6.2 Mbps since Dec. 14. One expert who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity stated that the attacks, which reached 220 gigabits per second, were “unique” and “unprecedented” in Turkey’s history.

As for whodunit, the international network of hackers known as Anonymous and the Russian government stand out. After Islamic State militants struck Paris on Nov. 13, Anonymous began confronting the extremist group and its supporters on the World Wide Web. In a video posted on Dec. 23, the hackers’ cooperative also issued threats against Turkey. The group claimed that "Turkey is supporting Daesh [IS] by buying oil from them and hospitalizing their fighters. We won't accept that [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan will help [IS] any longer.” The video further warned Turkey: “If you don’t stop supporting [IS], we will continue attacking your Internet, your root DNS [Domain Name System], your banks and take your government sites down. After the root DNS, we will start to hit your airports, military assets and private state connections. We will destroy your critical banking infrastructure.”