The assassination of the Russian ambassador in Ankara (Turkey) and the Islamist terrorist attack in a Christmas market in Berlin provoked different reactions between the outgoing Obama Administration and incoming Team Trump.

 While President Obama defined them as a struggle between countries and a common, stateless foe, President-elect Donald Trump framed them as a fight between Christendom and Islam, reports The Atlantic. Trump has previously suggested tracking Muslims entering the United States to prevent similar attacks. Such a database previously existed before it was phased out in 2011, but it could be reinstated.

More significantly, the two administrations used the attacks to tell radically different stories about who was being attacked, and why. The Obama administration identified the victims as members of a nation. The word "Germany" appeared several time in his statement. 

Team Obama’s response to the Ankara assassination was also state-centric. It offered condolences to the Russian people and declared, “we stand united with Russia and Turkey in our determination to confront terrorism in all of its forms.” Obama's message was that despite sharply different interests, nations must cooperate against their common foe: “terrorism in all its forms.”

Trump’s statement described the victims of the Market not as "Germans" but as members of a religion. He linked those killed in Berlin to other “Christians” who “ISIS and other Islamist terrorists continually slaughter … in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad.”

As reported in The Atlantic.