How Turkey Fights the Islamic State Burak Bekdil/The Gatestone Institute/July 29, 2015
Until very recently, Turkey was content to let Islamic State run wild in Syria. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (the Islamic State, or IS) has been the number one target for the world’s democratic nations since it captured large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq last summer and declared caliphate under sharia law in the lands it controls. The United States and its allies have been waging a war against IS at a distance. So is NATO ally Turkey, at least theoretically, and not at a distance.In reality, things are a bit different. Especially since the beginning of this year, several press reports in local and international media outlets told chilling stories about how jihadists move freely and recruit fighters in some of Turkey’s biggest cities. “It is no secret that Turkey has become a fertile ground for jihadist activity. Turkey says it fights IS. Maybe it does. But just randomly and reluctantly,” said one EU ambassador in Ankara. Last month a news report detailed stunning revelations of Huseyin Mustafa Peri, a Turkish citizen who joined IS in September but, after being shot and wounded, was captured in early June by Syrian Kurds. He explained the recruiting process with chilling clarity in a video. As if to confirm Peri’s revelations, the chronology of how a youth in southeastern Turkey was recruited by IS to detonate a bomb at a pro-Kurdish rally in Diyarbakir in early June either exposes a huge security vulnerability within Turkish law enforcement, or malice. (The twin blasts killed four people and injured over 100, two days before Turkey’s June 7 parliamentary elections.)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has effusively praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s contributions to the fight against IS. The father of the suspect said he had contacted the police when his son disappeared in October 2014. He said that he suspected that his son, who expressed strong jihadist opinions, could have gone to join IS. The family even pleaded with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu for help. Later, officials told him the young man had joined IS. Strangely, shortly before he detonated the bombs, the young man — known only by his initials, O.G. — was briefly detained at the rally due to some conscription irregularity. The police released him, even though their records should have listed his name as a “lost person in connection with terrorism.” Officials later explained that there was some procedural error that caused the bomber to be released. Not many people were convinced. Turkey’s fiercely pro-government media went a bit too far in revealing where Ankara stands in Syria’s civil war. “Turkish Pravdas” ran the stories and headlines praising IS and condemning pro-Kurdish fighters in northern Syria who fought the Islamic State with the help of US-led air strikes. One daily, Sabah, which openly supports President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ran the headline, “YPG (a Kurdish militia) is more dangerous than ISIS.” Other notoriously pro-government newspapers such as Star, Yeni Akit and Aksam ran similar stories. That is no doubt “good journalism” for Turkish officials. But not every Turkish journalist is necessarily a good political scientist.
Last month, three journalists at the border with Syria were briefly detained for angering the local governor by asking questions about possible infiltrators from IS. The three journalists, from the Turkish dailies Cumhuriyet and Evrensel and Germany’s Die Welt, were taken to a police station for interrogation on orders from the governor. The Turkish state helps IS. Not just with its police force and local governors and other officials in Ankara. Recently, two Chechens, who were accused of beheading three priests in Syria two years ago, avoided sentencing on murder charges, although an Istanbul court sentenced them to 7.5 years in prison for being members of a terrorist group. The jihadist Chechens, Magomet Abdurakmanov and Ahmad Ramzanov, were captured in Istanbul in early July. The court refused to hand down a murder sentence on the ground that “the crime was not committed against Turkey and the lack of an agreement on extraditions.” Now the Chechens will serve only two years in prison, due to the Turkish penal code, which automatically lowers prison sentences. A police report said Abdurakmanov might be one of the militants seen in a video that was uploaded on YouTube, which allegedly shows the beheading of the priests.
Revealingly, Abdurakmanov told the court that he had received support from Turkish intelligence when he was in Syria. “Turkish intelligence would not help me if I were a member of al-Qaeda,” he said. “We were in contact with Turkish intelligence all the time. Turkey sent us arms, cars and money when we were fighting in Syria. Turkey was helping us because we were fighting against [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad.” More recently, an interview with a discontented nurse was published. The nurse, an Alawite (an offshoot of Shiite Islam), claims to work clandestinely for a covert medical corps in Sanliurfa, a southeastern Turkish city bordering Syria. The nurse divulged information about the alleged role that Sumeyye Erdogan, President Erdogan’s daughter, played in providing extended medical care for IS’s wounded militants who were brought to Turkish hospitals. “No sooner did they become cognizant of my faith,” she said, “then the wave of intimidation began. I knew many things… who was running the corps. I saw Sumeyye Erdogan frequently at our headquarters in Sanliurfa … I am indeed terrified.” Meanwhile, Turkey keeps on telling the world how it fights the IS terrorists in Syria. Even more ridiculous than this claim is that some people apparently buy the Turkish fairy tales. In April, US Secretary of State John Kerry underlined that Turkey was an essential partner of the US in the fight against IS and praised Turkey’s contributions. “I want to emphasize this afternoon the importance of the ties between the United States and Turkey, particularly the security relationship at this particular moment,” Kerry said after a meeting with his Turkish counterpart. So it is natural that the Turks think they can always fool their allies: they help jihadist terrorists and in return get pats on the shoulder.
**Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet and a fellow at the Middle East Forum. http://www.meforum.org/5401/turkey-islamic-state
Turkey Turns on Its Jihadists Next Door
Burak Bekdil/The Gatestone Institute/July 29, 2015
When the Islamist radicals of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS, or Islamic State) decided to send a suicide bomber across the border into a small Turkish town, they probably did not think the bomb attack would poison their relations with Turkey. After all, the bomber’s target was a pro-Kurdish group, also viewed with hostility by Turkey. The attack killed 32 people and injured over 100. The attack also prompted tighter border controls in an area patrolled by the Turkish security forces. In an exchange of fire over the Turkey-Syria border, one Turkish non-commissioned officer was killed (the first Turkish casualty by IS fire), along with one IS fighter. That was the end of Turkey’s silent, peaceful cohabitation with the jihadists next door. The Turkish military said it sent fighter jets to bomb IS positions in northern Syria. Turkey also, for the first time, joined the allied forces fighting IS by agreeing to allow, after several months of negotiations, the US military to use the critical Incirlik air base in southern Turkey for air strikes against IS targets.
The crackdown on IS targets in Turkey reveals how jihadists have been enjoying official protection. Then came police raids against IS targets inside Turkey. Suddenly Turkey, a NATO member, was in an all-out war against IS, inside and outside Turkey. But in an embarrassing reality, the crackdown on IS targets in Turkey revealed how jihadists have enjoyed official protection over the past several years.
In one raid, for instance, the Turkish police targeted an Istanbul apartment where it (unsurprisingly) found 30 foreign fighters waiting to be dispatched into Syria to fight their jihad alongside their IS comrades. The police also detained hundreds of “IS members or sympathizers” in raids across Turkey. The IS men must have been shocked at the unexpected hostility they faced from Turkish security forces, something they probably had not seen before. But of all the detainees, two names were more revealing than the other, less-known ones. One was Abdullah Abdullaev, an Azeri jihadist believed to be one of the IS leaders in Turkey. Abdullaev is the man who ran a network that received, provided safe houses for, and dispatched a large number of jihadists into Syria to augment the jihad there. Ironically, Abdullaev had successfully avoided coming onto the Turkish security’s radar — a real miracle — until one IS cell with no real vision decided to bomb a pro-Kurdish meeting in a small Turkish town. Then it attacked Turkish troops. Then Turkey attacked both IS in Syria and pro-independence Kurds in Iraq.
Similarly, three pro-IS websites operating in Turkey were abruptly blocked, on court orders. Just like the detained IS operatives, the websites had been free to operate inside Turkey until the first direct combat between Turkey and IS. Well-known Turkish Islamist Ebu Hanzala was arrested in 2008 for plotting an attack on a synagogue, but was quickly released after appealing to a higher power. And then there is the curious case of “Ebu Hanzala.” Ebu Hanzala is in fact the nom de guerre of Turkish national Halis Bayancuk.[1] In 2008, Hanzala was caught by the police as he was sketching plans to bomb a synagogue in Turkey. Mysteriously, he was released one year later. In 2014, he was briefly arrested again at a pro-Al-Qaeda meeting in Van, an eastern Turkish province bordering Iran. Also in 2014, he publicly declared that he wanted Islamic law (shariah) in Turkey. Bayancuk also declared his commitment to IS in a series of videotapes he released. He even had a Twitter account under the name “Ebu Hanzala.”
Without the bomb attack against the pro-Kurdish party, Bayancuk would most probably still be a free man, fighting for jihad and organizing some of the traffic on Turkey’s jihadist highway, under the discreet surveillance of the same police officers who detained him when they wanted to. It is good news that Turkey is cracking down on jihadists across the country. But questions remain: How, so spontaneously, were the Turkish police able to find the safe house where jihadists were waiting to be shipped to Syria? How did they immediately find and detain Messrs Abdullaev and Hanzala? Why did they let them go free before? It is nice of Turkey to ban the three pro-jihad and pro-IS websites, but why did the Turkish court not shut them down before? Why, specifically, did the Turks let Hanzala go free, despite his proven links with terrorism and specifically with organizations such as al-Qaeda and IS? Why was he released shortly after he was detained in each case? Finally, Turkey is fighting what the entire civilized world views as a brutal jihadist organization. But the way Turkey fights the Islamic State reveals how friendly it may have viewed the group until now.
**Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
[1] “Ebu Hanzala” is the Turkish version of the Arabic name “Hazrat Hanzala,” the son of Abu Aamir Rahib, who was a non-believer during the birth of Islam. Hanzala fought for the Muslims while his father fought for the non-believers. During the Battle of Uhud, Hanzala is believed to have fought with such spirit that he was able to pass through the barrage of soldiers and ultimately reach the non-believers’ leader, Abu Sufyaan who later accepted Islam. http://www.meforum.org/5406/turkey-vs-jihadists
