Turkey, Friend or Foe?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/kenneth-r-timmerman/turkey-friend-or-foe-2/
December 12, 2014 by 28 Comments
As the battle for the Syrian border city of Kobani raged and prospects of an ISIS-led massacre of thousands of innocent civilians loomed this fall, the BBC interviewed the vice-chairman of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP Party in Ankara.
Why hadn’t Turkey responded to NATO’s request to launch joint military operations to halt the ISIS assault on Kobani? How could Turkey just sit back and watch so many innocent civilians die, BBC correspondent Jonathan Marcus asked.
The replies from Yasin Aktay are telling.
“Why is Kobani the most important problem?” he asked. “There is no tragedy in Kobani as cried out by the terrorist PKK. There is a war between two terrorist groups. You mean we should… favor one terrorist organization over another?”
The AKP deputy leader went on to explain the calculus of death as seen from Turkey’s point of view. “Less than 1000 people have been killed in Kobani, but more than 300,000 people have been killed in Syria. Which is more important?”
Aktay’s remarks reveal much more than just a callous disregard for the Kurds, who comprise roughly one-third of Turkey’s overall population, or for the popular Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which broke off peace talks with the Turkish government in October to protest Turkey’s stranglehold over the Kurds in Kobani.
According to Vice-president Joe Biden, Erdogan himself admitted that Turkey had ordered border guards to turn a blind eye as new ISIS recruits flooded across Turkey’s borders to join the battle against Assad in Syria. (Okay, when Erdogan was informed of Biden’s comments, he hit the roof and demanded that “loose-lips” Uncle Joe retract them).
In response to a Harvard University student’s question whether the U.S. could have intervened earlier in Syria, Biden went even further:
“[O]ur allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The Turks were great friends – and I have the greatest relationship with Erdogan, which I just spent a lot of time with – the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except that the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.
“Now you think I’m exaggerating – take a look. Where did all of this go? So now what’s happening? All of a sudden everybody’s awakened because this outfit called ISIL which was Al Qaeda in Iraq, which when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space in territory in eastern Syria, work with Al Nusra who we declared a terrorist group early on and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them. So what happened? Now all of a sudden – I don’t want to be too facetious – but they had seen the Lord. Now we have – the President’s been able to put together a coalition of our Sunni neighbors, because America can’t once again go into a Muslim nation and be seen as the aggressor – it has to be led by Sunnis to go and attack a Sunni organization.” [h/t to Mark Langfan for excerpting this Q&A from Biden’s speech]
Kurdish sources tell me that the initial Turkey-al Nusra front agreement was made more than two years ago, and included Turkey’s agreement to help smuggle arms to the Syrian rebels from Benghazi and other parts of Libya.
Earlier this year, Turkish and Qatari intelligence officials met with senior ISIS leaders in Jordan to plot the take-over of Mosul and the predominantly Christian Nineveh Plain.
Also at the meeting was a representative of Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) president Massoud Barzani, who has worked closely with the Turkish government and has spearheaded massive Turkish investment in northern Iraq. Barzani apparently believed ISIS would stop their advance after seizing Mosul and the Nineveh Plain, and ordered his peshmerga fighters to withdraw rather than fight the ISIS advance.
The most dramatic events occurred in Sinjar, when 13,000 peshmerga fighters mysteriously “melted away” in August rather than confront an ISIS assault force of around 1000 men. While much of the national media focused on the plight of the Yazidis, a Shiite sect considered heretical by most Sunnis, ISIS continued to march eastward through the Nineveh plain, massacring the Christians who failed to flee.
Not until they began threatening Erbil, the capital of the KRG, did Barzani apparently realize he had been duped and called on the United States to supply heavy weapons so the peshmerga could halt the ISIS advance. As Kobani was falling, Barzani authorized Kurdish fighters from the PKK and PJAK, who had bases in northern Iraq, to transit through his territory to relieve the besieged city.
A former ISIS communications technician, using the pseudonum “Sherko Omer,” recently sat down with Newsweek reporter Barney Guiton and spilled the beans on Turkey’s deep relationship to the Islamic State.
ISIS fighters traveled regularly back and forth from their stronghold in Raqaa, Syria into Turkey to acquire supplies and new fighters. “ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks,” Omer said.
It was imperative for the Islamic State to establish a secure supply line through Turkey in order to bypass areas in northern Syria controlled by Kurdish fighters from the Democratic Union Party (YPG), which is allied to the PKK.
“ISIS saw the Turkish army as its ally especially when it came to attacking the Kurds in Syria,” Omer said. “The Kurds were the common enemy for both ISIS and Turkey.”
“I have connected ISIS field captains and commanders from Syria with people in Turkey on innumerable occasions,” Omer said.
In the same report, a YPG spokesman told Newsweek that Turkey was providing ISIS with arms and ammunition, in addition to allowing Islamic State fighters to cross unimpeded back and forth between Turkey and Syria.
His accusations were repeated in Berlin Claudia Roth, a deputy speaker of the German parliament and a Green Party MP.
President Erdogan’s “dealings with the ISIS are unacceptable,” Roth said. “I could not believe that Turkey harbors an ISIS militant camp in Istanbul. Turkey has also allowed weapons to be transported into Syria through its borders. Also that the ISIS has been able to sell its oil via Turkey is extraordinary.”
Turkish opposition politician Ali Ediboglu claimed in June that ISIS had already exported oil worth $800 million through Turkey through special pipelines and convoys of trucks, without any opposition from the Turkish authorities.
(For more on Turkey’s support for ISIS read Daniel Pipes’ summary of what Kurdish and Turkish intellectuals have been writing, and this excellent if lengthy report from the FDD’s Jonathan Schanzer.)
President Obama once named Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan among his top five “best friends” on the world stage, “an outstanding partner and an outstanding friend.”
No longer. According to Erdogan, the two no longer chat on the phone. The time of Obama “hearting” Erdogan are over.
Erdogan says their falling out began in September 2013, when Obama failed to order unilateral military operations against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad once he faced resistance in the U.S. Congress.
If that’s the case, why is Obama letting Erdogan off the hook for his support for ISIS?
It’s time to let Turkey choose: they can continue to be a NATO ally and join us in the fight against ISIS and other enemies of freedom. Or they can continue to support ISIS and suffer the consequences. Which is it?
*
Don’t miss Ken Timmerman discuss his new book, Dark Forces:
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
Subscribe to Frontpage’s TV show, The Glazov Gang, and LIKE it on Facebook.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment