Turkey and the 'Islamic State'
By Vicken Cheteryan
Turkey is notably reluctant to join a military campaign against ISIS. In fact, Ankara's ambiguity towards the radical Islamist group has deep political as well as historical roots.
A new sight met regular airline passengers between Istanbul and southern Turkey in 2012-13: young, bearded men, often in pairs or groups, who travelled freely and, once out of Hatay or Gaziantep airports, effectively disappeared. They were, evidently, foreign militants coming to join the Syrian war that had started in 2011, and were unhindered by Turkish police as they made their way.
The media in both Turkey and the United States has begun to reveal that the then government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan (who has since moved from being prime minister to Turkey's president) chose to send humanitarian aid to radical Islamic groups active in Syria, which had an organic relation with the more radical jihadis affiliated with al-Qaida. The Turkish press also reports anecdotal information of regular military aid originating in Turkey being passed to Syrian jihadi groups that are now connected to ISIS, and of humanitarian aid to former allies of al-Qaida and ISIS.
Turkey, by channelling this aid to the salafi-jihadi groups among the Syrian rebels, made a conscious choice to strengthen the most extreme among them, thus contributing to ISIS's full emergence. The release on 20 September of forty-nine Turkish hostages held by ISIS since the group's capture of Mosul in June may reflect this unstated relationship (see Patrick Cockburn, "Turkey accused of colluding with ISIS to oppose Syrian Kurds and Assad...",Independent, 22 September 2014).
There is less attention to how Turkish policies encouraged the rise of the Islamic State (though many analyses focus on the Syrian regime's indirect contribution, by failing to target ISIS until mid-2014). In Turkey's case, the calculations had four aspects. First, by supporting the armed rebellion in Syria (whose most determined and organised element seemed to be the salafi-jihadicurrents), Ankara would help overthrow the al-Assad dynasty. Second, Erdogan's administration, itself the fruit of political Islam, looked with a favourable eye towards the jihadi formations. Third, this stance would have a bonus, namely curbing the influence of the militant PKK among Syria’s Kurds. Fourth, Ankara’s alliance with some pro-radical Arab states (mainly Qatar) would be strengthened.
Read more on the Open Democracy website.
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