Turkey and ‘Islamic State’ — is Ankara doing enough?
It came as a great relief to many Western governments when Washington announced last week that the leader of the “Islamic State” (IS) terrorist militia, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been killed during during a US military raid in the northern Syrian region of Idlib. Among the Turkish public, however, al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts has raised a serious question: How can one of the most wanted terrorists in the world go unnoticed only a few kilometers from Turkey’s border? The terrorist leader’s 65-year-old sister was also located around 6 kilometers (4 miles) from the Turkish border, Ankara reported on Tuesday. She is said to have been arrested by Turkish authorities near the northern Syrian town of Azar.
The news has many people in Turkey wondering whether the country’s border region has become a hideout for high-ranking IS terrorists, and what sort of relationship the country’s government has with jihadist groups.
Read more: Who was the ‘Islamic State’ leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?
Al-Baghdadi was hiding out near the Turkish border when he died during a US military raid
Is Ankara turning a blind eye?
The fact that high profile terrorists have sought refuge near the Turkish border, despite Anakara’s declared goal to eradicate terrorism from northern Syria, comes as a surprise to Erk Acarer, a Turkish journalist and expert on IS terrorism. “Through the military operation in Idlib, 3,000 Syrians invaded Turkey and the authorities did not even look,” he said, lamenting the lack of scrutiny directed toward people who could pose a threat and easily enter the country from Syria.
According to Cevat Ones, a former deputy chief in Turkey’s MIT intelligence service, Ankara is doing more to combat terrorism. The Turkish government is fighting al-Baghdadi and jihadist groups, “and Turkish society supports this fight,” he said.
There have been times, however, when the Turkish government underestimated the jihadist threat, Ones noted, adding that “the borders were not controlled very well when the [Syrian] civil war started in 2011.” Many terrorists entered the war zones via Turkey, he said. “There was a lot of criticism, and rightly so, that the borders were not secured — but the lenience toward jihadist terrorists has now been finally put to rest,” he said.
“Turkey is now fighting terrorists,” Ones said, arguing the Turkish military’s current invasion of northern Syria was evidence of that.
Read more: What does Turkey’s ‘resettlement’ plan in Syria mean?
Lethal negligence?
Critics and opposition members argue that the temporary carelessness in dealing with IS terrorists has put Turkish citizens at risk. IS supporters have carried out numerous terrorist attacks since 2015, including a suicide attack in the town of Suruc on the Syrian border that killed 34 young people. In the worst terrorist attack in Turkish history, two suicide bombers killed around 100 people in front of Ankara’s main railway station, also in 2015. Then there were the attacks on Istanbul’s Ataturk airport in 2016 and on an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Eve 2017.
Some attacks could have been prevented, argued Turkish lawyer Nuray Ozdogan of the Ankara Bar Commission. “The attack in Ankara that claimed approximately 100 lives would not have taken place if a serious investigation had been carried out into the Suruc attack,” she said.
The Ankara suicide bombers were mentioned in 66 secret service reports, but the attack was not prevented, she added. Turkish lawyers demanded an investigation into the Turkish state’s complicity in the wake of the IS attacks in Ankara, Suruc and Diyarbakir but the applications were rejected, Ozdogan said. Much of the evidence of the state’s complicity could never be presented, she explained, “because the police and intelligence services did not release any information.”
Read more: Kurds in Turkey increasingly subject to violent hate crimes
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Syrian civilians bear the brunt of Turkey’s offensive
A first stop
UN sources say over 200,000 people have been internally displaced in Syria’s northeast since Turkey launched its offensive on October 9. So far, the border town of Ras al-Ayn has paid the highest toll in the wake of a joint attack by Turkish militias and airstrikes. The city will remain under Turkish control following a deal struck in Sochi between Russia and Turkey.
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Syrian civilians bear the brunt of Turkey’s offensive
‘We’ve lost everything’
A majority of those who have fled are reportedly Kurds. Those civilians remaining in the city are mostly Arabs who are still in touch by phone with their former neighbors. “They told me yesterday that the Islamists were looting our house. We’ve lost everything,” this man told DW.
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Syrian civilians bear the brunt of Turkey’s offensive
Every crumb helps
The regime forces are stationed just a few kilometers away from Tal Tamr. As a result international NGOs formerly based in the area have fled over the past few days. Internally displaced people (IDPs) from Ras al-Ayn and the neighboring villages rely on the work of local NGOs who are struggling to cope with the crisis.
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Syrian civilians bear the brunt of Turkey’s offensive
Not enough to go around
Apart from Tal Tamr, other villages in the vicinity are also hosting hundreds of displaced people who rely on local NGOs. “They’re settling in empty villages, many of them too close to other locations controlled by either the Turkish-backed militias or ‘Islamic State’ sleeper cells,” Hassan Bashir, a local NGO coordinator, told DW.
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Syrian civilians bear the brunt of Turkey’s offensive
Food, glorious food
This Arab IDP from Ras al-Ayn has four wives but will struggle to get enough to feed all their children as local NGOs say they can only allocate a single food ration per family. “It’s not their fault, they’re just children,” he told DW, after being given a single bag of food rations.
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Syrian civilians bear the brunt of Turkey’s offensive
School’s out — forever?
Schools have remained shut across Syria’s northeast since the beginning of the offensive and several of them are now hosting IDPs from Ras al-Ayn. Those who can afford it will move to cities like Al-Hasakah, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the south, but others will have to cope with the dire conditions in a border city that faces further attacks from the north.
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Syrian civilians bear the brunt of Turkey’s offensive
The closest thing to home
50 Kurdish families from Ras al-Ayn are now living in this abandoned school in Tal Tamr lacking both water and electricity. As the sanitary conditions deteriorate, local doctors and the hospital in Tal Tamr fear an outbreak of cholera and other diseases. “If we continue like this we’ll have to get set for a huge humanitarian crisis,” a local doctor told DW.
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Syrian civilians bear the brunt of Turkey’s offensive
Sick and stranded
Although the hospital in Tal Tamr is treating the wounded, it cannot help those suffering from diseases such as cancer.Two IDPs told DW that they were supposed to receive chemotherapy in Damascus before the offensive started, but that the current security situation makes it impossible for them to get there.
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Syrian civilians bear the brunt of Turkey’s offensive
A different type of playground
The Christian village of Tell Nasri on the outskirts of Tal Tamr had remained empty since IS took over the area. The majority of its former inhabitants left during the IS siege when the militants destroyed the churches with explosives before the fall of the Caliphate. With nowhere else to go, several IDP families from Ras al-Ayn are now settling in Tell Nasri.
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Syrian civilians bear the brunt of Turkey’s offensive
Living on a prayer
These boys are among dozens stranded in Tell Nasri but the dire living conditions are the least of their problems. Just before this picture was taken, settlers told DW that they had been attacked from a neighboring village reportedly in the hands of Islamists. “They started shooting at us and we engaged [with them] for over an hour,” a fighter with the Syrian Democratic Forces told DW.
Thriving Islamist scene
These days, the Turkish authorities seem to have adjusted to the IS threat. In recent months, police operations against IS fighters have made headlines in the Turkish media, including recent arrests in Izmir, Adana and Istanbul.
However, IS structures managed to develop in many Turkish cities while the state was still turning a blind eye. The presence of IS and its jihadist communities is noticeable, in particular in towns near the Syrian border, including Hatay, Adiyaman, Gaziantep, Kilis and Sanliurfa — but also in Ankara, Izmir and Adana. They do not hide their fundamentalist ideology: In 2015, hundreds of IS supporters gathered in Omerli Park near Istanbul to attend an event with Halis Bayancuk, a well-known IS preacher who publicly calls for jihad.
There is hope that, after the death of al-Baghdadi, Turkey will take a harder line on terrorist organizations such as IS. But experts are wary, pointing out that the IS threat is bound to continue. Even if “the murder of the leader of a terrorist organization … [causes] a considerable weakening of the organization,” people in many countries, including Turkey, will continue to agree with the ideology, Ones said.
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Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/turkey-and-islamic-state-is-ankara-doing-enough/a-51127222?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf