GROWING UNEASE OVER TURKISH JIHADISTS IN SYRIA
ByStaff
– Posted on October 9, 2013Posted in: Armenia, News
Rebels from al-Qaida affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra are pictured waving
their brigade flag. As many as 500 Turks have been recruited since
al-Nusra was formed in January 2012. (AP Photo/Edlib News Network)
By Jamie Dettmer VOAnews.com ISTANBUL – Growing numbers of young
Turks are crossing into Syria to join jihadist groups fighting the
Assad regime raising fears in Turkey of a future national security
risk for Ankara.
Last month the U.S. and Turkey agreed to create a $200 million
dollar fund to help local organizations develop programs to counter
violent extremism among young people in places like Somalia, Yemen
and Pakistan. Now some are warning the threat might be closer to
home because of a surge in recruitment of young Turks by al-Qaida
affiliates.
Al-Qaida affiliates in Syria such as the Islamic State of Iraq and
Sham (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra are making headway in persuading
Turkish Sunnis to cross the border into Syria for jihad, Turkish
officials acknowledge.
Turkish officials said that jihadists have recruited several hundred
young Turks from the southeast of the country to fight in the civil
war raging next door. And independent analysts estimate that as many
as 500 Turks have been recruited since al-Nusra was formed in January
2012. The larger Iraqi affiliate ISIS, which became active in Syria
earlier this year, is also actively seeking Turkish recruits.
Syrian Kurds say Turkey is responsible
Syrian Kurdish leader Salih Muslim said the Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist AKP government are partly
responsible for the jihadist success, arguing that Ankara has not
done enough to combat jihadists using Turkey as a logistical base and
has in effect colluded with them by allowing al-Nusra fighters safe
passage. Jihadists and Syrian Kurds have been engaged in heavy fighting
in recent weeks in competition for control of Syrian territory.
Muslim is a co-chairman of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD),
an offshoot of the PKK, a separatist Kurdish group in Turkey. He
alleged that Turkish authorities are willing to turn a blind-eye
to the jihadists in Syria while they fight Kurds, arguing that
Ankara hasn’t done enough to block Gulf-supplied weapons earmarked
for the Western-backed Free Syrian Army from falling into jihadist
hands. He also said International aid agencies are being prevented
from sending relief supplies across the border to Kurdish villages
in northern Syria.
“Not a single assistance convoy crossed to our side in one month. Our
people are living under difficult war conditions. We have acute
shortages of electricity, water, fuel and medicines. There is an
embargo against us,” he told Turkey’s Taraf newspaper.
In recent weeks, as fighting has intensified between jihadists and
Kurds in northern Syria, observers said wounded al-Nusra fighters
have been transported by Turkish ambulances to hospitals in Urfa.
But Turkey’s Interior Minister Muammer Guler denied there has been
any assistance offered to jihadists along the border. According to
Guler in an October 4 press release, 129 suspected terrorists have
been arrested in the past year. But the interior minister did not
offer a breakdown of the allegiances of those detained.
In September, Turkish prosecutors indicted six jihadists – five
of them Turks – for trying to acquire chemicals with the intent to
produce the nerve agent Sarin. The suspects – all al-Nusra members –
tried to secure two government-regulated military-grade chemical
substances, according to the allegations contained in a 132-page
federal indictment.
Southeast Turkey emerges as a recruitment magnet
Turkey’s Radikal newspaper said a lengthy investigation it carried
out suggests 200 young Turks have been recruited alone from Adiyaman,
a town in the southeast of the country. A father of twin sons who had
been recruited by al-Nusra told the newspaper that the radicalization
process had taken about a year and that his sons disappeared on
September 2.
After their disappearance, he tracked his sons down to the Syrian
city of Aleppo. “I went to Aleppo with a guide and toured six camps
in four days. There were young men from Adiyaman, Bitlis and Bingol
in the camps. I found both my sons in a camp in Aleppo. When I told
the gang leader that I had come to take them back, he replied: the
boys are fighting for jihad here. Are you an infidel, since you are
trying to stop them from jihad?”
The recruitment process back in Turkey sidetracks local mosques,
presumably as a precaution against possible Turkish police
surveillance. Likely recruits are encouraged to join small prayer
groups where videos are shown of the fighting in Syria. Adiyaman isn’t
the only town that is seeing high levels of recruitment. A Turkish
police source -who asked not to be identified – said there is jihadist
recruitment activity in Urfa and Diyarbakir. Once persuaded to join
up Turkish recruits undergo 45 days of basic military training before
joining a fighting unit, he said.
Prior to the Syrian civil war, global jihadist groups had only limited
success in recruiting in Turkey. In 2007, the al-Qaida-linked Islamic
Jihad Union launched a Turkish-language website. Several Turks have
been arrested in the past in foiled bomb plots in Europe. And there
have been a handful of Turkish suicide bombers, the most notable
Cuneyt Ciftci, who attacked a NATO base in Afghanistan in March 2008,
killing several Western soldiers.
But now after nearly three years of civil war in Syria and growing
numbers of young radicalized Turks joining the fight fears are
growing that radicalization will spread, and that one day young
Turkish jihadists may bring the war home with devastating consequences.