Category: 2022

AL-Monitor
[The Islamic State leader’s hideout a stone’s throw away from Turkey's
border and Syrian Democratic Forces involvement in the raid have
raised fresh questions over Ankara’s fight against the Islamic State.]
By Fehim Tastekin
Feb. 10, 2022
The leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi,
was killed in a Syrian hideout close to the Turkish border, just like
his predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, casting question marks over
Ankara’s assertions of its decisive struggle against the radical
group.
Like his predecessor, al-Qurayshi was hiding in a house near the
northern Syrian town of Atmeh, a stone’s throw from the border across
the Turkish province of Hatay and only a few hundred meters from
Turkey’s Bukulmez military outpost which overlooks the region.
Washington’s underscoring of the Syrian Democratic Force’s role in the
raid came atop, dealing another blow to Ankara.
Al-Qurayshi, whose real name was Abdullah Amir Mohammed Saeed al-Mawla
and who went by several other aliases, was killed near northwestern
Syrian village Barisha some 25 kilometers (15 miles) away from the
Turkish border. Similarly, his predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had
also been killed in Barisha in 2019.
The three-story house where al-Qurayshi was hiding is located one
kilometer from a checkpoint of Failaq al-Sham, a Turkish-backed Syrian
opposition group, and some 500 meters from a Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
(HTS) checkpoint. HTS is the dominant group that controls Idlib and
surrounding regions including Atmeh.
Atmeh, which is home to a large refugee camp for displaced Syrians,
has become a place where jihadis from groups such as al-Qaeda and IS
can easily hide. Although the region remains out of the Turkish-backed
groups' control, Atme and nearby villages can be easily monitored from
the military watchtower at Bukulmez outpost.
Given the intelligence leaks that suggest al-Qurayshi was also relying
on a web of couriers to lead the group like his predecessor, Turkey’s
failure to identify the suspicious mobility in the region is raising
further question marks.
The US strike came after the IS raid on a prison in Hasakah.
Increasing Turkish strikes on SDF checkpoints at the time of the raid
likely smoothed the path for the attackers. Turkey has been keeping
Tell Tamr, Ain Issa, Kobani east of Euphrates and Manbij and Tel Rifat
west of Euphrates under constant fire through howitzers and combat
drones. This, in turn, provides ammunition to those who claim that
Turkey is opening a path for the IS.
In addition to the location of the al-Qurayshi's hideout, the SDF’s
involvement in the latest raid puts Ankara into an even more untenable
position. In a briefing after the strike, US President Joe Biden said
​​the raid was “aided by the essential partnership of the Syrian
Democratic Forces.”
Riding the momentum, the SDF didn’t miss the opportunity to taunt
Turkey. “Is there any doubt that Turkey [has] turned areas [of
northern] Syria into a safe haven for Daesh leaders?” Farhad Shami, a
SDF press person, wrote on Twitter, using the Arabic acronym of the
Islamic State. Shami also reminded readers that Baghdadi had been
killed in the same area. Mazlum Kobane, the commander in chief of SDF,
said al-Qurayshi was killed thanks to the “strong partnership” between
the US and SDF.
In short, instead of its NATO ally Turkey, the US joined forces with
the SDF to hunt down a prominent IS target near the Turkish border.
The location of al-Qurayshi’s hideout shows once again that IS leaders
hide in places from where they can easily make use of the Turkish
borders. Al-Qurayshi’s ethnic origins remain unknown, but some say he
was an ethnic Turkmen who had little difficulty establishing ties
within Turkey.
It's no secret that the IS considered Turkey a place where its
militants could take shelter in relative ease during its withdrawal
from Iraq and Syria. According to Kasim Guler, the alleged IS leader
for Turkey, whose confessions to the Turkish authorities were leaked
to the media last week, back then Baghdadi had made a decision to use
Turkey as a major base.
Guler, who was caught in June 2021 near the Syrian border, told the
authorities that under that plan, dubbed “the mountain project,” the
militant group was going to base in the outskirts of four different
Turkish provinces including Hatay along the border, according to an
exclusive report by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The bases would
train new militants joining the Islamic State from Europe. Guler said
that they had smuggled AK-47s, RPG launchers, and other weapons​​ from
the Syrian town of al-Bab to Turkey and buried them in six Turkish
cities, including Istanbul and Izmir, according to the DW report.
IS recruiter Mustafa Dokumaci’s attempts to realize the project were
foiled after the arrest of the ranking IS militants responsible for
the plan. The group relied on senior IS figure Mahmut Ozden for
communications between the Turkey-based IS cells, the DW reported,
citing Guler’s testimony. Guler said the group had cells in more than
a dozen Turkish cities including Istanbul and Ankara. Guler also
recounted some plots to assassinate prominent politicians including
Turkey’s main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, and Istanbul
Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.
The major reason why IS militants prefer to take shelter in Turkey is
that the Turkish government has considered Islamic State a useful tool
in its fight against the Syrian Kurdish groups. Accordingly, Ankara’s
policies against the radical group have become riddled with
inconsistencies.
IS militants can easily wire funds using exchange offices and jewelry
shops in Turkey. The Turkish judiciary’s weakness in dealing with
Islamic State suspects is another reason. Islamic State suspects
caught in Turkey cannot be tried on crimes they committed abroad. Some
IS suspects have been released on probation or on grounds of lack of
evidence.
They appear to travel to and from Syria and Iraq easily, even
smuggling their captives. Turkish police’s rescue of a 7-year-old
Yazidi girl whom the Islamic State had sought to sell in an online
auction as a captive in Turkey last year is a case in point.
Turkey’s fight against Islamic State has always been haphazard. The
fact that al-Qurayshi could shelter near the Turkish border has only
amplified the depth of these holes.
 

The National Interest
By Sam Mullins and Cüneyt Gürer
Feb. 11, 2022
[Given the extent of the Islamic State’s presence in Turkey, along
with the multitude of problems facing the country, it is remarkable
that Turkish authorities have kept the lid on things until now. The
question is how much longer it can last.]
It has been more than five years since an Islamic State gunman opened
fire at the Reina nightclub in Istanbul, killing thirty-nine revelers
from more than a dozen countries as they celebrated the New Year. The
group has not conducted a significant attack in Turkey since, and
international attention has been drawn elsewhere, captivated by the
latest blood and gore. But while the West has been fixated on emerging
and reemerging threats in far-off places, from sub-Saharan Africa to
Afghanistan, a much more sophisticated and immediate danger has been
simmering away in Turkey. Given the extent of the Islamic State’s
presence in Turkey, along with the multitude of problems facing the
country, it is remarkable that Turkish authorities have kept the lid
on things until now. The question is how much longer it can last.
From the outset, Turkey has been of critical importance to the Islamic
State. At the height of the caliphate-building project, foreign
fighters were flocking to Syria and Iraq in droves. Most of them
arrived by way of Turkey, where they were met by facilitators who
vetted them and sometimes gave them training before smuggling them
across what was then a poorly guarded border. But Turkey was always
far more than just a transit point and staging ground for new arrivals
from outside the region. More than 6,500 Turkish citizens (including
family members) reportedly joined the Islamic State, making it an
important area for recruitment and one of the largest producers of
foreign fighters in the world. Furthermore, the country swiftly
emerged as a critical financial and logistical hub for the
organization, allowing the Islamic State to acquire and move vast
amounts of money, weapons components, precursor explosive materials,
and a variety of other services and supplies. It is hardly a surprise
then, as the caliphate began to crumble in Syria, that the fallback
position for many—including a number of high-ranking leaders—was in
Turkey.
At the time of the Reina nightclub attack, Ahmet Yayla, a former
Turkish counterterrorism officer, estimated that there were around
2,000 “hardcore” Islamic State operatives in Turkey (about the same
number that the United Nations recently posited are in Afghanistan).
Since then, that number appears to have grown substantially. As the
fall of Raqqa was looming in the summer of 2017, Islamic State
commanders instructed their followers to seek refuge and await orders
across the Turkish border. “Many hundreds” of Islamic State fighters
and their family members were reportedly allowed to leave Raqqa under
the terms of a deal struck with the Kurds, and thousands more would
flee Syria in the months that followed. Though it was not the only
destination they could go to, it was perhaps the most attractive, and
it is almost certain that many of these individuals went into hiding
in Turkey. Add to this the “thousands” of Turkish foreign fighters who
returned home—few of whom have been prosecuted—and it is clear that
Turkey has a serious problem.
As the threat has metastasized, the number of counterterrorism
operations has soared, supposedly approaching around 1,000 per year,
with dozens of suspects sometimes netted in a single raid. Among those
arrested have been the alleged military head and “right-hand man” of
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who helped the former Islamic State leader hide
in Idlib near the Turkish border; the erstwhile Islamic State deputy
minister of education; and one of Baghdadi’s wives and several of his
relatives. The fact that these individuals were living in Turkey—and
in some cases went undetected for up to four years—is indicative of
the ease with which the Islamic State has infiltrated Turkey and the
country’s significance to the organization’s leadership.
As the crackdown has intensified, Turkish authorities have thwarted a
growing number of plots, including ambitious plans for mass casualty
attacks and the kidnapping of public figures. Details are generally
scarce, and Turkish politicians sometimes muddy the waters with
outlandish claims, but there is no denying that the threat is real.
Research by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center has shown that
Islamic State attack cells in Turkey have typically been connected to
the organization in Syria and Iraq, and have frequently had access to
firearms and explosives. The same worrisome combination of operational
connections and offensive capabilities has persisted in spite of the
Islamic State’s diminished presence in Syria and Iraq. Such was the
sense of impending peril this past October that the United States
Mission to Turkey suspended consular services across the country and
issued a public alert, citing “credible reports” of potential
terrorist attacks and kidnappings against American citizens and
foreign nationals in Istanbul and other locations.
Parallel to Turkish counterterrorism efforts, the U.S. Treasury has
been diligently working behind the scenes to root out the financial
infrastructure that the Islamic State and other jihadists rely on.
This has resulted in a growing number of designations of terrorist
financiers, including an array of money exchange and transfer
businesses, the largest of which, Al-Khalidi Exchange, was moving
hundreds of thousands of dollars each day. Evidently, Turkey’s efforts
to crack down on terrorist financing have been lacking. This led the
Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global financial watchdog, to
place Turkey on its dreaded “grey list” of countries that are
deficient in the areas of anti-money laundering and counterterrorism
financing in October—a development that has exacerbated Turkey’s
deepening economic crisis.
The FATF listing speaks to a more troubling concern. Although Ankara
was quick to designate the Islamic State as a terrorist organization
and join the global coalition to defeat it, Turkey has long been
accused of negligence when it comes to jihadists. Eyebrows have once
again been raised by the fact that Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim
al-Quraishi—just like his predecessor—was able to live in hiding only
a few kilometers from the Turkish border. There is little question
that the Erdogan government has other counterterrorism priorities,
chief among them the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and associated
Kurdish militias, which are mutual enemies of the Islamic State.
Equally, if not more important, is the Gülen movement—officially known
as the Fethullah Terrorist Organization—which Turkey holds responsible
for the 2016 attempted coup.
In comparison to the fervor with which these and other perceived
threats are pursued, the fight against the Islamic State has been
somewhat lackluster. Thus, in spite of the frequent raids, it appears
that relatively few of the suspects who are detained are formally
arrested and charged. Many, it seems, are simply released following
their initial statements. When cases do go to court, Turkish judges
have been surprisingly lenient. A particularly striking example is the
case of the Syrian cleric Jamal Abdul Rahman Alwi. Despite being
accused of giving the order to burn two Turkish pilots alive in 2016,
Alwi was released pending trial and only later rearrested after public
outcry. Many others, including senior members of the Islamic State,
have benefited from Turkey’s remorse law, which can result in
sentences being greatly reduced or even suspended.
What becomes of such individuals is murky. Turkish authorities have
deported a total of 8,585 terrorism suspects of 102 nationalities
since 2011. However, this figure does not account for Turkish citizens
and also includes individuals seeking to join the PKK and other
organizations. Few other details are known. Some suspects who cannot
be imprisoned or deported are placed under surveillance, but it seems
highly improbable that the security services—likely still recovering
from the loss of thousands of experienced officials caught up in the
anti-Gülenist purge—would be able to adequately monitor suspects.
With the president’s popularity at an all-time low and elections fast
approaching, the Islamic State is likely to become an even lower
priority than it already is. The threat of terrorism has already cast
a shadow over the upcoming elections after an improvised explosive
device was found on a car belonging to a police officer assigned to an
Erdogan rally. And although this has since been blamed on the PKK, it
only reinforces the existing pecking order. Yet, if history is
anything to go by, the Islamic State will be just as much, if not
more, of a problem in Turkey. The group was particularly active in the
lead-up to the general election in 2015 and is unlikely to let a
similar opportunity pass it by. This does not bode well for the months
ahead.
Since 2017, Turkey has been successful in doing just enough to keep
the Islamic State off balance. Though counterterrorism raids are being
conducted at a breathless pace, they are superficially disruptive in
nature. The border with Syria, though much tighter than it once was,
remains permeable; counterterrorism financing has been woefully
deficient; firearms and explosives appear to be readily available; and
plotting is widespread. Under the mounting pressure of domestic
challenges, and with elections on the horizon, it seems unlikely that
Turkey’s success can last.
This is a problem for the international community as well. As a major
tourist destination and a hub for international travel—including a
thriving trade in high-quality fake passports—Turkey is both an
attractive target for terrorists itself and a potential launchpad for
transnational attacks. Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for
policy, caused a stir late last year when he told members of the
Senate Armed Services Committee that the Islamic State’s affiliate in
Afghanistan “could potentially” develop the capability to launch
external attacks within six to twelve months. It is entirely possible
that the Islamic State already has that capability in Turkey. Although
attention is still largely focused elsewhere, it would therefore be
wise to keep a close eye on “Wilayat Turkey.”
*
Sam Mullins is a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center
for Security Studies.
Cüneyt Gürer is a professor at the George C. Marshall European Center
for Security Studies.