Posts Tagged ‘Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’

Turkey’s Influence in Middle East Fades

October 31, 2014

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends the 85th anniversary ceremony of the Turkish republic in Ankara.  

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends the 85th anniversary ceremony of the Turkish republic in Ankara. Presidential Press Office/European Pressphoto Agency

By Yaroslav Trofimov
The Wall Street Journal

ISTANBUL—Not so long ago, a confident Turkey behaved as a natural leader of the Middle East, with friendly Islamist regimes mushrooming amid the rubble of the Arab Spring and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, mobbed by adulating crowds whenever he stepped on Arab soil.

Now, just when the U.S. needs Turkey’s help most against the surge of Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and beyond, Ankara’s regional influence has sunk to a low point.

Ambitious policies that overestimated the pull of political Islam—and misjudged the resilience of the Middle East’s old political order—have alienated Turkey from much of the region. With the exception of Iraqi Kurds, hardly any government in the Middle East is on good terms with Ankara nowadays.

“We came from a policy of having zero problems with our neighbors, and now we’re having problems with almost everyone,” said Umit Pamir, a retired diplomat who served as Turkey’s ambassador to the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Greece.

Turkey’s relations with regional powerhouses Egypt and Israel are so bad that Ankara doesn’t have ambassadors in either country. Its insistence on regime change in Syria means chilly ties with Iran. The Shiite-led government in Baghdad is wary of Turkey’s reach into Iraqi Kurdistan, while Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies are upset with Turkey’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s designs on the region. Even maverick Qatar, which used to enable Turkey’s foreign-policy ambitions, has moved closer to the rest of the Gulf.

Instead of becoming a leader showing the Middle East the way to democracy and prosperity, Turkey is struggling to cope with the spillover of the region’s problems—from Islamist militancy to sectarian strife to deadly street violence.

Turkish officials stress that they have taken in some two million Syrian refugees at a cost of billions of dollars. They argue the massacres perpetrated by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad —coupled with Western unwillingness to act against him—have fueled the rise of Islamic State and have forced Turkey to press for regime change in Damascus.

But Mr. Erdogan’s risky bet on a quick downfall of the Syrian regime has left Ankara with limited options now that Mr. Assad has proved resilient. Turkey is increasingly at odds with the U.S. as it builds a coalition to tackle Islamic State instead—a project that includes helping Kurdish factions long seen as foes by Turkey.

“Traditionally, Turkish foreign policy has been noninterventionist, cautious, status-quo-oriented. Adopting a policy of regime change vis-à-vis one of its neighbors—that was a sudden departure,” said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat who is now a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe and runs the Edam think tank in Istanbul.

Turkey’s shrinking regional clout was reflected in its failure to win a United Nations Security Council seat this month. While Turkey sailed into the Security Council with votes from 151 nations in 2008, this time—despite confident predictions of victory by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu —it garnered only 60 votes and was trounced by Spain, in part because of lobbying by Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

There are no indications, so far, that Turkey is rethinking its regional approach.

“What kind of mistakes are we suddenly expected to confess? Turkey’s mistake is that it is a democracy, if it is a mistake. Turkey’s mistake is that it stands for human rights, if it is a mistake,” said Yasin Aktay, deputy chairman in charge of foreign relations at Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP. “Nobody can isolate Turkey. But we are now surrounded by nondemocratic processes in the region, and this is making the region very dangerous, and not just for Turkey.”

Compounding the damage to Turkey’s influence abroad, however, is that its own democracy no longer looks as appealing as before. The crackdown on demonstrators in Istanbul’s Gezi Park in 2013, moves to censor the Internet, and Mr. Erdogan’s insistence on shielding his associates from corruption investigations have all dented Turkey’s image in the region.

“Turkey was a model of sorts for a while, but the years after the Arab Spring have completely shattered that image of Turkey,” said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of political science at United Arab Emirates University. “First of all, Turkey has taken a side, the side of Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood. Second, Erdogan is acting as a dictator of sorts, cracking down on freedoms and demonstrators. The liberals of the Arab world no longer take Turkey as a model.”

Of course, with a modern economy, NATO’s second-largest army, and strategic position Turkey still remains a crucial power.

“They are influential and important, and what they say will always matter to the United States,” said Francis Ricciardone, vice president of the Atlantic Council in Washington who served until earlier this year as the American ambassador in Ankara. “They were not alone in making wrong guesses along the way,” he added.

In any case, support among the Middle East’s peoples, not its governments, is what really counts, Turkish officials say.

“For Turkey, the Middle East is very important, and it is also very important that the Middle East becomes democratic. Our hope is remaining,” said Osman Can, a senior official focusing on democracy issues for the AKP party. “We can establish good relations with the peoples, not the regimes, of the Middle East.”

As it happens, Turkey’s initial opening to the region, in 2009, made a lot of sense—and was welcomed by the U.S. By lifting visa requirements on citizens of most of the region’s countries, Turkey became the Middle East’s tourism and shopping hub, with everything from construction contracts to a regionwide obsession with Turkish soap operas following the flourishing of people-to-people ties. Mr. Davutoglu, as foreign minister at the time, was the architect of that outreach.

To some Turkish analysts, the first warning sign came in 2009, when current President Erdogan—then prime minister—was given a hero’s welcome after he returned home from the Davos summit in Switzerland. There, Mr. Erdogan had publicly insulted the Israeli president, triggering a policy shift that eventually killed a close security relationship.

“Israel-bashing worked so well politically that foreign policy became a way of accumulating political capital. And now they are trapped by that,” said Soli Ozel, a Turkish columnist who teaches international relations at Kadir Has University.

In 2011, as Arab regimes started collapsing, Turkey became a vocal ally of the Islamist parties vying for power. It was a natural choice: Mr. Erdogan was himself once jailed for delivering an Islamist poem, and his AKP party has long struggled to establish the supremacy of democratic institutions over the country’s military and security establishment.

It all seemed to go in the right direction. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi became president in Egypt in 2012.

The Islamist Ennahda party dominated the new government in Tunisia. Brotherhood-led politicians made advances in Yemen and Libya, and—most important—rebels, many of them with Muslim Brotherhood links, seemed close to toppling the Syrian regime. The Middle East, it appeared, would never be the same again.

Turkey, believing that the current Arab state order was doomed, increasingly adopted the policy of speaking above the heads of Arab leaders, straight to the “Arab street.”

This belief in the historic inevitability of the rise of political Islam, however, proved to be misplaced. Just a year after Mr. Morsi’s election, Egypt was gripped by protests against his rule that ended with the army taking over power and crushing the Brotherhood.

Turkey’s passionate backing for the Muslim Brotherhood and its refusal to recognize Egypt’s new leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, has left Ankara with next to no influence in the pivotal Arab nation.

In Tunisia, Ennahda lost elections this month.

Turkey’s leaders, said Mr. Ozel, “could not read the dynamics of the Arab state system.”

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

Obama’s War: U.S.-led air strikes intensify as Syria conflict destabilizes Turkey — “Constrained by the absence of forces on the ground” but could still work

October 15, 2014
Smoke rises from the Syrian town of Kobani, seen from near the Mursitpinar border crossing on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province October 14, 2014. REUTERS-Umit Bektas
 Smoke rises from the Syrian town of Kobani, seen from near the Mursitpinar border crossing on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province October 14, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Umit Bektas

MURSITPINAR Turkey/ISTANBUL Wed Oct 15, 2014 2:16am EDT

(Reuters) – American-led forces have sharply intensified air strikes in the past two days against Islamic State fighters threatening Kurds on Syria’s Turkish border after the jihadists’ advance began to destabilize Turkey.

The coalition had conducted 21 attacks on the militants near the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani over Monday and Tuesday and appeared to have slowed Islamic State advances there, the U.S. military said, but cautioned the situation remained fluid.

U.S. President Barack Obama voiced deep concern on Tuesday about the situation in Kobani as well as in Iraq’s Anbar province, which U.S. troops fought to secure during the Iraq war and is now at risk of being seized by Islamic State militants.

“Coalition air strikes will continue in both of these areas,” Obama told military leaders from coalition partners including Turkey, Arab states and Western allies during a meeting outside Washington.

The fight against Islamic State will be among the items on the agenda when Obama holds a video conference on Wednesday with British, French, German and Italian leaders, the White House said.

War on the militants in Syria is threatening to unravel a delicate peace in neighboring Turkey where Kurds are furious with Ankara over its refusal to help protect their kin in Syria.

The plight of the Syrian Kurds in Kobani provoked riots among Turkey’s 15 million Kurds last week in which at least 35 people were killed.

Turkish warplanes were reported to have attacked Kurdish rebel targets in southeast Turkey after the army said it had been attacked by the banned PKK Kurdish militant group, risking reigniting a three-decade conflict that killed 40,000 people before a ceasefire was declared two years ago.

Kurds inside Kobani said the U.S.-led strikes on Islamic State had helped, but that the militants, who have besieged the town for weeks, were still on the attack.

“Today there were air strikes throughout the day, which is a first. And sometimes we saw one plane carrying out two strikes, dropping two bombs at a time,” said Abdulrahman Gok, a journalist with a local Kurdish paper who is inside the town.

Smoke rises from the Syrian town of Kobani, seen from near the Mursitpinar border crossing on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province October 14, 2014. REUTERS-Umit Bektas

“The strikes are still continuing,” he said by telephone, as an explosion sounded in the background.

“In the afternoon, Islamic State intensified its shelling of the town,” he said. “The fact that they’re not conducting face-to-face, close-distance fight but instead shelling the town from afar is evidence that they have been pushed back a bit.”

Asya Abdullah, co-chair of the dominant Kurdish political party in Syria, PYD, said the latest air strikes had been “extremely helpful”. “They are hitting Islamic State targets hard and because of those strikes we were able to push back a little. They are still shelling the city center.”

It was the largest number of air strikes on Kobani since the U.S.-led campaign in Syria began last month, the Pentagon said. The White House said the impact was constrained by the absence of forces on the ground but that evidence so far showed its strategy was succeeding.

CEASEFIRE THREATENED

The Turkish Kurds’ anger and resulting unrest is a new source of turmoil in a region consumed by Iraqi and Syrian civil wars and an international campaign against Islamic State fighters.

The PKK accused Ankara of violating the ceasefire with the air strikes, on the eve of a deadline set by its jailed leader to salvage the peace process.

“For the first time in nearly two years, an air operation was carried out against our forces by the occupying Turkish Republic army,” the PKK said. “These attacks against two guerrilla bases at Daglica violated the ceasefire,” the PKK said, referring to an area near the border with Iraq.

Obama, who ordered the bombing campaign that started in August against Islamic State fighters, told the meeting of military leaders from 22 countries to expect a “long-term effort” in the battle against Islamic State militants.

Armed men, presumed by local sources to be Islamic State fighters, are pictured at a checkpoint in the west of Syrian town of Kobani, seen from near the Mursitpinar border crossing on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province October 13, 2014.   REUTERS-Umit Bektas

“There will be days of progress and there are going to be some periods” of setbacks, he said.

A U.S. military official told Reuters after the talks there was an acknowledgement that Islamic State was making some gains on the ground, despite the air strikes. But there was also a sense that the coalition, working together, would ultimately prevail, the official said.

“In the short term, there are some gains that they have been able to make. In the long term, that momentum will be reversed,” the official said, adding the coalition would adjust its tactics as Islamic State fighters increasingly blend into the population and become harder to target.

Washington has faced the difficult task of building a coalition to intervene in Syria and Iraq, two countries with complex multi-sided civil wars in which most of the nations of the Middle East have enemies and clients on the ground.

In particular, U.S. officials have expressed frustration at Turkey’s refusal to help them fight against Islamic State. Washington has said Turkey has agreed to let it strike from Turkish air base. Ankara has said that is still under discussion.

NATO-member Turkey has refused to join the coalition unless it also confronts Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a demand that Washington, which flies its air missions over Syria without objection from Assad, has so far rejected.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday there was no discrepancy between Ankara and Washington over the strategy for fighting Islamic State in Kobani and that Ankara would define its role according to its own timetable.

The fate of Kobani, where the United Nations says thousands could be massacred, could wreck efforts by the Turkish government to end the insurgency by PKK militants, a conflict that largely ended with the start of a peace process in 2012.

The peace process with the Kurds is one of the main initiatives of President Tayyip Erdogan’s decade in power, during which Turkey has enjoyed an economic boom underpinned by investor confidence in future stability.

The unrest shows the difficulty Turkey has had in designing a Syria policy. Turkey has already taken in 1.2 million refugees from Syria’s three-year civil war, including 200,000 Kurds who fled the area around Kobani in recent weeks.

‘PROVOCATIONS COULD BRING MASSACRE’

Jailed PKK co-founder Abdullah Ocalan has said peace talks between his group and the Turkish state could come to an end by Wednesday. After visiting him in jail last week, Ocalan’s brother Mehmet quoted him as saying: “We will wait until October 15. … After that there will be nothing we can do.”

A pro-Kurdish party leader read out a statement from Ocalan in parliament on Tuesday in which the PKK leader said Kurdish parties should work with the government to end street violence.

“Otherwise we will open the way to provocations that could bring about a massacre,” Ocalan said in the statement, which the party said he wrote last week.

Turkish attacks on Kurdish positions were once a regular occurrence in southeast Turkey but had not taken place for two years. The PKK said the strikes took place on Monday, although some Turkish news reports said they happened on Sunday.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the Turkish military had retaliated against a PKK attack in the border area, without referring specifically to air strikes.

Hurriyet newspaper said the air strikes caused “major damage” to the PKK. “F-16 and F-4 warplanes which took off from (bases in the southeastern provinces of) Diyarbakir and Malatya rained down bombs on PKK targets after they attacked a military outpost in the Daglica region,” Hurriyet said.

‘TOO LATE FOR US’

The battle for Kobani has ground on for nearly a month, although Kurdish fighters on Monday managed to replace an Islamic State flag in the West of the town with one of their own. The fighters, known as Popular Protection Units (YPG) want Turkey to allow them to bring arms across the border.

In the Turkish town of Suruc, 10 km (6 miles) from the Syrian frontier, a funeral for four female YPG fighters was being held. Hundreds at the cemetery chanted: “Murderer Erdogan”.

At least six air strikes, gunfire and shelling could be heard from Mursitpinar on the Turkish side of the border on Tuesday, where Kurds, many with relatives fighting in Kobani, have maintained a vigil, watching the fighting from hillsides.

In Iraq, Kurdish forces and government troops have rolled back some Islamic State gains in the north of the country in recent weeks, but the fighters have advanced in the west, seizing territory in the Euphrates valley within striking distance of the capital, Baghdad.

Members of Iraq’s Shi’ite minority have been targeted by recent bomb attacks in Baghdad, some claimed by Islamic State. On Tuesday, 25 people were killed by a car bomb, including a Shi’ite Muslim member of Iraq’s parliament.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland, Roberta Rampton and Phil Stewart in Washington; Writing by Peter Graff, Oliver Holmes and Philippa Fletcher; Editing by David Stamp, Toni Reinhold and Peter Cooney)

A camp on Monday in Suruc, Turkey, for Syrian Kurds fleeing jihadists in Kobani. Kurds in Suruc have accused Turkey of impeding the fight. European Pressphoto Agency

Syria crisis: 66,000 flee Islamic State into Turkey

September 21, 2014

From the BBC

Rami Ruhayem on Turkey’s border with Syria: “This is quickly becoming the Turkish border with the Islamic State”

Some 66,000 refugees – mainly Syrian Kurds – have crossed into Turkey in 24 hours, officials say, as Islamic State militants advance in northern Syria.

Turkey opened its border on Friday to Syrians fleeing the Kurdish town of Kobane in fear of an IS attack.

The UN refugee agency said it was boosting relief efforts as hundreds of thousands more could cross the border.

IS controls large areas of Syria and Iraq, and has seized dozens of villages around Kobane, also called Ayn al-Arab.

Turkey – which shares a border with Iraq and Syria – has taken in more than 847,000 refugees since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began three years ago.

But the opening of the border has seen a dramatic increase in the past 24 hours.

“As of today, the number of Syrian Kurds who entered Turkey has exceeded 60,000,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told reporters on Saturday.

He was speaking from the southern Turkish province of Sanliurfa, where many of the refugees have sought shelter.

Separately, a Turkish government official told the BBC’s Mark Lowen that the number is as high as 66,000.

Syrian Kurds wait behind the border fence to cross into Turkey near the south-eastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province, 19 September 2014.
Queues of refugees began to mass even before the border opened on Friday
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A Syrian Kurd pours water on a child after they crossed the border between Syria and Turkey near the south-eastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province, on 20 September 2014.
Turkey says it is facing an unprecedented influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria
A Turkish soldier stands guard as Syrian Kurds cross the border fence into Turkey near the southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province, September 19, 2014.  REUTERS-Stringer

A Turkish soldier stands guard as Syrian Kurds cross the border fence into Turkey near the southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province, September 19, 2014.
REUTERS/Stringer

Analysis. By Mark Lowen, BBC News, on the Turkish-Syrian border

The influx is astonishing – and still continues.

At least 66,000 Syrian Kurds have entered Turkey since Friday, when the country opened parts of its border crossing with Syria.

Around 300 Kurdish fighters are said to have gone the other way, crossing from Turkey into Syria to help resist the IS onslaught.

Until recently, Turks and Kurds fought a civil war that killed 40,000 people. The fact that Turkey is now accepting tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees is a sign of how the rise of Islamic State is shifting allegiances in this region.

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The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) said in a statement that, along with the Turkish government, it was preparing for the possibility of hundreds of thousands more refugees arriving over the coming days, as the battle for Kobane forced more people to flee.

It added that the town had been living in relative safety for much of the Syrian conflict and as many as 200,000 internally displaced people had found refuge there.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 300 Kurdish fighters had joined Syrian Kurdish ranks in the Kobane area to fend off the IS advance. The activist group did not specify which Kurdish group the fighters belonged to.

“Islamic State sees Kobane like a lump in the body: they think it is in their way,” the observatory’s Rami Abdulrahman said.

Syrian activists say IS has seized as many as 60 villages surrounding Kobane since fighting began earlier this week.

The observatory said on Saturday that at least 11 Kurds had been executed by IS, with the fate of some 800 residents who fled the villages “unknown”.

 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29294656

“We left everything we had… because of their cruelty.” Refugees who left Syria for Turkey explain why they fled from IS

Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) drive a tank in villages surrounding Jazaa, in Qamishli countryside, after they seized control of the area from Islamic State fighters, on the Iraqi-Syrian border on 30 August 2014.
The Kurds have reportedly teamed up with members of Syria’s Kurdish “People’s Protection Units”

The head of Syria’s Kurdish Democratic Union, Mohammed Saleh Muslim, has appealed for international assistance in the battle against the jihadists.

“Kobane is facing the fiercest and most barbaric attack in its history,” Reuters news agency quoted him as saying.

“Kobane calls on all those who defend humane and democratic values… to stand by Kobane and support it immediately. The coming hours are decisive,” he added.

BBC correspondents say the capture of the town would give IS control of a large strip of Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

Map of IS areas of control

Who are Islamic State (IS)?

  • Formed out of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in 2013, IS first captured Raqqa in eastern Syria
  • It captured broad swathes of Iraq in June, including Mosul, and declared a “caliphate” in areas it controls in Syria and Iraq
  • Pursuing an extreme form of Sunni Islam, IS has persecuted non-Muslims such as Yazidis and Christians, as well as Shia Muslims, whom it regards as heretics
  • Known for its brutal tactics, including beheadings of soldiers, Western journalists and aid workers
  • The CIA says the group could have as many as 31,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria
  • The US has been launching air strikes on IS targets in north-eastern Iraq since mid-August

Hostages freed

In a separate development, 46 Turkish and three Iraqi hostages seized by IS have been freed and taken to Turkey after a covert operation led by Turkey’s intelligence agency.

The hostages were seized from the Turkish consulate after IS militants overran Mosul in a rapid advance in June.

Few details about the operation have been released, but Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey’s “own methods” brought the group home.

“After intense efforts that lasted days and weeks, in the early hours, our citizens were handed over to us and we brought them back to our country,’ Mr Davutoglu said.

The BBC’s Mark Lowen says there is “huge relief” in Turkey

The group was greeted by flag-waving crowds in Ankara, after arriving there early on Saturday.

“I can’t describe the days we’ve lived through. I can’t describe what we felt, me and my relatives,” one of the hostages was quoted as saying after arriving in southern Turkey.

As well as consular employees, children and special forces police were among the hostages.

Thirty countries have pledged to join a US-led coalition against the militants but Turkey has said it will only allow humanitarian and logistical operations from a Nato air base on its soil.

Turkey has come under pressure from Western countries to stem the flow of foreign fighter joining IS.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkey is developing plans for a buffer zone on its border with Iraq and Syria.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29294656

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Back and Forth, Wearily, Across the ISIS Border

The New York Times

MAKTAB KHALID, Iraq — Around 6 each morning, with the sun already a threat, an officer at a security checkpoint here in northern Iraq rolls back the concertina wire just enough to allow travelers to pass one at a time.

Over the course of each day, thousands will move through this opening, one of only a few official routes across the 650-mile border that now separates two lands: Iraqi Kurdistan and the territory under the control of the extremist militants of the Islamic State.

The Islamic State’s use of violence as a tool of political control, reportedly including rape and public executions, has sowed panic as the group has advanced. And travelers at the border crossing confirmed that life had become significantly more challenging under the extremists.

Read the rest:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/world/middleeast/isis-islamic-state-iraq.html?_r=0

Has Turkey woken up to Islamic State threat? — Steady Stream of Islamic State Recruits Come From Turkey

September 16, 2014

A Turkish serviceman monitors border
Turkey has previously been accused of ignoring supplies and fighters crossing its border with Syria

The frontline runs through cotton fields and olive groves: on one side, a powerful Nato member; on the other – a country beset by Islamist militants, the new target of Western military intervention.

Turkey insists its 900km-long (560 mile) border with Syria is a bulwark against Islamic State (IS) and other jihadist groups that have grown during the Syrian war. But its track record tells another story.

Turkey was – for much of the past three-and-a-half-year conflict – the main entry point for weapons, resources and foreign fighters entering Syria.

As a staunch opponent of the Syrian regime, Ankara was seen as adopting a policy of “anyone but [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad”. It was widely criticised for turning a blind eye to the growth of militant groups – or worse, actively encouraging them.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, hand raised, and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, to his right, in August, leaving the Haci Bayram Veli Mosque in Ankara, the capital, where the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is known to recruit new members. Credit Adem Altan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

But in the past few months, the situation has changed: 49 Turks – diplomats and their families – were kidnapped by IS in the Iraqi city of Mosul in June and are still being held.

That, and the rapid growth of IS across Iraq and Syria, appear to have woken Turkey up to the threat. And now it is clamping down.

‘Impossible to cross’

We had rare access to the Turkish army in the southern region of Hatay as they increased patrols on the border: 5,000 troops are stationed in this area alone – and they want to show they are in control.

A Turkish serviceman monitors borderTurkey uses thermal-imaging equipment to monitor the border

Guiding me around new equipment – radars and thermal-imaging cameras – battalion commander Lt Col Umit Durmaz rejects criticism that Turkey has been too slow to act.

“As soon as the war started, we put in place measures to secure the border – and they’ve been steadily increased in the past three years,” he insists. “I find the accusations against us very unfair.”

I ask whether the Turkish military can guarantee that it can protect Europe from the militant threat.

“It is impossible to cross this border without our consent: I want Europe and Turkey to trust us”, he says. “Islamic State or other groups will not be able to attack our border. If they try, we will respond with all our might.”

Heyfek Neus with a childSyrian refugee Heyfek Neus says not all her neighbours from a village made it across the border

On the whole, it is low-level criminal activity that occupies the troops.

After taking a daily oath, repeating a vow at full volume to protect “the honour and integrity” of Turkey’s borders, some climb up to the watchtowers, overlooking the vast plains of northern Syria – areas under the control of the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front.

“We get about 10 to 15 smugglers a day of items like oil and cigarettes and we often have to exchange fire with them,” says Lt Col Unsal Akyel.

“Because there’s no legitimate authority on the other side, guns fall into the hands of ordinary people.”

Suddenly they spot movement on the river below: people trying to cross into Turkey. They clamber into an armoured vehicle and drive down, taking every precaution.

In the end, those arriving are simply refugees: a few of the three million who have fled Syria since the fighting began. They sit in the sun, worn out, the youngest playing with a single blade of grass.

“We fled because the Assad regime bombed our villages and killed our children,” says Heyfek Neus, a mother of five. “Not all of us made it across – one of our brothers died”.

‘Easy target’

This year alone, the military in Hatay caught almost 17,000 people trying to cross into Turkey.

Jerrycans seized from smugglers from SyriaOn the whole, it is low-level criminal activity that occupies border guards

It is double the number caught last year – a tangible sign of the tightening of the border.

Many are simply refugees, placed in overflowing camps. But others are foreigners – entering and leaving Syria, suspected of joining jihad.

Among the almost 9,000 people picked up for trying to cross from Turkey into Syria are nationals of 15 countries, including Somalia, Denmark and France.

In the past, flights into Hatay airport were packed with foreign fighters, travelling easily across a once porous border. But that is changing.

“Turkey has been blamed unfairly as an attempt to cover up the failed policy towards Syria by the international community,” argues Cemalettin Hasimi, an adviser to the prime minister.

“Turkey is an easy target. But we should focus instead on the ‘source countries’, which are doing nothing to stop their citizens from travelling to Syria to fight.”

That defensive line, say critics, hides a more sinister policy.

“The Turkish government has helped militant groups to grow,” argues Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, from the opposition CHP party.

“Today, areas where Islamic State or al-Nusra front are dominant are very close to the Turkish border. They weren’t able to get a foothold further south in Syria. Militants come and go from here.”

Close threat

Muslim Turkey is key to the US strategy against IS.

Bordering both Syria and Iraq, it houses large American bases and has the second-biggest army in Nato.

map

But the diplomats held hostage by IS make Turkey’s next move delicate for fear of retaliation.

Ankara wants to stem the influx of Syrian refugees. And it fears that weapons may pass from Kurdish groups in Syria to Kurdish PKK fighters in Turkey – deemed a terrorist threat.

With those concerns weighing heavy, government officials say Turkey will not take part in combat operations and will not allow its bases to be used for air strikes.

But the country will play an important humanitarian role – and its support for the Western-led coalition will be crucial.

As we drove away from the border, we suddenly caught a glimpse of a truck on the Syrian side carrying heavily armed al-Nusra fighters.

We turned around and sped back – but they disappeared fast into the forest, their black flag flying from a nearby building.

It was a reminder of just how close the threat is – and how the West relies on Turkey’s ability to confront it.

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ISIS Draws Steady Stream of Recruits From Turkey

The New York Times
September 16, 2014

ANKARA, Turkey — Having spent most of his youth as a drug addict in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Turkey’s capital, Can did not think he had much to lose when he was smuggled into Syria with 10 of his childhood friends to join the world’s most extreme jihadist group.

After 15 days at a training camp in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto headquarters of the group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the 27-year-old Can was assigned to a fighting unit. He said he shot two men and participated in a public execution. It was only after he buried a man alive that he was told he had become a full ISIS fighter.

“When you fight over there, it’s like being in a trance,” said Can, who asked to be referred to only by his middle name for fear of reprisal. “Everyone shouts, ‘God is the greatest,’ which gives you divine strength to kill the enemy without being fazed by blood or splattered guts,” he said.

Hundreds of foreign fighters, including some from Europe and the United States have joined the ranks of ISIS in its self-proclaimed caliphate that sweeps over vast territories of Iraq and Syria. But one of the biggest source of recruits is neighboring Turkey, a NATO member with an undercurrent of Islamist discontent.

Read the rest:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/world/middleeast/turkey-is-a-steady-source-of-isis-recruits.html?_r=0

Kerry opposes Iran role in anti-Islamic State coalition

September 13, 2014

(Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday it was “not appropriate” for Iran to join talks on confronting Islamic State militants, as he appeared to play down how fast countries can commit to force or other steps in an emerging coalition.

Kerry met Turkish leaders to try to secure backing for U.S.-led action against Islamic State militants, but Ankara’s reluctance to play a frontline role highlighted the difficulty of building a willing coalition for a complex military campaign in the heart of the Middle East.

As he tours the region to gather support for President Barack Obama’s plan to strike both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi frontier to defeat Islamic State Sunni fighters, Kerry said Shi’ite Iran should have no role in talks on how to go about it.

Accusing Iran of being “a state sponsor of terror” and backing Syria’s brutal regime, Kerry said it would be inappropriate for Iranian officials to join an Iraq conference in Paris on Monday to discuss how to curb a jihadist movement that has seized a third of both Iraq and Syria. Tehran has described the coalition as “shrouded in serious ambiguities”.

Secretary of State John Kerry, second from right, met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, left, in Ankara on Friday. Credit Turkish Presidency, via Associated Press

“Under the circumstances, at this moment in time, it would not be right for any number of reasons. It would not be appropriate given the many other issues that are on the table in Syria and elsewhere,” he told a news conference in the Turkish capital Ankara.

Faced with disparate interests and goals among the region’s often squabbling nations, Kerry said it was too early to say publicly what individual countries were prepared to do in a broad front to cut off funds to the militants, encourage local opposition and provide humanitarian aid.

Kerry won backing on Thursday for a “coordinated military campaign” against Islamic State from 10 Arab countries – Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and six Gulf states including rich rivals Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

But it remains far from clear what role individual nations will play. While he confirmed France’s commitment to use military force in Iraq, he declined to say whether France would join strikes in Syria.

That follows conflicting reports in key ally Britain over its potential role, with Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday saying he has not ruled out military action in Syria after his foreign secretary said Britain would not take part in any air strikes there.

“It is entirely premature and frankly inappropriate at this point in time to start laying out one country by one country what individual nations are going to do,” said Kerry, who travels to Cairo on Saturday, adding that building a coalition would take time.

“I’m comfortable that this will be a broad-based coalition with Arab nations, European nations, the United States, others,” he said. “At the appropriate time, every role will be laid out in detail.”

Turkey, which has the second-largest armed forces in the NATO military alliance after the United States and hosts a major U.S. Air Force base at Incirlik in its south, has so far conspicuously avoided committing to any military campaign.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who did not join the news conference with Kerry, said in a live interview on Turkish television hours after their meeting that U.S. action in Iraq would not be enough on its own to bring political stability.

“It is necessary, but it is not enough to establish order,” he told the Kanal 24 TV station.

U.S. officials played down hopes of persuading Ankara to take a significant role in any military involvement, saying Friday’s talks were focused on issues including Turkey’s efforts to stem the flow of foreign fighters crossing its territory and its role in providing humanitarian assistance.

“The Turks have played an extraordinary role on humanitarian aspects of the situation … and they are going to play and have been playing a pivotal role in our efforts to crack down on foreign fighter facilitation and counter terrorist finance,” a senior U.S. State Department official said before the talks.

“AMBIGUITIES”

Obama’s plan to fight Islamic State simultaneously in Iraq and Syria thrusts the United States directly into the midst of two different wars, in which nearly every country in the region has a stake, alliances have shifted and strategy is dominated by Islam’s 1,300-year-old rift between Sunnis and Shi’ites.

Islamic State is made up of Sunni militants, who are fighting against a Shi’ite-led government in Iraq and a government in Syria led by members of a Shi’ite offshoot sect. It also battles against rival Sunni Islamists and more moderate Sunni groups in Syria, and Kurds on both sides of the border.

From the early days of the Syrian conflict, Turkey has backed mainly Sunni rebels fighting against President Bashar al-Assad. Although it is alarmed by Islamic State’s rise, Turkey is wary about any military action that might weaken Assad’s foes.

It is also concerned about strengthening Kurds in Iraq and Syria. Turkey’s own Kurdish militants waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and are engaged in a delicate peace process.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil told Reuters some Arab states at talks in Jeddah on Thursday had proposed expanding the campaign to fight other Islamist groups besides Islamic State, a move Turkey would also probably oppose.

Turkey’s support for the rebels fighting Assad, including groups that some Western allies balked at backing, has laid it open to accusations it aided radical Islamists and contributed to Islamic State’s rise, a notion Ankara strongly rejects.

Francis Ricciardone, who was until late June the U.S. ambassador in Turkey, said on Thursday Ankara had supported groups including the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, in the fight against Assad, much to the dismay of Washington.

“We ultimately had no choice but to agree to disagree,” Ricciardone told a conference call arranged by the Atlantic Council think-tank on Thursday, in comments highlighting the challenges of building a coalition.

“The Turks frankly worked with groups for a period, including al Nusra, whom we finally designated as we’re not willing to work with,” he said.

(This story has been refiled to correct wording inside first paragraph quotation marks, “not apprpriate”, to correspond to Kerry’s exact comment)

(Additional reporting by Jonny Hogg in Ankara, and Nick Tattersall and Daren Butler in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Ken Wills)

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Iran’s Participation in Meeting to Aid Iraq Is ‘Not Appropriate,’ Says Kerry

New York Times

ANKARA, Turkey — Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that “it would not be appropriate” for Iran to attend an international conference on the security crisis in Iraq that is to be held in Paris next week because of what he called the role that Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force is playing in the fighting in neighboring Syria.

France is the host of the Monday meeting, which is to coordinate aid to the new Iraqi government for its fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. French officials have left open the possibility that Iran might attend.

But during a visit here to consult with Turkish officials on the international effort against ISIS, Mr. Kerry said he opposed including Iran.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/middleeast/kerry-opposes-irans-inclusion-in-iraq-security-talks.html?hpw&rref=world&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

Where’s The Beef? Still Insufficient American Leadership For New War on Terror and Islamic State

September 12, 2014

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Two weeks after admitting he had ¿no strategy¿ for dealing with the barbaric Islamic State, Barack Obama yesterday gave a 13-minute televised address in which he promised to ¿degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group¿

Two weeks after admitting he had ‘no strategy’ for dealing with the barbaric Islamic State, Barack Obama yesterday gave a 13-minute televised address in which he promised to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group’

By Daily Mail Comment

Published: 18:44 EST, 11 September 2014 | Updated: 18:58 EST, 11 September 2014

Two weeks after admitting he had ‘no strategy’ for dealing with the barbaric Islamic State, Barack Obama yesterday gave a 13-minute televised address in which he promised to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group’.

Typically, the President was strong on rhetoric. But, as military experts quickly pointed out, his response was riven with contradictions and utterly reliant on others to do the dirty work.

In Iraq, he is pinning his hopes on training the indigenous army to defeat IS on the ground – emphasising both the folly of disbanding Saddam Hussein’s forces in 2003, and his own disastrous decision to withdraw US troops when the country was still deeply unstable.

Meanwhile, in Syria he will support the fragmented rebels who are simultaneously fighting IS and President Assad and are themselves dominated by Islamists.

The stomach-churning irony is that the air strikes President Obama is planning against IS in Syria will inevitably help to prop up the same Assad regime that, only a year ago, the US and Britain wished to bomb out of existence.

Most worrying, however, was the chaotic response of the British Government yesterday, as ministers struggled to reconcile their ‘ethical’ opposition to the murderous Assad, with the need to do whatever is required to protect British citizens from the Islamic State.

First, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said: ‘Let me be clear. Britain will not be taking part in air strikes in Syria.’

Yet, within hours, Downing St insisted: ‘The PM has not ruled anything out.’

After the pomp of last week’s Nato summit in Wales, Britain was promised a coherent strategy, based on real leadership. While the IS maniacs continue to hold at least one Briton hostage, and plot terrorist attacks on our streets, the country is still waiting.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2752858/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Still-no-leadership-tackling-terror.html#ixzz3D5SCwdHy Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

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Fighters from the Islamic State group parade in Raqqa, north Syria, earlier this year

VOA News

U.S. intelligence says the Islamic State militant group has between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters on the ground in Iraq and Syria.

A Central Intelligence Agency spokesman said Thursday this is much higher than the previous estimate of 10,000.

He says the new estimate reflects stronger recruitment  by the Islamic State since June following success on the battlefield and the declaration of a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Earlier Thursday, ministers from 10 Gulf and Arab nations said Thursday they are committed to joining the United States in a “coordinated military campaign” against Islamic State fighters who have seized large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

After talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with Saudi officials and U.S Secretary of State John Kerry, officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council, along with Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, said they are united against the threat from all terrorists, including Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

(L to R) Egypt's Foreign Minister is joined by counterparts from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Oman, Bahrain, and Lebanon at King Abdulaziz International Airport’s Royal Terminal in Jeddah, Sept. 11, 2014.

(L to R) Egypt’s Foreign Minister is joined by counterparts from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Oman, Bahrain, and Lebanon at King Abdulaziz International Airport’s Royal Terminal in Jeddah, Sept. 11, 2014.

The GCC countries represented in the Red Sea port city, the Saudi government’s summer home, included Saudi Arabia and its rival Qatar, along with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Oman.

Non-Arab Sunni Turkey also attended the talks. But two other powerful regional powers, Shi’ite-ruled Iran and Syria, were excluded, a sign of how strong the Middle East’s sectarian divide remains.

The Arab states agreed in a written communique to take many of the steps U.S. President Barack Obama spelled out Wednesday in his newly articulated strategy for wiping out the militants – stopping the flow of foreign fighters, cutting off funds for Islamic State, providing humanitarian aid to those terrorized by the militants and rejecting what the ministers call their “hateful ideology.”

The ministers hailed the new Iraqi government and its pledge to advance the interests of all Iraqis, regardless of religion, nationality or sect.

Kerry and Obama have called the new unity government in Iraq a key to destroying IS.

Saudi clout

The Saudis, who are hosting a series of meetings with regional leaders, are key to the new coalition because of their country’s size, location and economic importance, “but also because of their religious significance with Sunnis,” according to a senior State Department official at the talks.

Saudi Arabia’s primary role in the Sunni world is a major element in the U.S. plan to create a broad coalition against the militant group.

U.S. officials also look to the Saudi kingdom to help bridge the Sunni-Shia divide, which is complicating efforts to confront Islamic State militants, specifically in Iraq.

Saudi Arabia has come to understand the Islamic State group is a serious threat to their country as well – that it isn’t a mainstream Sunni movement.

One element of Obama’s IS plan seeks to undermine the ideological and religious claims that the Islamic State militants make to Islam.

The administration hopes Riyadh will use its influence among Islamic religious leaders.

The coalition may need enhanced military basing and overflight rights for airstrikes against the Islamic State, the State Department official said. Saudi Arabia already has agreed to allow camps for training vetted moderate rebels to fight the IS insurgents.  

The official said Kerry was asking Arab leaders to use nationally-owned media – including Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya – as well as their religious establishments to speak out against Islamic State extremism in hopes of undermining its appeal to young recruits.

In that push, Kerry echoed Obama’s denunciation of the IS (ISIL) group as not “Islamic” because no religion condones the killing of innocents.

“ISIL claims to be fighting on behalf of Islam, but the fact is that its hateful ideology has nothing to do with Islam,” Kerry said.

“ISIL is a manifestation of evil, a vicious terrorist organization, and it is a organization that achieves its goals only through violence, repression and destruction, fed by illicit funding and a stream of foreign fighters,” he added. “It has seized territory and terrorized the people who live there regardless of their sect or ethnicity.”

Diplomatic push continues

The top U.S. diplomat will continue his coalition-building efforts Friday in the Turkish capital, Ankara, in meetings with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Kerry will also stop in Egypt as part of the effort to line up international support against the Islamic State militants.

The Mideast diplomatic push comes ahead of a conference set for Monday in Paris on how to stabilize Iraq. That meeting will include officials from the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China, and possibly other nations, even including Iran.


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