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Turkey aided rise of Islamic State, yet NATO promises to defend Turkey from Islamic State

Sep 8, 2014 11:40 am By Robert Spencer

Islamic StateThis ridiculous situation points up again how drastically the U.S. needs to reconfigure its alliances in light of the global jihad. The old Cold War arrangements simply don’t make any sense today, and lead to this: NATO promising to defend Turkey against the Islamic State that exists today in no small degree because of Turkish help.

“Well-Armed Turkey Aided Rise of Islamic State: Yet NATO Promises To Defend Ankara From Extremists,” by Doug Bandow, Forbes, September 8, 2014 (thanks to Twostellas):

…Also targeted by ISIL is Turkey. This led NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen to promise to defend Ankara: “If any of our allies, and in this case of course particularly Turkey, were to be threatened from any source of threat, we won’t hesitate to take all steps necessary to ensure effective defense of Turkey or any other ally.”

As a statement of solidarity Rasmussen’s words might offer comfort. As a guide to Western policy the statement makes no sense.

After all, Ankara is partly to blame for ISIL’s rise. The Erdogan government long ago decided to support the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Ankara allowed opposition fighters from all sides easy access to the battlefield. None were too brutal or radical to bar passage. This included ISIL, which gained strength and resources by conquering Syrian territory. Reported the Washington Post: “eager to aid any and all enemies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey rolled out the red carpet.” The government simply looked the other way as members of the Islamic State and other Islamist groups traveled to Syria.

Indeed, added the Post, Islamic State fighters treated the border town of Reyhanli, Turkey “as their own personal shopping mall.” Local LOCM +1.7% residents acknowledged jihadis purchasing supplies and wounded fighters being treated in local hospitals. One Islamic State commander told the Post: “We used to have some fighters—even high-level members of the Islamic State—getting treated in Turkish hospitals. And also, most of the fighters who joined us in the beginning of the war came via Turkey, and so did our equipment and supplies.” A politician from Reyhanli, Tamer Apis, complained that the government “welcomed anyone against Assad, and now they are killing, spreading their disease, and we are all paying the price.” While there was a lot of blame to go around, “this is a mess of Turkey’s making,” he added.

That Turkey might suffer some unfortunate complications from the bitter civil war next door should not surprise. Blowback is a constant of Middle Eastern policy, irrespective of government. But Ankara knowingly chose to play with fire. The Erdogan government since has changed course, confronting insurgents it once welcomed and attempting to close off what has been called the “jihadist” or “jihadi” highway. But passage for people and materiel through the 565-mile border still is available at a price.

Moreover, the worst damage has been done. Reported Bloomberg’s Mehul Srivastava and Selcan Hacaoglu, ISIL “has already established itself firmly in Turkish society.” The group has gained control of Syrian territory and expanded into Iraq, where it grabbed 49 Turkish diplomats and family members. The Islamic State military leader explained: “Now we are getting enough weapons from Iraq, and there is enough to buy even within Syria. There is no real need to get things from outside anymore.”

In all of this Turkey is paying the price of its own folly. There’s no reason to share the burden with 27 other NATO members. Better to hold Ankara accountable for its actions by leaving it responsible for its self-inflicted wounds….

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Filed Under: Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), Turkey Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Jay Boo says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 11:55 am

    The two genocide experts of Germany and Turkey have a sordid perverse history in bed together.

    http://massispost.com/2013/11/the-german-turkish-conspiracy-against-the-diaspora/

  2. tpellow says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 12:05 pm

    Yes, the West’s policy, including that of NATO, is dangerous on Islamizing Turkey:
    it is like having a Trojan horse in the West’s alliance.

    For example, PM Cameron says he would like to end the on-going mass immigration into the E.U and the U.K, but he explicitly campaigns to get 80 million Muslim Turks into the E.U.
    And Obama supports this pro-Turkey campaign because he wants forward U.S/ NATO military bases in Turkey, even though Islamic jihadists from the West find it easy to use Turkey as their transit route to the Islamic State areas of Syria and Iraq.
    So Obama and Cameron extend Islamizing Erdogan’s Turkish hold in the West.

    • Custos Custodum says

      Sep 9, 2014 at 12:38 am

      And Obama supports this pro-Turkey campaign because he wants forward U.S/ NATO military bases in Turkey …

      No. Obama wants to further Islamize the EU. Obama couldn’t care less about “forward military bases”. Such bases would only be useful as part of a strategy directed against either the Soviet Union or Iran. Obama’s strategy has throughout been NOT to take real action against either.

  3. Angemon says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 12:23 pm

    But Ankara knowingly chose to play with fire.

    Then let them burn. Not because the burned hand teaches best but because they sow the wind so let them reap the whirlwind.

  4. tpellow says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 12:47 pm

    “Islamic State: Where does jihadist group get its support?”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29004253

  5. Peter Buckley says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 12:49 pm

    Here’s a great article on anti-Semitism in Turkey:

    http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4675/turkish-jews

    If the West decides to arm the Kurds to the teeth, and gives their full backing to the establishment of a secular Kurdish state on its Southern border, it will be interesting to see how the future of Turkey pans out.

    • umbra says

      Sep 8, 2014 at 2:37 pm

      “If” kurdistan is fully revived, turkey would lose 20~25% of its territory – almost the entire southern and eastern flank. This event would probably be preceded by a war lasting a number of years before the formation of the kurdish state. There is also a possibility of ongoing low intensity conflict lasting years after the secession of kurdistan from turkey. The end effect is that turkey may very well be crippled for more than a decade.

  6. tpellow says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 2:30 pm

    Turkey: en route to Islamic jihad.

    “An obvious first step – close the jihadis’ highway.
    The best way to stop UK fighters reaching Isis is to catch them at Turkey’s border with Syria.”

    [Excerpt]:-

    “For the first two years of the Syrian civil war, the route of the foreign fighters was unimpeded. According to Iraqi intelligence officials, who interrogated captured fighters, they would arrive at Istanbul or Ankara airports, move to safe houses, then travel freely by car or bus over the border crossing points into Syria. Arms and ammunition for the rebels, mostly paid for by Qatar and private donors in the Gulf, took the same route, the whole supply operation monitored and to a degree orchestrated by the CIA.

    “It was only in the middle of 2013 that foreign governments began to get cold feet as it became evident that armed opposition movements in Syria had become dominated by home-grown and foreign jihadis. There was a surge of reports in the foreign media, which had previously been highly supportive of the Syrian uprising, that rebel wounded were being treated in Turkish hospitals. The online journal Al-Monitor quoted a Turkish MP from the border town of Reyhani as saying that “it’s only after the Salafists [Sunni fundamentalists] took over the border crossings and the Obama administration took fright that the Western media decided to report on Turkey’s support for extremist groups”.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/an-obvious-first-step–close-the-jihadis-highway-9687899.html

  7. Prinz Eugen says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 4:03 pm

    Turkey should never have been admitted into NATO. How many times have they tried to overrun Europe in the past 600 years? And why are the Turks still OCCUPYING Constantinople? The fact that khalifa Barak Hussein considers Erdogan as one of his best political allies is clear evidence that our lying leader
    is not on the side of the US, the west or Israel. When will his crimes and treason get him impeached, prosecuted and executed?

    No opposition leads to totalitarianism (sharia!).

    • Falsafa says

      Sep 8, 2014 at 4:48 pm

      Yes ofcourse, how dare we join NATO – protecting the southeastern flank of the alliance since the 1950s against the Soviets! now that communism is no longer a threat, Turkey has outgrown its usefullness and should therefore be kicked out of the alliance!

      and over 550 years of Turkish occupation of Constantinople is enough. We must put an end to this invasion immediately and go back where we came from…somewhere between the Caspian Sea and western China…When would you like us to pack our bags and leave? as soon an possible I suppose? sorry for all the trouble we caused…Apologies all around!

      • Mirren10 says

        Sep 8, 2014 at 5:26 pm

        ”Yes ofcourse, (sic) how dare we join NATO – protecting the southeastern flank of the alliance since the 1950s against the Soviets! now that communism is no longer a threat, Turkey has outgrown its usefullness and should therefore be kicked out of the alliance”

        Your meretriciousness is only equalled by your belief that, not only have we forgotten the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, we have also forgotten your own disingenuous defence of the failure of your country to abide by the NATO requirements they *signed*.

        http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/08/turkish-foreign-minister-defends-islamic-state-against-accusations-of-terrorism/comment-page-1#comment-1100467

        The success of IS is in no small measure aided by the actions of *your* government, who have enabled it.

        You are all bloody mahoundians, and you make me vomit.

      • Mirren10 says

        Sep 8, 2014 at 5:33 pm

        And, if you ever succeed in your attempts to include your sanguinary ‘nation’ in the filth that calls itself the ‘European Union’, I predict that will be the final rallying call for all those of goodwill and decency, to finally rise up and destroy your wicked and evil religion.

      • thomas_h says

        Sep 8, 2014 at 6:14 pm

        ”Yes ofcourse, how dare we join NATO – protecting the southeastern flank of the alliance since the 1950s against the Soviets! now that communism is no longer a threat, Turkey has outgrown its usefullness and should therefore be kicked out of the alliance! ”

        You profited greatly by joining the alliance in terms of economic support, loans, funding and investment.
        NATO would have survived quite comfortably without you, whereas without NATO you would still be a 19th century backward Islamic hole.

        You say that “communism is no longer a threat”. Absolutely! And on top of that you are increasingly openly siding with Islam – the new threat to the West that has replaced communism. That makes TWO good reasons to exclude you from NATO.

      • don vito says

        Sep 8, 2014 at 7:56 pm

        Now, now falsetto, don’t take it personally. I remember once upon a time when your ally United States of America, had its 4h Infantry division in Turkey, getting ready to liberate Iraq from saddum hussian. Turkey refused to let its ally, United States of America, launch from Turkish territory. I know how comfortable for you moslems, it feels , to play the victim. Pay back is islamic bitchy isn’t it! Kiss a kufr’s ass!

  8. Falsafa says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 5:58 pm

    nor have we forgotten the genocide of the Ottoman muslims from the Balkans in the latter part of the 19th and 20th centuries and the attempted genocide and ethnic cleansing of the muslims in eastern anatolia during WWI by the invading Russian forces aided by Armenian irregulars in the hopes of carving out a “western Armenia”…

    vomit all you like, just do it out of my sight…

    • thomas_h says

      Sep 8, 2014 at 6:25 pm

      “forgotten genocide”?
      How about “invented genocide”? Like the recent one in Gaza.

      “attempted genocide”???

      Backed up by an attempted evidence, I assume.

      Pathetic

      • don vito says

        Sep 8, 2014 at 8:20 pm

        Now, now falsetto, don’t take it personally. Making up a false charge of genocide, to cover a true genocide, just shows the whole world what a brainless dickhead moslems are! Putz!

      • Falsafa says

        Sep 8, 2014 at 9:12 pm

        Dont “assume”… rather try to read from objective sources… but of course why would you given your dogmatic view of history..that is what is pathetic.

        • thomas_h says

          Sep 9, 2014 at 6:44 pm

          “The objective sources”?

          You mean the sources that deny Armenian genocide by Turks?
          No?
          All right then, please refer me to your “objective sources”, so I may have the chance to correct my “dogmatic view of history”, which I happen to share with all, but Turks.

        • Falsafa says

          Sep 10, 2014 at 2:14 am

          Topic: objective sources

          here is a primer for starters from historian Bernard Lewis:

          https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qG70UWESfu4

          and pls refer to the works of the following historians on the topic:

          Guenther Lewy
          Heath Lowry
          Norman Stone

  9. Ilyas says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 7:21 pm

    Yes, please. Before you leave, start by recognizing the massacres and genocides you committed over 1000 years since you entered Anatolia. Ottoman Empire did what IS does now.

  10. dumbledoresarmy says

    Sep 10, 2014 at 4:04 am

    Turkey should be evicted from NATO.

    Israel should be invited to *join*.

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