This would not be any surprise. For years, Erdogan has been accused of wanting to revive the Ottoman caliphate. He has also hated Assad and warred against the Kurds for years. The Islamic State claims to be the caliphate and wars against Erdogan’s enemies, Assad and the Kurds. He may be calculating that they can finish off his foes and then Turkey can step in and reap the benefits, and take the caliphate for itself.
“‘We have proof’ Turkey backs ISIS & other terrorists – Kurdish commander,” RT, February 17, 2016:
Turkey favors Syrian jihadist groups that emerged from Al-Qaeda, a top Kurdish commander has told Russian media. He claims that Ankara, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been furnishing extremists with weapons and munitions.
The support the terrorist groups have been given by Turkey is confirmed by documentary evidence, Murat Karayılan, co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), told RIA Novosti.
Karayılan has been the acting leader of the PKK, a group considered terrorists by Turkey and the US, since its original leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured in 1999.
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has an “ideological inter-relationship” and joint interests with the radical Islamists, Karayılan said in an interview to RIA given in the Qandil Mountains, an area in Iraqi Kurdistan, next to the Iraq–Iran border.
“Along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkey has been sponsoring jihadists [in Syria] that emerged from Al-Qaeda… These states backed and armed radical Salafi groups, which base all of their actions on sharia [law],” he said.
Turkey wants to become a regional leader and that aspiration forced it to get bogged down in the Syrian crisis, the Kurdish leader said. It was the interference of Ankara and Riyadh that stripped the Syrian opposition of the remaining democratic and moderate attributes, Karayılan added.
“In this context, the Syrian Kurds and their political parties come in sharp contrast [to Turkish political forces] due to their secular attitude to lifestyle and state structure. That’s the reason of the jihadists’ hatred towards Syrian Kurds,” Karayılan believes.
The Kurdish commander maintains that “Turkish authorities think this way: if 3 million Syrian Kurds gain independence, then 20 million Turkish Kurds would want to do the same immediately.”
To prevent this scenario and dishearten Kurds striving to form a state of their own, Turkey’s ruling AKP party would do anything within its powers, including “inciting militants of Ahrar ash-Sham and Jabhat Al-Nusra [Al-Nusra Front] to attack Syrian regions inhabited by Kurds,” Karayılan said. He added that once these groups failed to defeat the Kurds, the AKP prompted Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL] into attacking them, which resulted in the battle for the city of Kobani between September 2014 and March 2015.
The Kurds have “documented evidence” that the AKP, which is headed by Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, has ties with all those terrorist groups, Karayılan said.
Turkey was fostering Al-Nusra Front and Islamic State from the very beginning, Karayılan claims.
“We’re 100 percent positive Turkey is maintaining contact with IS, we’ve seen it with our own eyes,” the PKK leader said, stressing that meetings between top Turkish negotiators and IS members have been registered on multiple occasions.
“In this regard we fully agree with the statements of the Russian Defense Ministry,” the Kurdish commander said. Moscow says Turkey has a mutually beneficial relationship with IS, buying oil from the areas captured by the terrorist group and acting as a supply line for arms and manpower….

Muhammad Bear says
Proof?
You mean aside from buying all of ISIS oil and shooting down a Russian plane that is attacking ISIS.
I didn’t think that any more proof was required.
David Scoltock says
If you think the Russians are there to fight ISIS, you are a bloody fool.
The Russians are there to support Assad and form a Kurdish free state. They will bomb ANY threat to those goals.
It’s just a return to the “great game” that started in the 19th century between the west and Russia. Only reason Turkey was allowed into NATO was to create a potential southern front against Russia if the cold war went hot.
Ohio Pilot says
Investing our blood and treasure into any Islamic country is a waist. By their religion you cannot trust them. All they respect is power and the effects of real and assured destruction.
Mark Swan says
Absolutely I Agree
Ellie says
Of course, Obama has said that attacking Kurds is perfectly acceptable.
mortimer says
Turkey is an officially racist country according to Article 301 in the penal code that provides a 3-year sentence for insulting Turkishness. The article allows for genocide of the Kurdish people which is a long-term goal of Erdogan to be accomplished when the excuse presents itself. There is a strong ‘master race’ element within the Turkish population that believes Turks are destined to rule the world.
Erdogan has no interest in fighting ISIS since they are committing the genocide against the Kurds. As soon as ISIS is neutralized Erdogan’s fascists will have to continue the genocide of the Kurds themselves and try somehow to justify it to the world.
The West should realize that this genocide is coming and not be caught unprepared as it has been in a number of recent genocides!
Veritas says
With friends like Erdoğan and Davatoğlu who needs enemies?
They have been busy undoing the work of Atatürk who tried to bring Turkey into western civilization by separating church and state. By now the Islamist Erdoğan would have been overthrown by a military putsch, but the EU has been meddling in the internal affairs of Turkey for years and has effectively enabled Erdoğan to gain his present dictatorial status.
Both of these Islamists have been whipping up nationalist zeal during recent elections and fomenting anti-Kurdish sentiments across Anatolia.
Ironically Erdoğan wants to free the Kurds from the Assad regime by bankrolling ISIS, invading Syria, and forming a Sunni coalition force to support alleged moderate Islamists. Meanwhile he wants to annex part of Syria to support the Turkmen who are also in opposition to Assad.
Of course Erdoğan will not countenance any sort of opposition against his regime by the Kurds in Turkey who form a sizable minority in the country.
Mark Swan says
You are Right
WorkingClassPost says
A great many Turks must be feeling the same way that so many Americans are, having voted Obama in for a second term: ‘WTF were we thinking of?’
And yet; Erdogan was ever the same, but with Obama it could have been so different.
Angemon says
If that’s the case, I’m willing to bet it will blow up in his face. And were it not for the deaths of many thousands, if not millions, of innocent people, I’d love to see it come about.
Why Turkey is a NATO ally and being considered for EU membership is beyond me.
DFD says
Angemon says : “..Why Turkey is a NATO ally and being considered for EU membership is beyond me.”
Angemon, I assure you, it’s WAY beyond every European. Well, except may be Merkel, Cameroun and Hollande… OK, three exceptions
EmHotep says
Yes, may be Turkey is going back to Sharia because of “Recep Tayyip Erdogan” the “dictator”, but people of Turkey hate this including myself. Erdogan is USA supported puppet who has sworn to finish Ataturk’s revolution of Secular state.. We cannot do anything at the moment because he is somehow very strong. Help us to send him to hell and Turkey will become peaceful state again.
gravenimage says
“Somehow very strong”–this is because he is supported by pious Muslims who take their Islam seriously. It isn’t some sort of mystery.
DFD says
EmHotep says: “… Help us to send him to hell and Turkey will become peaceful…”
That’s easy: Become Christians!
Mark Swan says
EmHotep…I know there are a great many citizens in Turkey who see and resent Recep Tayyip Erdogan…as the Monster He is…a radical Islamist…He once quipped (Democracy is like a streetcar…You ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you step off)…do You support the Kurdish people in their right to autonomy…or do You see them having a chance to equal representation within Turkey…they are a great People who must be appreciated and respected…marginalized long enough…and willing and able to exist.
sidney penny says
The last paragraph is the best paragraph
“In this regard we fully agree with the statements of the Russian Defense Ministry,” the Kurdish commander said. Moscow says Turkey has a mutually beneficial relationship with IS, buying oil from the areas captured by the terrorist group and acting as a supply line for arms and manpower….”
mutually beneficial-yes
and Saudi Arabia an ally of America? supporting ISIS?
Mazo says
The Kurdish PKK is a Marxist Communist group. It used sickles and hammers on its flag before the collapse of the Soviet Union and was supported by Communist countries. The PKK’s Syrian Kurdish branch, the YPG, is also a leftist Marxist group.
The banned Turkish Marxist Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) is allied to the PKK.
Most western Marxists and Communists support the PKK in Turkey and the YPG in Syria. Some western marxist university students illegally travelled into Syria with the help of the MLKP and joined the YPG as foreign fighters. They keep rallying in support of YPG against Islamists and are having wet dreams over the prospect of building a Communist leftist Kurdish entity in northern Syria.
The YPG is fighting against ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Syrian Islamist groups like Ahrar ash-Sham. Several western Marxists have died fighting for YPG against those groups. Chomsky signed a letter in support of the PKK.
I never heard any Marxist say a kind word about Islamists. All the Marxist leftists like Chomsky and British socialists are all saying they support the PKK and YPG and that they hate Erdogan, ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood.
Whoever these leftists who “support Islamists” that everyone here complains about, they seem to exist in people’s imaginations.
The Islamist right wing, ultra-nationalist, racist, and fascist Turkish Grey Wolves were trained and supported by the American CIA during the Cold War to murder leftist Kurds and leftist Alevi Turks. The CIA trained and supported them in Operation Gladio and used them to incite Turkic Muslim populations against the Soviet Union. The CIA also supported the Muslim Brotherhood against Arab governments it didn’t like and incubated the Muslim Brotherhood in cities in Western Gemany.
The PKK and the leftist Armenian ASALA fought against the right-wing Turkish military dictatorship and the Grey Wolves.
Ronald Reagan supported the Afghan Mujahideen and called them freedom fighters. The Northern Alliance Mujahideen factions including Ahmad Shah Massoud, joined the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in supporting the Islamists in the Tajikistan Civil War against the Russian backed Tajikistan government. At one point Ahmad Shah Massoud bombarded Kabul with thousands rockets with no regards to civilian casualties because his opponents wouldn’t allow him to take the city. The Northern Alliance and
Taliban were both criminal gangs, there were rapists and drug traffickers in Northern Alliance ranks.
Now the Grey Wolves are in Syria and are fighting alongside Islamist Turkmen, Al-Qaeda, and Ahrar ash-Sham in Lattakia along with Muslim Brotherhood supported groups. They are fighting against the Kurdish PKK and YPG. Turkish intelligence supports the Grey Wolves and Muslim Brotherhood.
Why are western right-wingers suddenly disowning and denying their best friends during the Cold War? Are you people suffering from mass amnesia or hallucinations? You taught mass murder, mass rape, use of chemical weapons and assasinations to your buddies and now suddenly you don’t like having these people live next to you.
Angemon says
Mazo posted:
“You taught mass murder, mass rape, use of chemical weapons and assasinations to your buddies”
I’m 100% certain that muslims such as yourself were engaging in mass-murder, mass rape and use of chemical weapons centuries before “right wing” was even a thing. Do I need to rub the blood-soaked history of islamic conquest and oppression of non-muslims in your nose, like a puppy with its own crap?
gravenimage says
More claptrap from Mazo:
I never heard any Marxist say a kind word about Islamists. All the Marxist leftists like Chomsky and British socialists are all saying they support the PKK and YPG and that they hate Erdogan, ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood.
Whoever these leftists who “support Islamists” that everyone here complains about, they seem to exist in people’s imaginations.
……………………………
What hogwash. Chomsky has *lauded* Jihad terror, saying, “This [9/11] is certainly a turning point: for the first time in history the victims are returning the blow to the motherland.”
More:
You taught mass murder, mass rape, use of chemical weapons and assasinations to your buddies
……………………………
More rot. Pious Muslims have been assassinating, mass raping, and mass-murdering their victims since long before the US or even the modern West ever existed.
In fact, these were all sacralized on the model of the vicious warlord “Prophet” Muhammed.
dlbrand says
As it was (as it remains) with the Saudis and other “West-friendly” Muslim nations in the Bush years and administrations and beyond; though we knew they funded and promoted the doctrines and teachings of Islam—chief among those tenets, jihad, fighting in the way of Allah, killing and being killed—we winked at it.
Called and claimed as allies those killing our and our neighbors’ children.
ABDELKADER HAMDAOUI says
Turkey was the precursor, the forerunner of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, it was itself an Islamic State of the Balkans and almost all of Eastern Europe. The mindset of the two-faced, double dealing, back stabbing, double crossing Machiavellianism, treachery, duplicity, insidious cunning and artful deception, treason, deviousness, betrayal, deceit in the Islamic and Arab world is beyond the wildest stretch of the American (Western) imagination. It is not an Islamic “threat” that can be dealt with militarily, politically or diplomatically. ISIL is not the be all and end all of this long running and ongoing age-old Islamic crusade that began in the 7th century. It is part and parcel of a “war” by strength and by guile. To create refugees by the millions to infiltrate and saturate the West. To fully understand what we are up against; un petit rappel d’histoire (de Charles Martel), jamais étudié à l’école peut-être? The Islam volunteers from the West were not “radicalized” they were planted and well entrenched generations of moles and sleepers. This is an invasion of the mind and body snatchers that started over 1400 years ago.