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Turkish government axes proposal to set up counter-jihad study group with UK to fight al-Qaeda

Aug 26, 2020 8:00 am By Christine Douglass-Williams

Turkey’s Islamic supremacist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan poses an ever increasing threat to the West; Turkey should long ago have been thrown out of NATO.  It has now come to light in court that the British insistently lobbied the Erdoğan government to collaborate with them on a joint counter-terrorism project against al-Qaeda and other jihad groups, but Turkey refused.

Turkey’s unwillingness to work against jihad terror has already been abundantly established. Ten months ago, NBC reported that Turkey was using jihadist militias which included al Qaeda and Islamic State members to advance into Syria. Turkey has also tightened its alliance with Qatar; this includes the harboring of jihadists including members of al Qaeda and Hamas. According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies:

Turkey and Qatar are fully brothers in arms. Both states share an affinity for Islamism that shapes their regional engagement. Fueled by shared ideological commitments, Turkish-Qatari cooperation extends into a variety of sectors, including defense, banking, media, and energy, and is likely to increase as their partnership deepens. The Turkish-Qatari axis represents a challenge for the United States and its partners because Ankara and Doha pursue not only legitimate forms of cooperation but also joint ventures in illicit finance, support for Islamist insurgents abroad, promotion of extremist ideologies, and harboring terrorists associated with Hamas and al-Qaeda.

Turkey’s alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood as well as with the most violent jihadis is directed toward its efforts to expand its regional and global influence. Only in the West is it still not understood how stealth and violent branches of jihad cooperate toward the same goal of conquest. This has been proven through 1400 years of history, yet is still doubted in the West.

“Erdoğan gov’t thwarted UK-Turkey joint counterterrorism project against al-Qaeda,” by Abdullah Bozkurt, Nordic Monitor, August 21, 2020:

The Turkish government axed a proposal to set up a counter-jihadist study group suggested by the United Kingdom to fight radicalism in the aftermath of the al-Qaeda bombings of two synagogues, an HSBC bank branch and the British Consulate General in Istanbul in 2003, the country’s top counterterrorism chief revealed in court.

The UK proposal, the Planned Turkey UK Fundamentalism Project, was conveyed to Ali Fuat Yılmazer, the then-police intelligence chief, by British Embassy liaison officer for terrorism Jim McKay. The project, which was partially financed by the European Union, aimed to research the root causes of religious fundamentalism, devise preventive measures and methods to identify early patterns, build effective counter-narratives and study the personal, social, political, religious and other traits that lead to radicalism.

Yılmazer, a 53-year-old veteran intelligence chief who ran the C-section, which specialized in tracking and identifying religious extremist groups, was an expert in radical groups, was an accomplished officer who set up a monitoring system in Turkey and prepared a curriculum for the police academies and had a background in social studies. He wrote a comprehensive thesis in 2006 on the social factors behind terrorism that manipulates religion for its cause and studied al-Qaeda as a case study as part of his thesis. He gave series of lectures at the National Security Academy, trained senior government bureaucrats and made trips to other countries to share Turkey’s best practices for combating radical terror groups.

Testimony of police chief Ali Fuat Yılmazer revealed that the government prevented the Turkish police from cooperating with the UK on al-Qaeda:…..

…..Impressed with Yılmazer’s expertise and in-depth knowledge of al-Qaeda and other radical religious groups during a meeting with a visiting British delegation in Ankara, UK officials offered him the opportunity to work on a joint Turkish-British project running a comprehensive study on how to deal with religious terrorism. The minutes of the meeting with a visiting British delegation were detailed in an intelligence report on March 20, 2007 that was submitted to court on January 16, 2017 in a case where Yılmazer was tried on dubious charges of abuse of authority after his unlawful dismissal from his job by the Islamist government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2014.

During the hearing Yılmazer recalled this proposal and follow-up meetings as evidence of how the Erdoğan government had been lenient when it came to al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups in Turkey and its neighborhood. A week after the meeting with the British delegation in 2006, Yılmazer was assigned to Istanbul as provincial intelligence chief.

However, the British Embassy did not let go of its insistence on a joint project and continued to lobby the Erdoğan government. Dame Mariot Leslie, the UK’s then-foreign secretary’s counterterrorism envoy and director general for defense and intelligence, wanted to meet him in person when she visited Turkey April 25-27, 2007. Leslie made a trip to Istanbul after wrapping up the Ankara leg of her visit to have a sit-down and chat with Yılmazer in a meeting that was attended by then-British Ambassador Nick Baird and McKay as well. Leslie later became the UK’s ambassador to NATO and subsequently retired from the diplomatic service.

Despite lobbying for the launch of the joint counterterrorism project against al-Qaeda and other radical groups by British officials, the Erdoğan government balked at the UK’s request. “About this proposal, the then-head of the Security Directorate General [Emniyet] said, ‘No need for such things,’ and we were unable to implement the project. This ‘never-mind mindset’ has surrendered Turkey today to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS] terrorism and has led to the perception that Turkey is a country that supports terrorism all over the world in a way that we do not deserve. The fight against terrorism is in the hands of such a mentality [in the government today],” Yılmazer said in his testimony in court.

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Filed Under: Al-Qaeda, Featured, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), Turkey Tagged With: Ali Fuat Yılmazer, C-section, Jim McKay, Planned Turkey UK Fundamentalism Project


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Comments

  1. Michael Copeland says

    Aug 26, 2020 at 8:58 am

    “The project … aimed to research the root causes of religious fundamentalism … and study the … traits that lead to radicalism.”
    This embodies the flawed assumption that violence is against the instructions of (a certain unnamed) religion.

    Lt-Col. Allen West has the answer for these learned studies:
    “They are doing exactly what this book says.”

    • t. says

      Aug 26, 2020 at 3:17 pm

      Whoever took this photo of Erdogan is a genius!

  2. Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says

    Aug 26, 2020 at 3:47 pm

    I wonder what the thinking was in selecting this photo of Erdogan, with two Islamic crescent-like horns sticking out of the side of his head.
    https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/ecf81283-a529-4d9f-a0c1-bc217506ce90_1.a6f6ac7e6b2870bab354e6bd37ec0475.jpeg

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 26, 2020 at 8:58 pm

      I think its pretty apt, Mark.

  3. gravenimage says

    Aug 26, 2020 at 8:57 pm

    Turkish government axes proposal to set up counter-jihad study group with UK to fight al-Qaeda
    ………………….

    Of course it did. Turkey is not actually Anti-Jihad.

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