Bill and Joe are joined by their FDD colleagues Sinan Ciddi and Melissa Sacks to discuss Turkey’s status as a permissive jurisdiction for terrorist organizations, particularly Hamas — and why the outcome of yesterday’s elections in Turkey might signal that a change is coming.
Host Bill Roggio is joined by two of his FDD colleagues to unpack the context surrounding Turkey’s imminent presidential elections.
Jonathan Schanzer is the Senior Vice President for Research at FDD, where Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow. Both are Turkey experts. (One has taken a harder hit from pro-government Turks on Twitter than the other.)
From President Erdogan’s thinly-veiled political opportunism — like his 180 on Syria; his regional charm offensive, particularly with Israel; and his role as a U.S. “counterterrorism partner” — and his blatant corruption — like his mismanagement of earthquake aid and his allowing Turkey to be a terrorist superhighway — to an opposition candidate’s eleventh hour dropout, this is your starter pack for understanding what’s about to unfold in Turkey.
In recent weeks, a Taliban delegation led by Zabihullah Mujahir visited Turkey to meet with various officials including senior Hamas members.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced that five alleged al Qaeda facilitators in Turkey have been designated as terrorists. The designation highlights the ongoing work of an old school network of Egyptian jihadists and the younger personnel in Turkey who assist them.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced today that two money men working for al Qaeda and Hay’at Tahrir al Sham (HTS) have been designated. The designations are part of a broader U.S. effort to sanction individuals and entities taking part in the Syrian war. Other extremists and parts of Bashar al-Assad’s regime were also designated and sanctioned as part of the campaign.
Two prominent jihadist ideologues, Sheikh Abdullah al-Muhaysini and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, are engaged in a war of words over Erdoğan’s Turkey. The relationship between the jihadists in Syria and Turkey has long been a point of contention and the heated rhetoric reveals that it isn’t likely to subside soon.
Recently, Hezbollah has suffered losses it has not seen in years of fighting in Syria.
The U.S. Treasury Department has announced a new round of counterterrorism designations targeting the Islamic State’s support networks in Turkey, Afghanistan and the Gulf.
In a message released on Feb. 5, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri harshly criticizes the jihadists in Syria. He says they are engaged in a misguided “competition” for “imagined authority” over territory that is under the oversight “of secular Turkish checkpoints.”
On Aug. 29, the Treasury Department announced that Salim Mustafa Muhammad al-Mansur had been added to the US government’s list of specially designated global terrorists. The move was made in conjunction with the Iraqi government. Al-Mansur served as the Islamic State’s “finance emir for Mosul,” Iraq as of earlier this year, but he has “moved to Turkey.”
The US Treasury Department and United Nations designated Islamic State operative Fared Saal as a terrorist yesterday. Saal, a German-Algerian, first joined the jihad in Syria several years ago. Along with his comrade Denis Cuspert, he appeared in a July 2014 video showing dozens of corpses at the Shaer Gas field in Homs, Syria.
In a statement released last week, Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, an influential jihadi ideologue aligned with al Qaeda, criticized Turkey’s cooperation with Russia against the Islamic State. Maqdisi warned jihadists and Islamists in Syria to rethink their decision to work with Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield, which has captured significant territory from the so-called caliphate in northern Syria.
As each side converges on the Islamic State-held city of al-Bab, a military confrontation between Turkish-led rebels and pro-regime forces appear inescapable. In the meantime, tensions between Ankara and Moscow are rising yet again, risking pulling the United States and NATO further into the Syrian theater.
On Nov. 2, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi called for attacks inside Turkey as retribution for Turkish operations in Iraq and Syria. Earlier today, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a car bombing in the city of Diyarbakir, which is in southeastern Turkey.
Above all, it was a message: a reminder of Ankara’s determination to limit US cooperation with the Kurds, Washington’s most effective partner against the Islamic State in Syria.
Two weeks after Zuckerberg said ‘je suis Charlie,’ Facebook begins censoring images of prophet Muhammad
Facebook complies with Turkish court order, starts censoring Prophet images
Turkey’s lax border policies backfire as the Islamic State threatens to bite the hand that feeds.
President Erdogan denounced the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for “incit[ing] hatred and racism.” Shabazz Suleman, a British jihadist who was among some 180 Islamic State fighters turned over to the terrorist group in October in exchange for 46 Turkish hostages, claimed that while in a Turkish prison he and fellow fighters were allowed contact […]
A female suicide bomber detonated at a police station in downtown Istanbul, killing one policeman and wounding another; the attack came less than a week after the DHKP-C (Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front) threw a grenade at police near the prime minister’s office and threatened further attacks. A Dutch journalist was arrested on terrorism charges but […]
Turkey’s new legal definitions lead to increase in arrests
A senior Foreign Ministry official said that an agreement with the US is expected to be reached this month on the training and equipping of Syrian rebels in Turkey. Negotiations continue over the nature of the rebels to be trained, the use of İncirlik airbase for coalition operations, and the creation of a no-fly zone […]
Citing state secrets, a judge stopped a defendant from testifying about a visit to Turkey by Yasin al Qadi, an alleged al Qaeda financier who has been a guest of President Erdogan in recent years. Counterterrorism police arrested 14 people suspected of membership in a group linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party in Erzincan.
The Foreign Ministry rejected claims in a November UN report that said arms for the Islamic State and the Al Nusrah Front are being smuggled primarily through Turkey. Increasing numbers of Turkish Jews are leaving the country due to security concerns. Mehmet Ali Ağca, who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, was deported by […]
The CIA has reportedly asked Turkey for the second time to track down the sources of Islamic State videos being posted from Turkey; so far the government has taken no action in response. A lawmaker asked Parliament about a recent report alleging that Turkey has sent some 2,000 trucks of weaponry to Syria between September […]
Mehmet Dogan, the leader of Turkey’s Tahşiye group, said he “loves Osama bin Laden”; President Erdogan has defended Dogan. Authorities arrested over 100 members of a teachers’ union in Ankara yesterday as they marched in support of secular education, after attacking them with water cannons and tear gas. A Turkish criminal court issued an arrest […]
In the ongoing investigation into incidents in January when Turkish intelligence trucks headed into Syria were stopped and searched, 19 new suspects have been charged with spying and obtaining state secrets. The trucks reportedly carried weapons destined for Syrian rebels. Terrorism charges were filed against the editor and general manager of a major Turkish newspaper. […]
Turkey’s Religious Schools Rise as Erdogan Exerts Sway
Antiterrorism police in Istanbul arrested Z.M., a Russian national of Chechen origin, on suspicion of assassinating Abdullah Bukhari, 38, a dissident Uzbek religious leader in the city. On Dec. 5, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov claimed that Akhmat Umarov, a brother of late Caucasus Emirate leader Doku Umarov, was behind the deadly Dec. 4 attack in […]
Abd al Baset Azzouz, an al Qaeda operative who served as Ayman al Zawahiri’s representative in Libya, was captured in Turkey in mid-November. Azzouz is reportedly being investigated for his possible ties to the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi.