ISIL Archives

Report: Seized USB drives reveal Turkey’s links to ISIL

July 27, 2015 By administrator

A senior Western official claimed that information gathered at the compound of Abu Sayyaf, the individual responsible for oil smuggling operations on behalf of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who was killed in a US commando operation a few months ago, points to high-level contacts between Turkish officials and leading ISIL members, the Guardian newspaper in the UK has recently reported.

While they had given voice to some resentment and mild criticism of Turkey‘s much-questioned approach against ISIL, until very recently, Western officials had refrained from directly criticizing Turkish decision makers. The recent revelation appears to be the first public criticism of Turkey’s approach and could complicate Ankara’s relations with its Western allies.

Turkey, which entered the fray against ISIL after two years of reluctance to take an active part in the international coalition against the militant group, had faced charges of ignoring, if not openly facilitating, militants’ border crossings to join ISIL in Syria. Ankara’s refutations of such accusations seemingly fall short of convincing its Western allies, and the Guardian report will likely fuel underlying questions about ISIL’s links with Turkey.

“In the wake of the raid that killed Abu Sayyaf, suspicions of an undeclared alliance have hardened,” the Guardian report said.

One senior Western official familiar with the intelligence found at the compound told the Guardian that “direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking Isis [ISIL] members was now ‘undeniable.’”

The Guardian report continues: “’There are hundreds of flash drives and documents that were seized there,’ the official told the Observer. ‘They are being analyzed at the moment, but the links are already so clear that they could end up having profound policy implications for the relationship between us and Ankara.’”

With Turkey now striking ISIL targets in Syria after a bomb attack suspected to have been carried out by a militant killed 32 in the southern Turkish town of Suruç near the Syrian border and the killing of a soldier on the border, Ankara may have earned loud praise and strong support among its Western allies.

But questions and charges of tacit cooperation with the militant group over the past two years will, especially after the discovery of new information at Abu Sayyaf’s compound, overshadow today’s efforts and haunt Ankara’s ties with the West in years to come.

While Turkey busy killing Kurds in Iraq, ISIL abducts over 180 children in Iraq’s Mosul

July 25, 2015 By administrator

The Takfiri ISIL terrorist group has abducted more than 180 children in the Iraqi city of Mosul over the past few days, an Iraqi Kurdish official says.

Saeed Mamouzini, a senior official from the Iraqi Kurdistan’s Democrat Party (KDP), said on Saturday that the children, aged between 10 and 15, have been transferred to the ISIL military camps in the city of Mosul to receive training.

“During the past few days, ISIL militants kidnapped 182 children from the city of Mosul… The children were transferred to centers for ideological training, weapons and suicide operations,” media outlets quoted Mamouzini as saying.

Latest figures show the militant group has abducted about 1,500 children since capturing the city over a year ago.

The Takfiri group uses children in both Syria and Iraq to carry out terrorist attacks and executions.

Some videos released by the ISIL terrorists show children or teenagers executing captured soldiers and civilians.

Media reports also indicate that the ISIL terrorist group is teaching children to carry out beheadings by showing them gruesome videos of decapitations in training camps.

The Takfiri group is also currently recruiting teenagers and children in the areas under its control in Syria and Iraq by offering them gifts or threatening and brainwashing them.

Turkish daily fires senior journalist over tweet blaming Erdogan over ISIL

July 23, 2015 By administrator

Kadri Gursel, journalist for the Turkish Milliyet daily, who has been fired over a tweet critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s policy on ISIL.

A leading Turkish newspaper has sacked one of its most senior commentators over his tweet criticizing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s policies, which the journalist said, gave rise to the Takfiri ISIL terrorist group.

In a statement released on Thursday, the Milliyet daily said that Kadri Gursel had been fired because his remarks on his social media post were “incompatible” with the paper’s editorial policies.

In a tweet posted on Wednesday, Gursel accused Erdogan of being behind the rise of the ISIL, adding that it was shameful that world leaders were offering their condolences to him for a recent deadly bomb blast in the southern Turkish town of Suruc, reportedly claimed by the extremist terror group. “It’s embarrassing that foreign leaders call the person who is the number one cause of the IS (ISIL) terror in Turkey to present their condolences for Suruc,” Gursel said.

The July 20 explosion in Suruc, located near the Syrian border, killed 32 people and injured more than 100 people.

The explosion targeted people from the Socialist Youth Associations Federation, also known as the SGDF, who had gathered at a cultural center before their journey to Kobani, also called Ayn al-Arab, to help in the restructuring of the war-torn Syrian town.

The anti-Erdogan tweet came as Turkey has been criticized for clamping down on journalists and sentencing them to long prison terms.

Ankara has also been widely accused of supporting the Takfiri ISIL militants operating in Syria as part of a broader Western plot for the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Many media reports have recently revealed Ankara’s role in providing support to the terror groups active in Syria.

Last month, center-left Turkish daily Cumhuriyet released a video implicating the country’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) in assisting the notorious Takfiri group.

Erdogan said Cumhuriyet would pay a “heavy price” for publishing the video, prompting international media rights group Reports Without Borders to slam the Turkish leader for threatening journalists.

On June 12, Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman also revealed that Ankara allows ISIL terrorists to freely walk in the streets of the Akcakale border district in Sanliurfa.

Turkish police seek female ISIL suspect over Suruç attack

July 21, 2015 By administrator

A female suicide bomber who crossed into Turkey last month allegedly conducted the deadly Suruç attack in southeastern Turkey on July 20, daily Habertürk has reported.

The report suggested that one of three women members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who crossed into Turkey to conduct suicide attacks could be one of the perpetrators of the attack, which left at least 32 dead and hundreds injured.

The Security General Directorate had warned in June that three ISIL militants, Fadime Kurt, Özlem Yılmaz and Nuray Demirel, could carry out a suicide bombing in Turkey. Yılmaz’s photo had also been handed out to provincial authorities along with a confidential “possible attack” briefing.

The June 20 suicide attack targeted a municipal culture center in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa’s Suruç district, where members of the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations (SGDF) were staying as part of a summer expedition to help rebuild Kobane, which lies directly across the border. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu confirmed that ISIL was the prime suspect after the attack.

Turkey: ISIL performs Eid prayer in İstanbul, calls for war

July 19, 2015 By administrator

Hundreds of supporters of the radical terrorist organization Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) allegedly performed Eid prayers in Istanbul, for a second time, in which they criticized the Turkish government and made a call for war.

The Turkish media reported on Sunday that a group of ISIL militants — allegedly consisting of 1,000 ISIL members — gathered at a picnic site in İstanbul’s Ömerli neighborhood to perform the prayers signaling the end of the holy month of Ramadan and the beginning of the celebration of Eid al-Fitr.

According to the news agency Sputnik Türkiye, the prayer was led by Halis Bayancuk, also known as Abu Hanzala, who is alleged to be one of ISIL’s most high-ranking members in Turkey. He allegedly called on the supporters after the prayer to engage in war.

As part of his 14-minute speech, Bayancuk, who is said to be in charge of the al-Qaeda network in Turkey, criticized democracy and called for the formation of a state governed by religious law. Also criticizing the Turkish government, Bayancuk said the Gülen movement, inspired by the Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, was being unfair towards members of ISIL and al-Qaeda and was instigating arbitrary detainments through its alleged contacts in law enforcement and judicial circles. However Bayancuk gave no details on how a civil society organization could instigate detentions. The Gülen movement is also known as the Hizmet movement.

Bayancuk was detained in raids against al-Qaeda cells by the police and gendarmerie units in six provinces across Turkey on Jan. 14, 2014, but was let go after no indictment was prepared against him. It is unclear why the prosecutor’s office did not indict him, although several others have already been charged.

The government removed the police chiefs who undertook the operation from the investigation while reassigning the prosecutor who handled the case and the judge who authorized the raids.

It was stated back in 2014, when Bayancuk was detained, that wiretapped conversations had him telling other members of al-Qaeda that the conquest of Syria was almost over and that Turkey would be next. “We will conquer İstanbul, God willing,” he was heard saying.

ISIL forbids its followers to join prayers in mosques located in countries not under the group’s control. A similar gathering was also held last year. The İstanbul Governor’s Office made an announcement stating that the group had not obtained the necessary permission to perform their prayer on public property, after images of the prayer caused a public outcry.

ISIL is also known as a Salafi extremist militant group and self-proclaimed caliphate and Islamic state led by Sunni Arabs from Iraq and Syria. As of March of this year, the group is said to have exerted control over territory in Iraq and Syria occupied by nearly 10 million people.

Source: Zaman

China says Uighurs being sold as ISIL’s given Turkish identity papers in Southeast Asia

July 11, 2015 By administrator

BEIJING – Reuters,

Uighurs from China’s Xinjiang are being given Turkish identity papers in Southeast Asia by Turkish diplomats and then taken to Turkey where some are sold to fight for groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as “cannon fodder,” a senior Chinese official said.

Beijing says the Turkic language-speaking Uighur minority are firstly Chinese nationals, and those who flee China should be returned to their home region in the far west of the country bordering central Asia.

“Turkish embassies in Southeast Asia will give them proof of identity,” Tong Bishan, division chief of the Ministry of Public Security’s Criminal Investigation Department, told a small group of foreign reporters in Beijing on July 11.

“They are obviously Chinese but they will give them identities as Turkish nationals.”

The accusation is likely to further anger Ankara, already alarmed by the return of more than 100 Uighurs to China from Thailand this week.

Some Turks see themselves as sharing a common cultural and religious heritage with their Uighur “brothers”.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Uighurs keen to escape unrest in China’s western Xinjiang region, have travelled clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey. China is home to about 20 million Muslims spread across its vast territory, only a portion of whom are Uighurs.

Tong said that hundreds of Uighurs had been given documents by Turkish diplomats, especially in Kuala Lumpur, and then allowed into Turkey.

Neither the Turkish Foreign Ministry nor the Turkish embassy in Kuala Lumpur were able to immediately provide comment.

‘Youths brainswashed’

But upon arriving, they have no chance of finding legal work and some end up with extremist groups, Tong said, like the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which Beijing accuses of waging an insurrection campaign in Xinjiang to set up their own state.

“They are very easily controlled by certain local forces, especially the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and other terrorist groups. They organise the youths, they brainwash them, and get them to the front line to fight. They are cannon fodder,” Tong said.

“There is competition for them. Some are sent to Iraq, some to Syria. The terrorist groups there lack people. They will snatch people away. The terrorist groups will pay, at least $2,000 a person. It’s their way of recruiting soldiers.”

Tong, who has been helping lead the Chinese effort to get Uighurs in Southeast Asia back to China, said he did not know how many Uighurs were now fighting for ISIL.

But he said that they have found propaganda videos and messages on the mobile phones and computers of some of those who have been returned, including pictures of dead fighters and promises of the joys to come in the afterlife.

“We are providing education and support, to tell them what real Islam is about. They’ve been listening to and watching stuff on the Internet, from irregular imams.”

Attempt to ‘demonize’ China

Numerous groups have been sent back to China this year from Southeast Asia, Tong said, including the 109 repatriated from Thailand this week. He did not have a full figure for the numbers deported.

The deportations have sparked sometimes violent protests in Turkey, home to a large Uighur diaspora.

The United States and United Nations have condemned the deportations and asked Thailand to stop them, saying the Uighurs could face harsh treatment in China.

Beijing denies the accusations of human rights groups that it restricts the Uighurs’ religious freedoms. It blames Islamist militants for a rise in violent attacks in Xinjiang in the past three years in which hundreds have died.

Tong said that concern the Uighurs would be mistreated upon their return was simply an attempt to “demonize” China, and said they were being well looked after, though those suspected of crimes will be prosecuted.

Attacks in Turkey trigger debate

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is due to visit China, said on July 9 that news reports on China’s alleged restrictions on Muslim Uighurs during the holy month of Ramadan do not reflect reality. He said that the timing of the reports was “meaningful,” referring to his upcoming visit.

Erdoğan’s words come amid a spike in attacks against East Asian tourists and others in Turkey. Hours after he delivered his speech, Thailand on July 10 closed its embassy and consulate in Turkey after a violent protest against its deportation of Uighur Muslims to China. It was the latest protest in Turkey over the treatment of Uighurs.

July/11/2015

Claims of complicity irk Turkey after ISIL’s attack on Kobani

June 25, 2015 By administrator

The unexpected and deadly attack of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants on Syria‘s Kobani early on Thursday unleashed a torrent of debate over how the fighters penetrated the town and whether they entered from Turkish territory, prompting Turkish officials to strongly deny such claims. Report ZAMAN

Explosions are captured, by a camera on the Turkish side of the border moments after car bombs detonate in the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria. (Photo: DHA)

Although Ankara rebuffed claims of allegations that ISIL fighters came from Turkish territory in the strongest possible terms, prominent Kurdish politicians appeared to be doubtful with the official explanation and questioned the alleged role of the Turkish government in the latest attack on Kobani.

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgiç called such allegations lies, denying reports of fighters crossing the Turkish border. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş expressed dismay over the accusations, calling them a smear campaign against Turkey.

“Turkey has been on full alert from the first moment of the attack for wounded from Kobani and asylum seekers in need of humanitarian aid,” he tweeted.

Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party described the ISIL attack on the Syrian border town of Kobani as a massacre and blamed it on Turkish state support for the militants, comments that will fuel tension in Ankara amid attempts to form a government.

“The whole world knows the Turkish government has supported ISIL for years. Today’s massacre is a part of this support,” said Figen Yüksekdağ, co-leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). “The remarks of Turkish politicians are null and void for us. It is up to the Turkish government to prove it does not support ISIL,” she told reporters at a press conference in Ankara on Thursday.

“If this massacre took place without your support, then explain it, prove it. Otherwise our claims are valid,” she added.

Challenging the Şanlıurfa governor’s official statement, Yüksekdağ said it is implausible that ISIL militants came from Jarablus, to the west of Kobani, while Mürşitpınar is very close to Kobani.

The office of Şanlıurfa governor earlier in the day said in a statement that evidence showed the militants had entered Kobani from the Syrian town of Jarablus.

“Why have ISIL militants, on many occasions, easily slipped through the Turkish border, but not on this one when they attacked Kobani? It is unfathomable. We consider the possibility that they crossed the border [on this occasion],” Yüksekdağ said.

While Turkey is part of the US-led global anti-ISIL coalition, its Western allies voice resentment over what they say is Ankara’s reluctance to take a more active part in the campaign against the militant group. Turkey’s Western partners repeatedly call on Ankara to do more to curb Syria-bound fighters crossing its border to join ISIL.

Democratic Union Party (PYD) leader Salih Muslim also said all signs and findings reveal that ISIL fighters entered Kobani from Turkey. In the latest effort to seek to calm Turkey’s jittery nerves over the creation of a separate Kurdish zone in northern Syria after Kurds’ capture of Tel Abyad from ISIL, Muslim said again on Thursday that the PYD has no separatist agenda.

He said claims of ethnic cleansing by Kurds in Syria’s north is an affront to them as Syrian Kurds are the ones who suffered most from such policies in the past.

The pro-Kurdish HDP entered Parliament for the first time after clearing a 10 percent threshold in the June 7 election.

Its success helped to deprive the governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) founded by President Tayyip Erdoğan of a majority needed to form a single-party government for the first time in over a decade. The AK Party needs to find a coalition partner to form the government. The HDP success at election also sank Erdoğan’s long-sought bid for an executive presidency as the AK Party was stripped of its majority in Parliament.

ISIL attacks Syrian government and Kurds in twin assault

ISIL fighters launched simultaneous attacks against the Syrian government and Kurdish militia overnight on Wednesday, moving back onto the offensive after losing ground in recent days to Kurdish-led forces near the capital of their “caliphate.”

After recent losses to the Kurds backed by US-led air strikes, ISIL sought to retake the initiative with incursions into the Kurdish-held town of Kobani at the Turkish/Syria border and government-held areas of Hasaka city in the northeast.

In a separate offensive in the multi-sided Syrian civil war on Thursday, an alliance of rebels in the south of the country also launched an attack with the aim of driving government forces from the city of Deraa.

The attacks by ISIL follow a rapid advance by Kurdish-led forces deep into the hard-line group’s territory, to within 50 kilometers (30 miles) of its de facto capital Raqqa, hailed as a success by Washington.

The United States and European and Arab allies have been bombing ISIL since last year to try to defeat ISIL, which a year ago proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory in Syria and Iraq.

ISIL advanced rapidly last month, seizing cities in both Syria and Iraq. The latest Kurdish advance in Syria has shifted momentum back against the jihadists, but ISIL fighters have adopted a tactic of advancing elsewhere when they lose ground.

The group said it had seized the al-Nashwa district and neighboring areas in the southwest of Hasaka, a city divided into zones of government and Kurdish control. Government forces had withdrawn towards the city center, it said in a statement.

Syrian state TV said ISIL fighters were expelling residents from their homes in al-Nashwa, executing people and detaining them. Many ISIL fighters had been killed, it said, including one identified as a Tunisian leader.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war, said ISIL had seized two districts from government control.

Thursday’s separate ISIL attack on Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, began with at least one car bomb in an area near the border crossing with Turkey, according to Kurdish officials and the Observatory. ISIL fighters were battling Kurdish forces in the town itself.

Kobani was the site of one of the biggest battles against ISIL last year. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) , backed by US air strikes, expelled the fighters in January after four months of fighting.

YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said Thursday’s attackers had entered the town from the west in five cars, deceptively flying the flag of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army movement, which has fought alongside the YPG against ISIL.

“They opened fire randomly on everyone they found,” he told Reuters.

A doctor in Kobani, Welat Omer, said 15 people had been killed and 70 wounded, many of them seriously. Some had lost limbs. Some of the wounded had been taken to Turkey.

Around 50 people fled to Kobani’s Murşitpınar border gate with Turkey after the attack, seeking to cross the border, local witnesses said. Syrian state TV said the attackers had entered Kobani from Turkey — a claim denied by the Turkish government.

ISIL militants also killed at least 20 Kurdish civilians in an attack on a village south of Kobani, the Observatory reported.

A Syrian official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said ISIL appeared to be trying to divert the focus of forces fighting it because of the pressure it was now under near Raqqa: “I believe this is why they moved to Hasaka — because they felt great danger from the situation in Raqqa.”

The Kurdish militia say they currently have no plan to march on Raqqa city.

ISIL storms Hasaka

ISIL militants in Syria stormed government-held neighborhoods in the predominantly Kurdish northeastern city of Hasaka on Thursday morning, capturing several areas of the city, officials and state media said.

The attack came after the ISIL group suffered several setbacks in northern Syria against Kurdish forces over the past weeks. The city of Hasaka is divided between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and Kurdish fighters.

Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the YPG, said ISIL militants attacked government-held neighborhoods on the southern edge of Hasaka, and captured some areas.

Syrian state TV reported intense clashes inside Hasaka’s southern neighborhood of Nashawi. According to the report, ISIL fighters killed several people they captured in the city, including the head of a military housing institution. It said the militants sustained many casualties, including the commander of the group who is a foreign fighter.

ISIL tried to storm the city earlier this month and reached its southern outskirts before facing strong resistance from Syrian government troops who pushed them away.

Read I told you so: http://wp.me/p2E179-9Xx

Turkey irritated see New flag flies

June 17, 2015 By administrator

A Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) flag flies

A Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) flag flies, on the same spot where an Islamic State flag flew the day before, in the northern Syrian town of Tel Abyad, as seen from the Turkish border town of Akcakale, in Sanliurfa province, Turkey, June 16, 2015. Syrian Kurdish-led forces said they had captured a town at the Turkish border from Islamic State on Monday, driving it away from the frontier in an advance backed by U.S.-led air strikes that has thrust deep into the jihadists’ Syria stronghold. The capture of Tel Abyad by the Kurdish YPG and smaller Syrian rebel groups means the Syrian Kurds effectively control some 400 km (250 miles) of the Syrian-Turkish border that has been a conduit for foreign fighters joining Islamic State.

Turkey Erdoğan views PYD as threat, prefers ISIL control in northern Syria

June 15, 2015 By administrator

Kurdish People’s Protection Units fighters gather at the eastern entrances of the town of Tel Abyad,
(Photo: Reuters)

Rattled by new flux of refugees fleeing the raging war between the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the northern Syrian city of Tel Abyad near the border, Turkey’s leader expressed concern over the YPG takeover of the town, implying that he would rather prefer ISIL control over the strategic border city.

The ISIL and YPG, the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), are vying for control over Tel Abyad in an episode in the long struggle for supremacy in northern Syria. Backed by air forces from the global anti-ISIL coalition, the YPG recently made swift gains and pushed back radical militants after a withering months-long siege of the Kurdish city of Kobani, which proved to be a turn in the tide against ISIL. Turkey had to absorb more than 150,000 civilians during ferocious battles in and around Kobani in late 2014. Report Zaman

A similar fierce showdown is in the air, this time in Tel Abyad, a key border town just opposite of Akçakale, a Turkish border town in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa. Barbed fences and a wall divide the two towns.

The YPG advance toward Tel Abyad prompted a new mass exodus of refugees, sparking a humanitarian crisis across the border. The town is of strategic importance to the militant group, which regards as its only gateway and supply line through the border with Turkey.

Losing Tel Abyad, some 80 kilometers north of the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa, would deprive the group of a direct route to bring in new foreign militants or supplies. The Kurdish advance, coming under the cover of intense US-led coalition airstrikes in the area, also would link their two fronts and put even more pressure on Raqqa as Iraqi forces struggle to contain the group in their country. Reports on Monday suggested that the YPG totally encircled the town.

A Today’s Zaman reporter in Akçakale said the ISIL militants began to withdraw to Raqqa to prepare for the next round of the battle, which will probably take place in or around Raqqa, the provincial capital of ISIL. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict, said there were only around 150 Islamic State fighters in Tel Abyad.

Already battered by endless waves of refugees, Turkey allowed more than 3,000 refugees who were fleeing the fighting in Tel Abyad to enter the country, reversing its earlier decision of closing its borders to new refugees.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in a reflection of the widely-held opinion of Justice and Development Party (AK Party) senior figures, views the looming battle from a different angle. Ankara sees the YPG as the Syrian arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an outlawed militia that has fought a 30-year insurgency against the Turkish state to establish regional autonomy in southeast Turkey. The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by the US, Turkey and EU.

Erdoğan spoke to reporters from pro-government media outlets during his return from Azerbaijan and addressed the steep challenges Turkey faces across the Turkish-Syrian border.

Offering a bleak assessment of the security situation in northern Syria, the president, however, appeared uneasy about the ascendant YPG, which has systematically rooted out ISIL groups from towns and villages as part of a steady campaign since January when it defeated the militant group in Kobani.

Erdoğan portrayed the YPG’s ascendancy on the battleground as a threat to Turkish national interests, accusing the Kurdish militia of deliberately targeting the indigenous Arab and Turkmen population in northern Syria.

The Turkish president said the US-led coalition fighting ISIL militants in Syria was bombing Arabs and Turkmens near Turkey’s border.

“On our border, in Tel Abyad, the West, which is conducting aerial bombings against Arabs and Turkmens, is unfortunately putting terrorist members of the PYD and PKK in their place,” Erdogan said.

Last week, he accused the West of backing “Kurdish terrorists” in northern Syria. The YPG has emerged as the main military partner for the US-led campaign against ISIL in Syria. Erdoğan’s views reflect a concern over the revival of probable separatist sentiment among Turkey’s Kurdish community, which closely follows YPG movements in Syria.

Erdoğan’s refusal to help the besieged Kurds in Kobani fight ISIL touched off nationwide protests in Turkey on Oct. 6-7, 2014, leading to the death of more than 40 people in street clashes. The AK Party government, sources close to the party say, does not want to see a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria that could control Turkey’s border and thus transport routes to Arab Syria.

The president’s comments came at a time when the Cumhuriyet and the Birgün newspapers ran news stories involving video and photo footage that appeared to be evidence of the AK Party government’s links to ISIL in northern Syria. In one incident, the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), transported ISIL militants on buses through the Akçakale border gate as reinforcements in the fight against Kurdish forces.

Rebels accuse Kurds of deliberately displacing Arabs

More than a dozen Syrian rebel groups on Monday accused the country’s main Kurdish militia of deliberately displacing thousands of Arabs and Turkmens as it pushes deeper into ISIL strongholds in northern Syria.

The Kurdish advance has caused the displacement of 18,000 people who fled to Turkey in the past two weeks. On Monday, up to 3,000 more refugees arrived at the Akçakale border crossing, according to the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). An Associated Press photographer saw large numbers of people at the border and thick smoke billowing across as US-led coalition aircraft targeted ISIL militants in Tel Abyad.

The accusation, which was not backed by evidence of ethnic- or sectarian-related killings, threatened to escalate tensions between ethnic Arabs and Kurds as the Kurdish fighters conquer more territory in northern Syria.

Since the beginning of the year, the YPG have wrested back more than 500 mostly Kurdish and Christian towns in northeastern Syria, as well as strategic mountains seized earlier by ISIL. They have recently pushed into Raqqa province, an ISIL stronghold where Tel Abyad is located.

“YPG forces … have implemented a new sectarian and ethnic cleansing campaign against Sunni Arabs and Turkmen under the cover of coalition airstrikes which have included bombardment, terrorizing civilians and forcing them to flee their villages,” the statement issued by rebel and militant groups said. The YPG, however, denies these claims.

Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the people who had fled into Turkey were escaping fighting and there was no systematic effort to force people out.

He said also said there were no Turkmen in the area, stating, “There are violations [referring to acts of abuse] by individuals from the YPG, but not in a systematic way.”

Turkish Dictator Erdogan blasts West for destabilizing Syria by supporting Kurdish ‘terrorists’

June 13, 2015 By administrator

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused the West of destabilizing Syria by supporting Kurdish “terrorist groups,” while bombing Arabs and Turkmens.

The impassioned remarks were made in Erdogan’s first appearance since the general election. He called on all political parties to act “responsibly” in forming a coalition government, after his Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority at the polls on June 7.

“The West, which has shot Arabs and Turkmens, is unfortunately placing the PYD (the political wing of the YPG) and PKK in lieu of them,” Erdogan said in a speech at the Ankara chamber of commerce.

The Kurds have a strong presence in Syria, Iraq and Turkey and have proved a formidable enemy to Islamic State (IS), earning international backing for standing up to extremists.

On the other hand, the ethnic group has been historically locked in a fierce struggle of wills with Turkey over its status as a nation.

Meanwhile the Kurdish-linked People’s Democratic Party (HDP) has for the first time managed to get into the Turkish parliament.

This is a difficult situation for Erdogan, who is a US ally on the one hand, but has been showing very negative attitudes toward the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) forces, which the US has been trying to aid in the fight against IS.

The Turkish leader is uncomfortable with the military gains made by the Kurds in Syria, alleging their links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), whom he’s called “terrorists” on multiple occasions, and who have been fighting the Turkish government in an insurgency lasting more than 37 years.

While delivering the remark, Erdogan has used the opportunity to again strike at the perceived ineffectiveness of the US-led air-strike campaign against IS terrorists.

On Thursday Turkey said it was taking measures to limit the influx of Syrian refugees whose numbers soared recently due to fighting between Kurdish forces and jihadists.

Over the last week, 7,000 refugees had fled to Turkey and another 6,600 had joined them since Wednesday, a Turkish official told AFP.

“Turkey will not accept entries onto its territory from Syria except in case of a humanitarian tragedy,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said after visiting the Akcakale border crossing on Wednesday.

Kurtulmus also reaffirmed Ankara’s anger against EU nation’s which have accepted only a small portion of Syrian refugees as opposed to Turkey which has taken over 1.8 million Syrian refuges since the start of the conflict in 2011.

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