Free Republic

A team of Columbia University researchers from the United States, Europe, and Turkey confirmed last week that the Turkish government has provided to ISIS: military cooperation, weapons, logistical support, financial assistance, and medical services. This detailed investigation was headed by David L. Phillips, Director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia UniversityÂ’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights. He had served as Senior Advisor and Foreign Affairs Expert for the U.S. Department of State.Here are brief excerpts from the extensive research documenting the direct links between Turkey and ISIS: Turkey Supplied Military Equipment to ISIS An ISIS...

Turkey's anti-terrorism police have detained over 440 people for alleged links to the Islamic State group, the state-run agency reported Sunday. The Anadolu Agency said 60 IS suspects, the vast majority of them foreigners, were taken into custody early Sunday in the capital, Ankara. It said a total of 445 people were detained in simultaneous pre-dawn police operations that spanned several cities, including Istanbul and Gaziantep, near the border with Syria. The largest operation was in the southeast province of Sanliurfa, where police took into custody more than 100 suspects from multiple addresses and found materials relating to Islamic State...

The cat is finally out of the bag: Turkey has worked with Islamist groups and has supported militant organizations in the Middle East for years, according to the German government, state broadcaster ARD reported Tuesday. The view was expressed in a confidential response from the interior ministry to parliamentary questions from left-wing party Die Linke. The response was seen by ARD. The ministry added that Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan has actively supported cooperation with Islamist and terrorist organizations. The ministry said in its statement: The many expressions of solidarity and support actions for the Egyptian MB [Muslim Brotherhood], Hamas...

An ISIS commander was killed in Salahuddin province and his body was searched. A cell phone retrieved from the corpse revealed messages from Turkish intelligence services proving the NATO country was providing security for ISIS militants when they traveled between Turkey and Iraq. This is the second NATO country implicated in assisting ISIS troops. The first was Canada. The IS commander was killed by Hashd al-Shaabi, a loyalist volunteer force. Jabbar al-Ma’mouri, a leader within the force made the announcement. He said, “The mobile phone also contains other important information which cannot be disclosed now, and it has been delivered...

I just saw an ad on CNN for Turkish airlines. Why would an American ever fly Turkish Airlines? Only 35 departing from the US used Turkish Airlines to fly anywhere but Istanbul all of last year. (1) So why is Turkish Airlines advertising on CNN? Simple: it's an excuse to give CNN cash. Why would Turkey want to give CNN cash? To influence U.S. policy. See, Turkey is the primary funder of ISIS. (2, 3) To be specific, Turkey's Prime Minister's son, Bilal Erdogan, is the person through whom ISIS sells its oil and collects their money. (3) Turkey has...

Article: "The same official confirmed that Turkey, a longstanding member of NATO, is not just supporting ISIS, but also other jihadist groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. “The distinctions they draw [with other opposition groups] are thin indeed,” said the official. “There is no doubt at all that they militarily cooperate with both.”" Video: (Video portion: Judicial Watch released USG documents showing Turkey backing ISIS and America knew in August, 2012 that Salafist (one of the violent jihadist beliefs), Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and AQI (Al Qadea in Iraq) are the major forces driving insurgency (turned...

Turkey's geo-political maneuvers may urge reconsideration of its NATO membership. While the threat from Daesh grows, Ankara is more focused on the continuing fight with the Kurds. The Erdoğan government is undermining the core values of what NATO stands for, and its anti-Kurdish policy spells problems for its role in the region. NATO has to make a statement and also work behind the scenes to engage Erdoğan to prioritize the war against Daesh. Under the pretext of an anti-Daesh (ISIS) campaign, Turkey's government since late July 2015 is harshly repressing the Kurds, playing the ‘anti-terrorism' card towards NATO. But the...

Turkey is at war with its own Kurds and ISIL. The bomb attack on the Turkish border town of Suruc in southeastern Turkey, targeting a group of activists planning to help rebuild Kobane across the border in Syria, came at an opportune moment for Turkey’s interim AKP (Justice and Development Party) government. Unlike a bombing in another border town, Reyhanli, two years ago, which failed to attract U.S. support for Turkey’s campaign against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, this time the bombing has done the trick. The suicide bomber was a member of an Islamist group linked to ISIL (the...

A US-led raid on the compound housing the Islamic State's "chief financial officer" produced evidence that Turkish officials directly dealt with ranking ISIS members, Martin Chulov of the Guardian reported recently. The officer killed in the raid, Islamic State official Abu Sayyaf, was responsible for directing the terror army's oil and gas operations in Syria. The Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) earns up to $10 million a month selling oil on black markets.

Damning evidence was found when US special forces killed Islamic State (ISIS) leader Abu Sayyaf in May, revealing that NATO member Turkey has in fact been collaborating with the brutal jihadists. The British Guardian reported on Sunday that when Abu Sayyaf’s compound was raided in eastern Syria, it was discovered that Turkey is the main buyer of smuggled ISIS oil which was managed by Abu Sayyaf to economically prop up the terror group. The report quoted a senior Western official, who told the Observer that the findings at the compound showed direct deals between Turkish officials and ISIS leaders is...

Turkish policy in Syria, where Ankara stands accused of aiding militants like the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) group, is likely to change under a new government, the co-chair of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) said. The comments by Selahattin Demirtas follow a stunning upset in Sunday’s general elections in Turkey, where the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in 13 years and is mulling the idea of a coalition government. "Coalition governments will not be able to continue to support groups like ISIL and other extremist groups in Syria," he said in...

Turkey's push to carve out an independent foreign policy and purchase arms from countries outside of NATO is raising concerns among members of the defensive military alliance, Emre Peker reports for the Wall Street Journal. "Turkey is recasting itself as a nonaligned country in its rhetoric, which is making NATO very uncomfortable," a Western official in Brussels told the WSJ. Ankara's decision to purchase missile-defense technology from China, as opposed to from NATO member states, is the most visible break between Turkey and the rest of the NATO bloc. Turkey chose to purchase from Beijing due to a matter of...

RAPHAEL SATTER AND ISIL SARIYUCEOctober 14, 2014Istanbul University student Aysegul Korkut is outraged by the images coming out of Syria. But these days the Islamic State group's horrors seem closer to home: She recently faced off against masked supporters of the brutal militants on her own campus. "I couldn't understand what was happening at first," the 21-year-old said of the moment she first spotted baton-wielding youths striding across the Department of Literature, shouting: "Allahu Akbar!" Within minutes, she and other leftist students had been sucked into a fight, with both sides hurling glass bottles at each other and trashing a...

Turkey has agreed to allow the U.S.-led coalition to use its military bases for the fight against the Islamic State and to use Turkish territory as part of a training program for Syrian opposition fighters, Obama administration officials said Sunday. “That’s a new commitment and one that we very much welcome,” Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Yesterday, unnamed administration officials leaked the good news that Turkey would allow us to use their air bases to attack IS forces in Syria and Iraq: Also Sunday, officials confirmed that Turkey agreed to let U.S. and coalition fighter aircraft launch operations against ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria from Turkish bases, including Incirlik Air Base in the south. U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who has been traveling in South America, has said the U.S. wanted access to the Turkish bases. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private talks between the Americans...

The reason for the anger: Syrian Kurdish fighters are battling to prevent Islamic State militants from overrunning Kobani, a mostly Kurdish city in north Syria a couple of miles south of the Turkish border. Kurds have blamed the Turkish government for not doing enough to help the Kurds of Kobani.

It has been reported that the fundamentalist terror organization ISIS has very recently opened a consulate in Ankara, Turkey. The terror organization the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has reportedly opened an embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara and started to issue visas to those who want to join the jihadist fight in Iraq. The Turkish ruling AKP government has apparently provided great conveniences to the terrorist organization during negotiations to secure the return of 49 Turkish diplomats who were kidnapped in the Turkish Consulate of Mosul by ISIS terrorists. The website, which appears to be belong...