Turkish Government Accused of Arming Radicals in Syria

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan’s government stands accused of funding Islamist militants in Syria—maybe even Al Qaeda—by backers of his political rival in the latest twist of a knock-down, drag-out war of accusations between Turkey’s Islamist power brokers.

Previously, this battle between Erdoğan and the followers of Fethullah Gülen, a mysterious, U.S.-based imam living in the mountains of Pennsylvania, had focused on allegations of government corruption and the prime minister’s counter-accusation that the Gülenists are forming a state within a state, populating judicial and law-enforcement posts with supporters to pursue a vendetta against Erdoğan’s party, the AKP.

Now the issue of supplying arms to extremists in Syria is rumbling onto the agenda. The government calls the Gülenists’ claims a smear campaign and denies supplying weapons to militants. The Gülen camp says Ankara definitely has something to hide.

Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (Reuters/Umit Bektas)

Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen (Reuters/Selahattin Sevi/Zaman Daily via Cihan News Agency)

The Gülenists, once government allies but now bitter foes, are keen to depict Erdoğan’s government as hard-line Islamists keeping company with unsavory friends like Al Qaeda.

Turkey categorically denies any sort of connection with jihadi groups. But NGOs and even some foreign diplomats have criticized the government for allegedly turning a blind eye to extremists operating and funneling arms on Turkish soil, because they are fighting a mutual enemy in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“It is not because of ideological reasons, but the fact that they thought they could support whoever could contribute to overthrowing Assad,” says Soli Ozel, a lecturer at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. “But in the end this turned out to be a boomerang,” he adds, referring to the diplomatic blowback Ankara has endured for not having taken a clearer position against extremists in Syria.

Now, he says, Turkey’s unwillingness to disclose more information about the contents of certain mysterious trucks could create the same sort of bad impression.

According to SANA, Syria's official News agency, these Turkish weapons, funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are being smuggled to Syria.

On New Year’s Day, Turkish security forces stopped a truck on the Syrian border, allegedly loaded with weapons and ammunition. The gendarmes—members of the military who carry out police duties, similar to the National Guard in the U.S.—had a search warrant but couldn’t carry out a search. Why? Agents from Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency (MIT) were on board and refused to let the police look around, saying the truck’s contents were a “state secret.”

If that wasn’t a strong enough signal that the Turkish government (which since the start of the civil war three years ago has denied arming Syrian rebels) didn’t want the vehicle searched, the Ankara-appointed governor of Hatay province intervened and ordered the gendarmes to leave.

Since the incident, the story has spiraled in several different ways. Initially, reports indicated that some of the people on the truck were allegedly part of the IHH (Humanitarian Relief Foundation), an Islamist charity that helped lead a 2010 effort to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip, which ended with the death of nine activists at the hands of the Israeli Defense Force.

The IHH, which Israel and the U.S. have long suspected of ties with Islamist extremists, ferociously denies that it was any way involved with the truck or its mysterious cargo. But the group continues to find itself the object of prosecutors’ attention.

Turkish soldiers guard the border with Syria in 2012. (Reuters/Umit Bektas)

Last week, police organized simultaneous raids in six different cities against Al Qaeda, detaining two alleged high-level members. As part of the investigation, police also went into IHH offices in the town of Kilis, near the border with Syria, detaining at least one person.

Echoing Erdoğan’s rhetoric, Bülent Yıldırım, IHH’s president, suggested that the Gülenists were behind the investigation, and attempting to slander his organization, adding that he believes Israel was also involved.

The government reportedly reassigned police officers involved in the raid, in what has become its standard response to big investigations in recent weeks—a tactic also used to slow down other investigations into government-connected figures. But the police probes into the trucks haven’t ceased and continue to cast a spotlight on radical groups and apparent arms shipments into Syria.

Two questions linger: Who exactly is shipping the arms, and who is receiving them? The Gülenists would dearly love to prove that Turkey is sending weapons to Islamist militants. And until they do so, the investigations—and the government’s vehement objections to them—continue.

Nearly 500 gendarmes acting on a tip stopped seven trucks headed on Syria on Sunday in southeastern Turkey. Containers in the three trucks reportedly contained mortar shells, rockets and other ammunition among medical supplies.

The gendarmes again confronted the intelligence officers. A local governor again arrived, denying the gendarmes permission to search the trucks. Under a law passed a couple of years ago, prosecutors can act against the intelligence services only with permission from the prime minister. The governor’s office says the intelligence officers were “only doing their duty.”

The message is the same at the national level. Hüseyin Çelik, the spokesman for Turkey’s governing AK party, vented his rage at the prosecutor who sought to probe inside government property. “This is an intelligence agency truck,” he said, warning that any prosecutors who made “such mistakes” would be punished. “What is inside it doesn’t concern anybody.”

Such words might prevent prosecutors from physically prying into such trucks. They’re unlikely, however, to dispel doubts over who Turkey is aiding in Syria.