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And now Turkey declares war on ISIL
[Hurriyet Daily News] This column on July 22 cited the deadly suicide kaboom that killed 32 youngsters in the town of Suruc in the province of Sanliurfa on the Syrian border as a declaration of war by the Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... That followed with the killing of a Turkish non-commissioned officer and wounding of two troops on July 23 as a result of fire opened by some ISIL gunnies after their attempt to cross the border into Turkey was prevented by Turkish border patrols. With the escalation of tension along the border, the Turkish government instructed the army to carry out attacks against any terrorist organization that potentially posed a threat to Turkey at a security summit late July 23. As a result of security assessments, Turkish jets pounded ISIL positions on the Turkish border in the early hours of July 24. "We are observing activity in Syria and on the border at every moment. Turkey will show the strongest reaction to the slightest movement that threatens it," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told news hounds July 24, in a bid to show Turkey's determination in clearing its border of terrorist units. Turkey's attack on ISIL coincided with a serious and comprehensive agreement between Ankara and Washington over the use of the former's strategic military base, Incirlik, by U.S. warplanes as well as deepening cooperation in the fight against ISIL. The agreement, on the one hand, will allow the United States to use Incirlik and Turkish airspace to hit ISIL but on the other hand it will allow Turkey to establish secure zones inside Syria. Beyond this, as an anonymous U.S. official told the New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... , this move of Turkey's would be a game-changer in the Syrian theater and would surely re-balance all parameters in the region. As the Suruc massacre has shown, however, ISIL is no longer an external threat. Simultaneously with the aerial campaign, Turkish security forces launched an extensive raid against ISIL which also included other terror organizations like the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) in more than dozen towns. As the main transit country for imported muscle who had joined ISIL in the last one-and-half-years, Turkey unfortunately has become a ground for the world's bloodiest terrorist organization with cells operating across the country. These cells were claimed to have helped imported muscle cross into Syria as well as provided some logistic support to the organization. There is no solid intelligence on how many ISIL members and sympathizers are in Turkey and how many of them are planning terror acts. This unfortunately makes ISIL an important internal threat that needs to be immediately dealt with and eliminated before it hits civilian targets. But as Davutoglu suggested yesterday, Turkish security believes these three terror organizations are committing their terrorist acts simultaneously and in coordination, thus creating a sort of terrorist bloc, despite having totally different world views and political objectives.
Posted by: Fred 2015-07-26 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=424411 |