The fondness of Erdoğan and Davutoğlu
It was in the papers yesterday on July 22 that the suicide bomber of Suruç was from the southeastern city Adıyaman, that he was tipped off to the police by his father for joining the Islamic State of Iraq and Levent (ISIL), that he was wanted by police as a terror-related suspect and that he had met the HDP rally bomber of Diyarbakır at a tea shop in Adıyaman.
The first news story about ISIL recruiters in Adıyaman appeared in Sept. 2013 in daily Radikal, written by İdris Emen.
The story was based on statements from families whose sons were taken to fight in Syria. It ended like this:
“The town of Adıyaman is uneasy because its youth are going to Syria. One shopkeeper said they have heard that some people recruit young people in exchange for money and send them to Syria. He said they were truly afraid of this situation. They even talk about an organized gang that takes Adıyaman youth to Syria.
However, our questions about this matter to the office of the Adıyaman Governor and Adıyaman Police Department were unanswered because they do not want to talk about this.”
It is very obvious why the governor and police authorities do not want to talk. At that date, young jihadists going to Syria to fight were tolerated because Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu had one dream: To conduct their daily prayers (namaz) at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.
While the government was openly siding with the “jihadists” in the civil war at Syria, how could the office of the governor and security department oppose that? How enthusiastic could they be to prevent these kinds of activities?
When Turkey’s Syrian border became a highway for jihadists, it was again the same people in power in Turkey. From the first days of the war, it is known that the jihadists freely passed into Turkey to rest and receive medical treatment and also that some refugee camps operated as military camps.
What I am saying is that we did not come to this situation overnight.
Now, a weakness in intelligence and security is being mentioned after the Diyarbakır and Suruç bombings. Yes, there is a weakness in question but this weakness stems from the fondness of the Erdoğan-Davutoğlu duo toward the “jihadists.”
Good morning to the security summit
After the Suruç massacre, a security summit convened at the Prime Ministry. They decided that the fight against ISIL will continue nonstop. Operation and intelligence works will continue at full speed. In the fight against this organization, operations against ISIL’s terror network within Turkey have been prioritized. The organization’s financial and logistic network inside Turkey will be collapsed.
Next will come low-level ISIL members. Additional sources and staff will be allocated to monitor the sympathizers and members in Turkey.
I could not decide whether I should laugh or cry when I read these decisions of the security summit.
The atmosphere is as if the name of ISIL is being heard for the first time.
If these are actually the decisions, then we understand that until yesterday, ISIL was not the target prioritized by the Turkish security forces. What has been decided upon now should have been conducted anyway. If the plan made at this security summit had been implemented before, then neither of the bomb attacks in Diyarbakır or Suruç would have been able to be carried out.