The price of the mistake: $25 billion
“We have no more tolerance for further delay on the Syrian issue and the fight against Daesh [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – ISIL]. Why don’t we have any tolerance? Look, 3 million people are in Turkey.
From education to health, from A to Z, everything [their costs] belongs to us. The cost has reached $25 billion. But what will happen tomorrow? We have to find some solutions,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had said.
Thus we have learned from the topmost authority that our Syrian policies, which were wrong from the beginning, will have major consequences on us, and besides its political costs, its financial cost is $25 billion.
While the president was delivering his speech, Atay Uslu from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was briefing the parliament’s sub-commission of refugee rights, saying that 70,000 Syrian babies were born every year in Turkey.
Scientific surveys conducted earlier have already revealed that a vast majority of Syrian migrants will not return to their country before 20 to 25 years; a portion of them will never go back. This means that we will be paying the cost of wrong policies for many more long years. Whether this total cost would reach $100 billion, we do not know yet.
The president is talking about the necessity to “find certain solutions” to this situation. He is not an opposition leader. He has been ruling this country for many years; thus, instead of talking about the necessity of finding solutions, it is his duty to come up with the solutions to solve this issue.
But he cannot do it because in this matter Turkey is increasingly being pushed into the “neutral element” position.
Now, he will be meeting Trump, and as he said it, this meeting will end with a “full stop.” However, it looks like circumstances are not present for this full stop to end at a favorable location for Turkey.
600 Turkish kids in ISIL
The online film and TV series platform Netflix will shoot its first Turkish series. The theme of the series is the story of a father whose son has joined ISIL. According to Ali Eyüboğlu’s column, this would be a dramatic action series.
An American father whose son has joined ISIL comes to Turkey in search of his son. He crosses into Syria where he meets a German woman exactly in the same condition as he is and events unfold.
Looking at the plot, it is possible to say that this series will have a large audience.
According to reports on the website of the U.S. Military Academy West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, jihadists from more than 120 countries have joined ISIL ranks alone or together with their wives and children. The reports on this website estimate that the number of children held under ISIL who are under 18 was “scary” and it was nearing 200,000.
It should not be difficult to assess that these children will be raised to become suicide bombers or armed attackers.
A serial by Hale Gönültaş that started being posted on Gazete Duvar online news portal is about children held by ISIL. It has been claimed that there are nearly 600 Turkish kids held by ISIL. These are the children of
Turkish families who have crossed into Syria to join ISIL.
Associate Professor Serhat Erkmen from Ahi Evran University has pointed out that in one of the videos the network had posted last year, one of the six kids at 10 years of age who were beheading Syrian prisoners of war was Turkish.
Gönültaş has spoken to families whose sons have joined ISIL; whose daughters-in-law and grandchildren are held by ISIL. She has also spoken to a Turkish woman whose husband was killed in the war and she was forced to marry another jihadist.
Families in Turkey are desperate. As you can imagine, “the state is not able to do anything” to save these children and women.
Obviously nobody wants to think about the consequences of these children, who will be raised as terrorists, infiltrating into Turkey.
