If you wondered why it seems that Obama is having such a tough time getting allies in his war against ISIS, it’s not just his incompetence. At least one NATO ally is being seen as actively allied to ISIS.
A former member of ISIS has revealed the extent to which the cooperation of the Turkish military allows the terrorist group, who now control large parts of Iraq and Syria, to travel through Turkish territory to reinforce fighters battling Kurdish forces.
A reluctant former communications technician working for Islamic State, now going by the pseudonym ‘Sherko Omer’, who managed to escape the group, told Newsweek that he travelled in a convoy of trucks as part of an ISIS unit from their stronghold in Raqqa, across Turkish border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February.
“ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks,” said Omer of crossing the border into Turkey, “and they reassured us that nothing will happen, especially when that is how they regularly travel from Raqqa and Aleppo to the Kurdish areas further northeast of Syria because it was impossible to travel through Syria as YPG [National Army of Syrian Kurdistan] controlled most parts of the Kurdish region.”
This doesn’t even touch on the fact that Turkey considers the Kurds closely aligned to a terrorist group, the PKK, which I explained here. You can be sure that this will continue to complicate our efforts to have forces in the Middle East attack and defeat ISIS instead of doing it ourselves.