Erdogan’s ties with terrorist groups impacting Turkey’s future

Ali Rajab

Relations between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and groups affiliated to al-Qaeda in Syria are coming at the center of debate.

These relations have been even controversial after Erdogan started sending Syrian mercenaries to Libya.

There are fears that Erdogan’s strengthening relations with terrorist groups will turn Turkey into a major sponsor of international terrorism.

In a recent article in the Investigative Journal, Turkish writer Ahmet S. Yayla, the director of the Center for Homeland Security at DeSales University, wrote that Erdogan has been in the news lately for his controversial role in supporting one of the sides in the Libyan conflict with Syrian jihadi mercenaries.

He added that beneath the headlines, even more is going on.

Three recent crucial incidents indicate that Erdogan has been getting ready for a significant move, probably a transformation that will change Turkey forever, Yayla said.

The first development – and the most under-the-radar for non-Turks – concerns Erdogan’s gradual empowerment of the Turkish National Police (TNP) Intelligence Department Directorate as a sort of personal intel office.

On January 17, 2020, the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey issued a new presidential decree, elevating the status of the Turkish National Police (TNP) Intelligence Department to a Directorate.

This office is in charge of carrying out intelligence operations against terrorist organizations.

The TNP is in charge of all types of crimes and law enforcement related issues all over Turkey except for rural areas, covering over eighty-five percent of the population with 300,000 employees, Yayla wrote in his articlce.

After the December 2013 anti-corruption operations, which the TNP carried out against Erdogan’s son Bilal Erdogan, his inner circle, and four of his ministers, Erdogan realized that he could not trust the police.

Immediately after surviving the anti-corruption operations, Erdogan started to restructure the TNP, essentially firing and replacing the officers and police chiefs working for key investigative departments, including the intelligence, counterterrorism, and organized crime, by the end of 2014.

Furthermore, the 2016 coup attempt became a great excuse for Erdogan to additionally fire around 35,000 TNP personnel whom he deemed as possible opposition and to hire over 80,000 new officers considered loyal to him.

Yayla added that TNP intel has been extremely loyal to Erdogan since 2014.

In fact, it was Erdogan’s intelligence officers who learned that ISIS was going to carry out a suicide attack on a leftist march outside the Ankara train station eight days before the attack happened in October 2015, Yayla said.

He added that they were already following one of the key perpetrators; however, they did not stop the attacks.

The ISIS suicide attack in Ankara on October 10, 2015, killed 109 and wounded over 500 people.

The European Union Intelligence and Situation Centre (EUINTCEN) released a report suggesting that the ISIS Ankara suicide bombing “may have been committed on the orders of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).”