Turkey recruits Turkmen as mercenaries

Hossam al-Haddad

The Turkmen minority in Iraq seeks to increase Turkish support for it at the same level as in Syria, where Ankara provides Turkmen militias, such as the Sultan Murad Brigade and Suleyman Shah Brigade, with arms and funding in exchange for sending thousands of mercenaries to Libya.

The Guardian recently revealed that the older brother of the new leader of ISIS resides in Turkey and represents the Iraqi Turkmen Front, which is part of an alliance of Turkmen movements and was founded in 1995 with the support of Ankara.

Hisham al-Hashemi, a expert in the extremist movement who was assassinated in Baghdad recently, had estimated the Iraqi group’s monthly revenues from investments and taxes at about $7 million. Despite the huge losses it has suffered in lands and manpower, it is still able to resolve its financial and combat problems, which poses a threat to the region.

According to Monte Carlo Doualiya, the new head of ISIS is described as a severely brutal and authoritarian extremist. ISIS leader Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla, who succeeded Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was unknown to American and Iraqi intelligence before the terrorist organization introduced him to the world under the name Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.

The US intelligence services discovered that Qurashi was a pseudonym for Mawla. In March, the State Department placed him on the Most Wanted Global Terrorists list, and Washington offered a reward of $10 million for any information leading to his capture.

Mawla is reported to be an Iraqi Turkmen born in Tal Afar, west of Mosul, in northern Iraq. He is 44 years old and graduated from the University of Mosul’s College of Islamic Sciences. He was also an officer in the Iraqi army during the rule of Saddam Hussein, although there is not enough information about the timing and circumstances of his joining ISIS.

This and other information confirms Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s association with ISIS and that the terrorist organization receives full support from Ankara. ISIS was able to seize Iraqi and Syrian oil and then pump it to Ankara.

Several reports have confirmed that the looting of Iraqi and Syrian oil by ISIS heads to Turkey, which buys the oil at low prices from Ankara’s loyal terrorists. Then, Turkish mafias within Turkish agencies and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) carry out the process of refining the stolen oil and selling it on the Turkish market at the higher official price, generating profits for these mafias of up to one thousand percent after calculating the share of the groups that control the oil fields and transportation routes.

Both the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) reported that the oil-rich areas in Syria may have produced at least $50 million worth of oil per month.

Ankara is converting the Turkmen minority into terrorist mercenaries, first fueling them in Syria and then sending them to Libya. There are also reports of a number of them being sent to Azerbaijan.

There is no doubt that the Ottoman dictator is trying hard to restore the glories of the Ottoman Empire, using the international Brotherhood organization, the Qatari emir, and their close relationships with most terrorist groups in order to help him achieve his delusional Ottoman dream.