In one of the most contemptible of recent political developments, we now know that the great secular, democratic nation of Turkey is directly aiding ISIS fascists in order to crush the secular, left-wing Kurdish resistance.<\/p>\n
This proud member of NATO sat on its hands for weeks, watching across the Syrian border as Daesh fascists tried to take over the town of Kobane, a Kurdish stronghold under-equipped resistance forces have valiantly defended with their lives. Many Western pundits were perplexed by Turkish inaction, going to great lengths to craft risible theories. Clear-eyed analysts, on the other hand, understood what Turkey\u2019s modus operandi was all along: \u201cThe enemy of the enemy is my friend.\u201d Secular, leftist Kurdish opposition forces are a threat to Turkish hegemony. President Erdo\u011fan would clearly prefer brutally violent Sunni ethnoreligious supremacist extremists over secular, leftist, autonomous Kurds.<\/p>\n
As of 10 November, 363 brave Kurdish People\u2019s Protection Units (YPG) fighters\u00a0have been martyred<\/a>. 609 ISIS fascists have been taken down with them.<\/p>\n Until recently, it was speculated that Turkey had provided indirect support to Daesh; there did not appear to be evidence showing direct\u00a0<\/em>Turkish assistance to ISIS fascists. New evidence leads to the latter conclusion.<\/p>\n On 7 November,\u00a0Newsweek\u00a0<\/em>published \u201c\u2019ISIS Sees Turkey as Its Ally\u2019: Former Islamic State Member Reveals Turkish Army Cooperation<\/a>.\u201d The piece is based on testimonies by a former ISIS communications technician who goes by the pseudonym Sherko Omer. Omer traveled to Syria to fight against the bloody Assad regime\u200a\u2014\u200aa regime with brutal state terrorist campaigns of\u00a0mass bombing<\/a>,\u00a0torture<\/a>,\u00a0starvation<\/a>, and\u00a0rape<\/a>\u00a0of civilians, including\u00a0children<\/a>\u200a\u2014\u200ayet soon \u201cfound himself caught up in a horrifying sectarian war, unable to escape<\/a>.\u201d He never planned on joining ISIS; he was not a Salafi extremist. Omer was trapped in a terrifying snare\u200a\u2014\u200aa sectarian, international proxy war\u200a\u2014\u200aand feared for his life, knowing full well that Daesh murders defectors.<\/p>\n Omer managed to escape by surrendering to Kurdish forces (ISIS extremists would not have spared his life after such a surrender), and subsequently detailed to\u00a0Newsweek\u00a0<\/em>what he saw in his time working for the fascist group.<\/p>\n He notes that Turkey allowed trucks from the Daesh stronghold in Raqqa to cross the \u201cborder, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February.\u201d He later adds that, not only did they travel \u201cthrough Turkey in a convoy of trucks,\u201d they even stayed \u201cat safehouses along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n As a communication technician, Omer recalls \u201cconnect[ing] ISIS field captains and commanders from Syria with people in Turkey on innumerable occasions,\u201d reporting that he \u201crarely heard them speak in Arabic, and that was only when they talked to their own recruiters, otherwise, they mostly spoke in Turkish because the people they talked to were Turkish officials.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks,\u201d Omer says.<\/p>\n Newsweek\u00a0<\/em>indicates that, until October, \u201cNATO member Turkey had blocked Kurdish fighters from crossing the border into Syria to aid their Syrian counterparts in defending the border town of Kobane,\u201d and \u201cthat people attempting to carry supplies across the border were often shot at.\u201d<\/p>\n YPG spokesman\u00a0Polat Can<\/a>\u00a0claimed:<\/p>\n There is more than enough evidence with us now proving that the Turkish army gives ISIS terrorists weapons, ammunitions and allows them to cross the Turkish official border crossings in order for ISIS terrorists to initiate inhumane attacks against the Kurdish people in Rojava [north-eastern Syria].<\/p>\n We now know that he was indeed correct.<\/p>\n \u201cISIS and Turkey cooperate together on the ground on the basis that they have a common enemy to destroy, the Kurds,\u201d Omer divulged.<\/p>\n Not a New Policy<\/strong><\/p>\n Newsweek\u00a0<\/em>states that it could not independently verify Omer\u2019s testimony, but \u201canecdotal evidence of Turkish forces turning a blind eye to ISIS activity has been mounting over the past month.\u201d There have even been reports of the Turkish military\u00a0shooting\u00a0<\/em>Kurdish civilians who are trying to flee into Turkey for safety.<\/p>\n Turkish journalist Fehim Ta\u015ftekin has been writing for months about how \u201carmed groups like al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic Front cross the [Turkish] border freely.\u201d In\u00a0just one horrific example<\/a>, in May 2014, he tells of an incident in which the Turkish military killed a Syrian Kurdish mother, in front of her own children, as they fled from Daesh fascists. (On the same day, the Turkish military shot 14-year-old Ali Ozdemir in the face, causing him to lose both of his eyes. He had crossed the border to visit his grandmother.)<\/p>\n Syrian journalist Bazran Halil explained in May 2014, months before the ISIS siege on Kobani:<\/p>\n The canton of Kobani is surrounded by ISIS. There is no electricity, no water. People drink water from wells. We are threatened by cholera. Turkey is the only place where people can meet their needs. Think, we don\u2019t even have chickens. For Turkey to close the border means, \u2018Go surrender to ISIS.\u2019 In the border segments under control of Islamist organizations, everything is allowed to cross. Factories looted in Aleppo are carried across in trucks, and nobody says anything.<\/p>\n The Turkish policy, nevertheless, is to shoot, and to shoot to kill. The chairman of the Bar Association in Diyarbakir, a large southeastern Turkish city, insists that execution is the proper punishment to mete out to refugees \u201cillegally\u201d crossing the border. The chief of Diyarbakir\u2019s Human Rights Association explains that soldiers on the border are ordered to shoot to kill. This is Turkey\u2019s \u201cRojava policy\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200athat is to say, its plan to quash the resistance and kill the Kurds.<\/p>\n In fact, while Daesh was carving out huge swaths of Syrian territory in which to impose a fascist \u201ccaliphate\u201d (that is\u00a0recognized by approximately zero of the world\u2019s prominent Muslim scholars, leaders, and institutions<\/a>),\u00a0Turkish fighter jets bombed the Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK<\/a>) \u200a\u2014\u200aa secular, leftist organization affiliated with the YPG\u200a\u2014\u200afor the first time since their 2012 ceasefire. Turkey insisted the bombs were not meant to defend ISIS (there is certainly no way attacking resistance groups as they courageously battle against ethnoreligious supremacist terrorists fighting desperately to take over their land could possibly be construed as implicitly supporting that fascist menace).<\/p>\n Given the long and egregious history of anti-Kurdish racism in Turkey, institutionalized under Atat\u00fcrk, we should not be surprised. Yet Erdo\u011fan\u2019s regime is doing much more than crushing YPG\/PKK freedom fighters\u200a\u2014\u200asomething much, much more perilous. Turkey is fanning the flames of a bloody and mushrooming sectarian conflagration that has already engulfed much of the Middle East and may very well extend further, consuming all in its wake.<\/p>\n _______________________<\/p>\n Ben Norton<\/em>\u00a0is an artist and activist. His website can be found at http:\/\/bennorton.com\/<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n