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How Influential Are Turkish Spies Within The Islamic State?
Today Zaman is a Turkish daily and part of the Gülen organization. As such it is currently in opposition to the Turkish president Erdogan and some of his policies. So take this with a grain of salt:
During the meetings between Turkish officials and Barzani in Ankara, Barzani spoke on the 150 ISIL militants of Turkish origin who had been captured by Kurdish peshmerga forces during clashes with ISIL. According to sources, Barzani said some ISIL members captured by the peshmerga had identified themselves as members of MİT and he requested that MİT head Fidan clarify the issue.
Barzani also sought assistance from Ankara to remove 500 Turkish nationals in Mosul who are in leading positions in ISIL.
The MIT is the Turkish secret service. It is certainly not the only spy organization whicht has infiltrated the Islamic State. But as Turkey has been the rear base and travel route for the Islamic State and its members the MIT is likely the service with the biggest contingent.
How any spies and/or operators does it have within the Islamic State structures? Even more important – how influential are these within the Islamic State hierarchies?
The Kurdish organizations within Turkey believe that the two big Islamic State attacks on mostly Kurdish rallies, in Suruc and in Ankara, were intended to support Erdogan's reelection. Influential MIT agents within the Islamic State would have been be part of such conspiracies.
The latest piece by Seymour Hersh, just out, also touches on the Turkey – Islamic State cooperation:
[By January 2014] American intelligence had accumulated intercept and human intelligence demonstrating that the Erdoğan government had been supporting Jabhat al-Nusra for years, and was now doing the same for Islamic State. ‘We can handle the Saudis,’ the adviser said. ‘We can handle the Muslim Brotherhood. You can argue that the whole balance in the Middle East is based on a form of mutually assured destruction between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, and Turkey can disrupt the balance – which is Erdoğan’s dream. We told him we wanted him to shut down the pipeline of foreign jihadists flowing into Turkey. But he is dreaming big – of restoring the Ottoman Empire – and he did not realise the extent to which he could be successful in this.’
Can we believe these assertions from Hersh’s anonymous sources:
Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) was running their own foreign policy? (“…‘The Joint Chiefs believed that Assad should not be replaced by fundamentalists . . . a direct challenge to Obama’s policy would have ‘had a zero chance of success’ . . . “We have the power to diminish a presidential policy in its tracks.”’ )
Is this credible? Given the immense efforts made to oust Assad and the frosty relations with Russia for the last two years? No one at JCS ratted out the pro-Assad efforts to gain favor with the neocons? And WHY TELL US THIS NOW?
…what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey…?
But no reference is made to his seminal reporting in “The Redirection” of a US-KSA-Israel conspiracy to use extremists as a weapon!!!
Flynn is a ‘truth teller’ but says: “Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria”
Just “looking the other way”???? Not actively supporting them?
‘Bring him the head of Prince Bandar.’
The description of events during 2013 are rather strange. In September of that year, USA came very close to bombing Syria. That is not even mentioned. Does it make any sense for Assad to have asked for the head of Brince Bandar?
‘We worked with Turks we trusted who were not loyal to Erdoğan,’ the adviser said, ‘and got them to ship the jihadists in Syria all the obsolete weapons…
And neither CIA or MIT discovered this?
But as the army gained in strength with the Joint Chiefs’ support, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey escalated their financing and arming of Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State…
JCS helped Syria – counter to US foreign policy – yet there is no mention of the controversy regarding the USA’s ineffective bombing of ISIS?
There was a suspicion that some of those who signed up for training were actually Syrian army regulars minus their uniforms.
I imagine that the Syrian Army conducts their own training. Isn’t it MUCH more likely that the program ‘dropouts’ were ISIS/al Nusra trainees. As reported by CBSNEWS in August 2015, hundreds of trainees “dropped out” because they wanted to fight Assad more than they wanted to fight ISIS. It’s quite likely that the real purpose of the ‘moderate rebel’ training program was to train anti-Assad fighters.
… two Turkish F-16 fighters, apparently acting under more aggressive rules of engagement, shot down a Russian Su-24M jet that had crossed into Turkish airspace…
Repeats the official narrative? Why no mention of Russia’s belief that their planes were ambushed?
The JCS adviser told me that one of Hollande’s main goals in flying to Washington had been to try to persuade Obama to join the EU in a mutual declaration of war against Islamic State.
Could Hollande be that stupid? Or does this just reinforce the hate for Obama, Turkey, and KSA?
Obama now has a more compliant Pentagon.
Pulling punches? How could Hersh fail to point out the irony of Obama’s supposedly bucking the neocons to make peace with Iran while doggedly supporting those who support extremists that make war? And AGAIN: WHY TELL US THIS NOW?
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Dec 20 2015 18:28 utc | 19
Also, whenever you see a Hersh article, always think “limited hangout.” Lysander at 13.
Absolutely. And perhaps even worse. I believe his piece on the Ghouta chem. attacks (which I and others went into with some thoroughness, right here, Petri Kohn amongst others) was in part fabrication. From sources of course, I have no doubt ‘sources’ communicated what he reported (maybe there was some cherry picking, who knows.) But he didn’t take the time or effort to look at the ‘available’ / ‘real’ facts.
> Such as pictures and vids of the attack, the MSF report, the phone calls, a tally of the victims, the medical report on the victims, a location / time line analysis, etc.
His piece on that, link, goes into all kinds of convolutions about the checking and use of rockets, sarin, etc. .. but never questions the MSM ‘agreed – on ’ description of event itself.
He works with second-hand analysis, layered-over interpretation, narrative, and facts thrown into a certain story-line. Sometimes that can’t be avoided, and the piece (linked by b) is certainly interesting and important, as you say. In other cases, the facts on the ground matter, and are at least partially available, or can be scoped out.
At heart – I’m not dissing Hersh here particularly, or even strongly – journos (and other pundits, speculative commentators, low-level investigators, even a certain brand of ‘conspiracy theorists’, etc.) of this stripe, ACCEPT the events as they have been reported by Gvmt. agencies, spokes-ppl, the media, etc. while seeking out conficting motives, alternative perps, other underground plots, complications, minor inaccuracies, plus indulge in a tiresome expositions of irrelevant details. Not to mention red herrings …
Result: Any event becomes a Rorschach test (an ambiguous pic one can interpet how one likes), appealing to judgment of personality, motive, power, etc., like a detective story, a tv fiction series! Which increases strife between groups, serves to divide and disrupt society.
maybe his worst effort: (Ghouta attacks in LRB)
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin
Posted by: Noirette | Dec 21 2015 16:14 utc | 94
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