The Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) warns that the Islamic State (ISIS) could be using Turkey as tactical base reorganize and subsequently wage attacks in Europe countries.
According to the Dutch Intelligence, a large number of ISIS foreign fighters who have traveled to Syria from all over the world have entered Syria through Turkey.
In an intelligence report published in the beginning of the week, it showed how ISIS and even Al-Qaeda use Turkey as a tactical base to reorganize their fighters and further wage their insurgence in the war-torn Syria.
According to AIVD, the insurgent group has been able to exploit the relative peace in Turkey to hearth plans to extends its jihad into Syria and other regions of the Middle East. The Dutch intelligence warns than ISIS reorganization as rife threat aimed at extending its insurgency into the Europe countries.
Instead Turkey has concentrated on fighting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), for instance as compared to fighting the Islamic State. The report highlighted the disparity of PKK fighters to ISIS fighters in Turkish prisons.
According to the report, there are over 10,000 PKK operatives compared to around 1,350 ISIS fighters in Turkish jails.
The report further points out that, Turkey has not conducted any operations against al Qaida or its affiliates since 2014, and claims the group “is considered a friend as of now.”
Al-Qaeda “openly advised its members not to carry out attacks in Turkey and they said they would support [Turkey President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan during the elections regardless of how they see democracy, this is according to Ahmet S. Yayla, an Assistant Professor of Homeland Security at DeSales University. Yayla, was the former chief of the counter-terrorism department of the Turkish National Police in Sanliurfa between 2010 and 2013.
In a separate reference, Dr. Aykan Erdemir, a former Turkish parliamentarian and now a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, was cited by open sources saying that the Turkish state considers Kurdish organizations as a more significant threat than any other terror organization. He noted that PKK and its Syrian affiliate, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), “top the list of existential threats” for Ankara.
