Shot in the Foot: Turkey 'Suffering From its Ties to Daesh'

The recent terrorist attack in Istanbul which killed 10 and injured 15 is a grim result of the Turkish policy toward the Daesh terrorist group, Ilias Kouskouvelis, a professor of international studies at the University of Macedonia said.

"Turkey is suffering from its policy of establishing informal ties with Daesh," Kouskouvelis said in an interview with Radio Agency 109.4 FM.

According to the analyst, since 2011 it has been an internationally recognized fact that Turkey has had ties to the so-called "fighters" in northern Iraq and Syria.

"Turkey has helped them, including selling illegal oil. Those have been close ties between those 'fighters' and those avidly supporting Daesh in Turkey," he said.

The professor noted that Greece alongside EU country members warned about unprotected borders, but Ankara denied the allegations.

He also said that the Turkish government is already trying to change its course, including providing military support to Western countries involved in the anti-Daesh campaign.

Kouskouvelis assumed that the recent blast could be a response from Daesh to those efforts to change the strategy.

Media has repeatedly reported that Ankara had ties with a web of Jihadist terrorist groups in Syria. However, the government has denied the claims.

Turkey’s relationship with terrorists came to light after a Russian bomber was shot down by a Turkish jet in Syria in late-November. After the incident, Russia accused Ankara of supporting terrorists and later the Russian Defense Ministry provided evidence that it is involved in selling illegal oil with the terrorists.

Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald, authors of highly-acclaimed books on US foreign policy, told Sputnik that Moscow’s evidence against Turkish officials and Erdogan is both substantial and convincing.

"Turkey has been a major crossroads for narcotics, weapons and human trafficking to Europe for decades," Gould and Fitzgerald said.

Turkey is linked to several Islamist groups and shares mutual enemies with Daesh, Behlul Ozkan, assistant professor at Marmara University in Istanbul, wrote in his article for Politico in late-December.

"Radicals in Syria have regularly received military supplies from Saudi Arabia and Qatar via Turkey, with the full knowledge of the CIA," he wrote.

Ozkan underscored that it has been long claimed that Daesh has taken advantage of Iraq and Syria’s "porous borders" as well as the black market created by the ongoing conflicts there to sell its oil to Turkey and other countries in the region.

"Daesh is entirely an organized crime operation in partnership with the Erdogan family," security consultant and Veteran’s Today senior editor Gordon Duff told Sputnik earlier in January. "The Erdogan family and their friends run organized crime in Austria, in Germany, in the Netherlands… which includes human trafficking on a massive scale, narcotics trafficking [and] credit card fraud."

Turkey might have claimed that it was fully committed to fighting Daesh, but in fact one of Ankara’s main priorities is preventing Syrian Kurds from gaining autonomy, journalist Stuart Rollo told RT.

"Well, Ankara's main priority is to prevent separatism within Turkey, which are Kurdish political parties and forces, and also to establish, to strengthen, the Sunni Arab opposition in Syria and to make sure that they are in a position to dictate the terms of whatever peace eventually does come to Syria," Rollo noted.