Online ‘Auctions’ of Yazidi Captives Speak of Ongoing Islamic State Activity in Turkey

Anti-IS operations in Kirsehir resulted in the detention of 12 suspects in 2017, seven in 2018, 16 in 2019 and 57 in 2020. Seven alleged relatives of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were among the predominantly Iraqi suspects. One of them was imprisoned, pending trial, in February 2020, while the other six were sent to the deportation authorities.

In Ankara, a group of shopkeepers financed recruitments in the district of Sincan, known as one of the capital’s Islamist strongholds. Abdulkadir Ercan, a former al-Qaeda suspect, stood out in the recruitment effort. He had been detained in a 2011 police raid on a house full of explosive materials, but was released six months later, along with 13 other suspects. Ercan arranged for scores of jobless or struggling young men to go to Syria, including 21 relatives. Later, foreign IS members would take refuge in Sincan, including widows of slain militants who received financial support through the local networks of IS.

Kecioren was another Ankara district that came under the spotlight. Its outlying slums were teeming with Syrian refugees, which made it easier for IS to gain a foothold for recruitment. The promise of economic benefits also lured young people of unlikely profiles such as boozers, drug abusers and nightclub bouncers. The neighborhood of Hacibayram was also a major recruitment ground.

Gonultas told Al-Monitor that impoverished neighborhoods rife with drug-peddling and arms-trafficking were the main IS recruitment grounds in Ankara and that the recruits were drawn mainly by “the promise of lots of money and lots of women.” She singled out Oguzhan Gozlemecioglu as a leading figure, noting he had no Islamist background but would “change ideologically” to become an emir in Raqqa. “He was killed, while his brother Halil Ibrahim was captured by [Kurdish forces]. Their father served six months in jail for recruitment for IS,” she said.

“Buses were running from Sincan to Raqqa in 2016 and 2017. People would even go [to Syria] to see their children,” she recounted. A clan known as “the Tatlibal group,” which was involved in the recruitment of fighters, has erected an apartment block in Ankara that houses mostly Syrian and Afghan tenants, Gonultas said. “People who have been with IS are residing there as well,” she said.

Atilla Kart, a former legislator for the main opposition Republican People’s Party who closely followed IS recruitments at the time, puts the blame on the government. According to him, the inadequate efforts against IS have to do with the climate the government has created and the institutional erosion in the country.

Kart told Al-Monitor that police had grown reluctant to take on Islamist groups unless they receive explicit orders from Ankara. He recalled an incident in 2015, when a family, trying to trace a son who had joined IS, failed to set the police into action even after providing the address of a cell house in Gaziantep near the Syrian border. Kart contacted a local police chief to help the family. “He told me, ‘You are right. The parents want us to raid the place but we cannot do so without instructions from Ankara.’ All the information was there — how many people stayed in the house and from which provinces they had come. So, that is how Turkey came to the current point,” Kart said.

IS militants in Turkey continue also to transfer money through jewelers and exchange offices, using the “hawala” method. The detentions are just the tip of the iceberg, with the IS network much larger than it is generally imagined.

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/03/turkey-syria-yazidi-captives-speak-of-isis-ongoing-activity.html#ixzz6qzISuU1b