Angry Planet - My enemy’s enemy - Turkey’s blind eye toward Islamic State

Episode Date: June 29, 2017

Turkey is a member of NATO, an American ally and a bulwark against the broiling chaos of the Middle East. That’s the story at least. The truth is far more complicated. Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would arm the Kurds -an ethnic minority whose territory spreads across Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. No one likes Daesh and the Kurds have done an incredible job pushing back against the religious zealots. But Turkey has a venomous relationship with the Kurds and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly called them terrorists. Worse, there’s good evidence that Turkey is helping, or at least turning a blind eye to, Islamic State activity on its border. This week on War College, war correspondent Norma Costello walks us through the complicated history of the Kurds, Turkey and the Islamic State. According to Costello, the state sponsored violence against the Kurds in Southeast Turkey is one of the great unreported tragedies of the 21st century and Erdogan’s support of Islamic State is a calculated strategy to suppress the Kurds in Turkey. By Matthew Gault Produced by Bethel HabteSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters News. When people talk about Erdogan supporting ISIS, they would like to say it along the lines of, well, you know, he's a Salafist and he's what, and he's all these things. Okay, yeah, maybe he is, but one thing he really hates is the Kurds. So if he can use proxies, be they the FSA or be they ISIS, to fight the war that he is fighting,

but getting overwhelmed by, he'll happily do it. So the idea that, you know, he would be supplying them with basic necessities or allowing freedom of movement, it's, you know, it's just normal. You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm your host, Matthew Galt. With me today is freelance journalist Norma Castello. Her work has appeared on Vice, War is Boring, Al Jazeera, and the Independent. She splits her time between Ireland and the Middle East, and it's in Ireland that I catch her today. She spent a lot of time in Turkey in the past six months, and she's preparing

for another trip back as we speak. Norma, thank you so much for joining us. Hi, Matthew. elephant in the room today is U.S. President Donald Trump saying that he's interested and is going to go forward with plans to arm the Kurds. Obviously, this is going to upset Turkey. And I'm wondering if you can give our audience, so they kind of have an understanding, a little bit of the background between the Turks and the Kurds and why there's some tension there. Well, the relationship between the Kurdish population within Turkey and the rest of the country has always been quite fraught, even let's say Turkey, if you divide it through ideological lines, you would have the liberals in the West or the Kemalists. Then in the central Anatolian area, you have a lot of, you know,

they would be quite conservative people. It's a lot more rural there. It's a lot more agricultural. And then in the southeast, you have the Kurdish populations. Now, historically speaking, the Kurds have faced, I mean, their history is, you know, one of the bloodiest histories in the Middle East. It's been constant repression. They've experienced what, you know, you could call to an extent, a form of ethnic cleansing down there. And in 1983 to 84, they started a military movement against this. So this was set up by a guy called Abdullah Oshelan, who's now become sort of a cult figure to them. I mean, he is their dear leader supreme.

He established the PKK, which is a sort of Marxist-Lennon, leaning group, which had an armed wing, which started to carry out a series of bombings and military attacks against Turkish police and military targets. This then sparked waves of violence, which we still see today, where we have military cracktounds from the Turkish authorities, who are, you know, they're determined to basically quell this Kurdish insurgency. Now, You have to look at this in ways. And I guess, Matt, to make it easier for the audience to understand this, I'm going to talk about what happened from 2015 up until present day.

Because obviously to get into the history of that movement, it's incredibly complex. It transcends borders. It also involves a hell of a lot of international, you know, weapons and international involvement and kind of proxing the PKK as proxy. So if we just start in 2015, what you had was a breakdown in a brief respite in the conflict between the conflict between the PKK and the Turkish authorities. So if you remember around that time we had the Battle of Kobane, and I don't know if you if you remember that,

where ISIS were essentially, they had the city of Kobane under siege. And there was rumours at the time that Turkey was essentially supporting the movement of fighters through Turkey into Kobane, while at the same time blocking Kurdish support from the Turkish side into Syria. Now that then sparked a wave of protests in the southeast of Turkey, which were the Kurdish population, you know, they were watching these horrific images of these people are not separated. You know, that's the one thing that I guess we have to really understand about the populations in Turkey and in Syria is that you're looking at,

oh, obviously within the Kurds, it's like a kaleidoscope of ideologies. You might have, I mean, for example, there's the Kurdish Hezbollah, which are an extremist sunny movement. And then you would have the PKK, which are a Marxist-Lenemus movement. But they would be cousins, their neighbours. They're very connected. You would have families living across the border.

So when these guys saw this happen and saw what Turkey was doing, it kind of sparked a wave of protests in the southeast, which eventually ended up culminating in the bombing in Surich, which is a town quite close to the border, where a load of young socialists were gathered and they basically the Kurdish population blamed the Turkish authorities and I was there shortly after that bombing

and the anger and resentment amongst those people was tangible and at that time you had a massive PKK recruitment drive being carried out where young fighters were taken from their traditional base of Candle Mountain in Iraq where pretty much I think every second family I met in the southeast had a relative who had trained there with the PKK. The young people were mobilized. You also had liberals from the West who were now joining the PKK because of what they saw as the Turkish state being complicit in a sort of Wahhabism or what the term they use is Islamophatism, that that was happening within the country. So this then led to what we now know as a war that has, you know, largely been ignored. I mean, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the actual situation in the southeast, and it wouldn't surprise me if you weren't.

The media has been completely restricted. I mean, every time I go there, and I've been covering this war since since inception, you know, since, well, since this wave, let's say, 2015, you are constantly monitored by. special forces. It's incredibly dangerous. It's possibly the most dangerous place I've ever worked. And I'm not saying that as a sort of in any sense, kind of, is it in a bravado way. It's, it's terrifying because you're up against the apparatus of the state. And the Turkish state, obviously being a NATO member, is incredibly well equipped. They have sophisticated technology. Your phone, for example, will be monitored. You will be followed. You will be, I, I, I've managed to, I mean, we're looking at it in a number of days, which is why I'm talking to you about this, because I do expect to get arrested. I do expect something to happen. I mean, it is happening continuously to my colleagues. And they're few and far between. I remember attending a Nauru celebration, which was in 2016, and this is Kurdish New Year. And Salahatine Dermatash, who's the leader of the Kurdish, pro-Kurdish party, the HDP, who is an

incredibly erudite and articulate man was taken and arrested as part of the post-coup crackdown. Now, from that time on, you kind of had a situation where media stopped coming. Even at that celebration, I turned to him at one point and I said, where is the BBC? Where is the Guardian? Where are the New York Times? And he laughed and said, well, you know, since this war started, nobody has come here. And there used to be a thing he made a crack about, you know, there's a job called war journalism. And obviously people don't think it applies in Turkey.

So we are looking at a media blackout in the region completely. And also what we face as reporters. For example, if you walk into, they started to carry out a series of curfews in the cities, in the Kurdish towns and cities. So what they would do is they would block all entry and exit points to these, you know, to these areas. Now, these areas would have a lot of young PKK fighters involved in what they saw as, you know, their latest Kurdish insurgency. And they were emboldened as well by what was happening in Syria. So they thought that this was, you know, finally their chance to kind of, you know, to have a successful campaign against the state. But they carried out this series of curfews.

We couldn't get in or out of cities. These were mount by Turkish special forces. They used armor cars. They had tanks in some areas. and they were starting out, I guess, from what I saw, and it's unfortunate because obviously I wish I had, you know, more video and more photos to really explain to people visually what they did to those areas. But it's impossible.

You know, I mean, you take a photo and you're automatically arrested. So there's no photography of the region coming out. And what they were doing is street by street just demolishing the Kurdish areas. Now, they've done this before. I mean, they did carry out, you know, we would, in. Europe, we call it a genocide. They completely deny this against the Armenian people. So this is just sort of when a state never makes reparations or never even acknowledges that, then you're laying at a template that allows you to just, you know, spiral forward in whatever way you want.

And what they kind of did was street by street systematically destroy Kurdish areas. I mean, Sharnak, for example, one of the cities, I think at the last time that I was there, now bear in mind, I can't even get into Sharnak, I can go outside it. 80% of the city was reported to have been destroyed. We're trying to assess the damage as journalists. I mean, sometimes activists might be able to send us photos that they take from airplanes as they're flying in and out of Diyarbakar, so we can even get an assessment of what happened in what is known as the capital of the Kurds,

the Arbacar, one of the biggest cities in that region. We still can't assess the damage. the photos that, you know, I have seen, it looks like Aleppo in there. And obviously, with the media blackout, you have sort of, they're controlling the flow of information to what they're actually doing. And then you also have a European Union that's petrified because they made a very, you know, it was morally kind of reprehensible deal with the Turkish state to stem the flow of migrants into and refugees. to Europe. So Europe stayed silent. Now, last year I spoke to the EU Commissioner for Human Rights. He had prepared a report on the South East. And I asked him, OK, you have this report ready. How did you manage to ascertain the information? Because obviously, you know, I work on the ground there and it's incredibly difficult to even move in these cities without being followed and watched and having to shake off special forces. And he said, well, you know, well, we didn't really go into the affected areas, which obviously, you know, I was baffled by it,

but, you know, how are you going to, how are you going to produce this report? And you, just to give your readers a little bit of context here, so he's the EU Commissioner for Human Rights, which is part of the Council of Europe. This is sort of like a feeder institution for the European Union. Now, Turkey is a member of the Council of Europe. So you can imagine carrying out an investigation on, you know, gross human rights violations. against a Council of Europe member is also, you know, quite problematic. They produced their report. They held it. They didn't publish it automatically because obviously Europe was making, you know, we were making our deals with with Erdogan about stopping the refugees from coming. And now it is out. It's out in the public domain. It's, it's, it's,

tame reading. But it's as close to the reality of the situation, then then I was actually impressed with what they managed to produce given the limited access that they had. This is largely a forgotten war. I mean, when we talk about war in the Middle East or eyes are drawn to Syria, they're drawn to Iraq. But Turkey is not somewhere that we see, we would imagine the level of devastation to civilian populations and, you know, infrastructural destruction. We just don't think about that kind of thing happening in Turkey. and they've done a pretty good job with keeping us as journalists out of the region.

You also have to remember as well that anybody who is operating for, who is reporting for, let's say, a big organization, it's rare that they will come to the southeast. They want to report about Syria. They obviously have, you know, that is a huge story as well that needs to be covered and they can get access to people in Gaziant, Tem, and they can, you know, get their refugee stories and focus on that.

But if they appear in the southeast, they will be deported. I mean, this week, a French journalist who was a freelancer for LaMaud and the Washington Post, I think it was the Washington Post, he was deported. Now, so they're like, I mean, they're indiscriminately targeting journalists. And the New York Times have also had their reporters deported as well. So it's, you know, it's, it's a. It's an amazing cover-up. And even when I use that term cover-up,

in the cities where they have destroyed, you know, vast neighborhoods, they erect white tarp. So you have huge white sheeting blocking, you know, the destruction that's literally behind it. It's the most bizarre thing. And again, I wish I had, you know, an image of this. But unfortunately, the last time I tried to take one, I was with a photographer and we were put into an armored car and we were detained.

So you're not going to see these images. I'm not going to be able to bring them to you. And it's a sad reflection that, you know, states like the European Union continue to support what's happening down there. And I mean, even Theresa May, obviously with Brexit, you know, the UK are spiraling into this kind of frenzy of like we need to develop trade links with people. And instead of visiting, let's say, a country like Ireland, their neighbours, she went straight over and met Erdogan and negotiated a 100 million pound deal, arms deal. What is it about Erdogan and Turkey that makes him so attractive to the West? Why do people want to make deals with him?

Well, look at where he is. And I mean, also historically speaking, Europe has loved Turkey as that buffer zone between us and the madness. And also, he's expedient, you know. He knows how to play the game. He knows that European governments are facing, you know, their own. own issues within their populations. I mean, you have like increasingly an increasing wealth disparity. You have, you know, a lot of left and right wing movements emerging on the extreme ends of the spectrum. And social democracy, which was kind of the, you know, the status quo in Europe

is crumbling. So anything like, for example, the refugees would be the spark that would like chaos for governments here. And obviously politicians want to stay in power. So they're going to do anything in order to keep their populations happy. Also, he's, he's, he's wonderful at using terrorism. He's wonderful at this. He's wonderful at fearmongering when it comes to how, you know, he sees himself as this kind of, you know, I'm really trying my best to stop the terrorists here so that they don't come over to you guys.

Yet at the same time, then he'll speak to his own people and he'll say that, you know, like I don't know if you were familiar with the campaign that led up to the recent referendum where he, you know, you know, He sent politicians to Europe who made inflammatory comments about European values and said, you know, Europeans shouldn't feel safe if they continue to antagonize Turks. And, you know, they created this whole divide between Europe and Turkey ideologically, which, you know, obviously kind of supported him during that campaign. That's how he sold it to his own people. Yeah. You know, we were the boogeyman.

It's the sort of, you know, he even, I think he suggested at one point that the, European leaders met the Pope and that we were crusaders, you know. And that's the kind of thing that he's been, that's the rhetoric, he's brilliant, of playing for his demographic. Turkey is a largely secular country though, right? And Erdogan is not. Or is that, or am I completely off base? That's, that's sort of a general misconception about Turkey.

You have to remember, like, I mean, what Ataturk imposed on those people was a sort of forced Western, Western gaze, you know, now you are now secular. You are now going to be like Europeans. And what that actually created, I think, you have to remember. I mean, they fought quite bravely in World War I. I mean, Gallipoli was a victory for Turkey, but it's sort of like we stripped them, or well, at a Turk and the West, stripped them of their identity.

I think a lot of them feel like that. And especially in Anatolia, they feel like they were robbed of their faith, they were robbed of their culture and their values, and this imposed idea of what it meant to be a civilized and, you know, progressive Turk was thrown at them. So people didn't stop practicing religion the minute Atatur came to power, you know, they continued and they were very religious and obviously he's appealing to that. And from my experience in Turkey, I think every time it's Friday prayers at the mosque, they're busy and it's young people. It's a younger generation, you know.

That are more religious. Yeah, definitely. You do see that. You also have to divvy it up as well. I mean, obviously in the Kurdish cities, which is more of a kind of Marxist-Leninist influence, they are a lot more secular. In the West, obviously, you know, they're a lot more secular as well. But when you go through the center of the country, you know, you, as a woman, you know, you do have to dress modestly and obey, you know, the basic tenements of Islamic culture. What about the military? Is it still kind of largely a secular organization or am I completely wrong about that, too?

The Turkish military are stretched. They are completely stretched. I mean, they're using the FSA as proxies in places like al-Bab, you know, and they've repackaged them. I mean, the FSA, you know, their fundamental goal was to overthrow asset. And now they've been repurposed as a tool for Turkey to stop the Kurds linking their cantons and creating a Kurdish border, you know, at the south. And I think that really is symbolic of the fact that they just really don't have the boots to put on the ground. And also working in the southeast, when I. would get access to recently, I don't know, the civilians that were allowed to leave the curfewed

areas, you know, when they would come to the cities, I would interview them. And there was a sort of general consensus that there was a lot of soldiers working in places like Jizre in New Saibn, in Shirenak, who spoke Arabic and who were, well, as one woman said, she said, they looked like Daish, you know. And again, they could be people that were repurposed by the people. Turkish army to again help them. I mean, an old woman. Now again, these are all, you know, I can't substantiate these outside from civilian accounts, but the thing is I have so many civilian accounts and I have them from so many different areas that it's really hard to go against the grain with this. But they have said that they came into their homes in the

southeast and when they saw the Quran, they, these Arabic speaking soldiers said, well, we were told you were kafas. We were told you were at your commune. us and that's why we came here and they let some of the elderly people go and apologize to them. So again, if this is an ongoing practice, then that means that Turkey is being forced to repurpose FSA troops to help them with their war against the Kurds, which shows that they're weak. Now, let's get on to what's going on then with, you know, internally within the army. So the army, you know, it does have that chemeless streak to it. Now, he's doing a lot of dismantling.

Like, I mean, even within the recent referendum, if your family were connected to the military, your chances of getting into politics are pretty much over now. Also, during the coup, I think it's, and the post-coup purge, we've seen him target academics, liberals, journalists, feminists, all, you know, all of the usual targets. But I think if something else happens,

And if there is another, another coup, and if this coup starts to affect the military, and if he starts to arrest senior generals, I mean, you have to look at that from a pragmatic perspective and say, well, is that not going to weaken the military firstly when they're engaged in so many conflicts on their borders and internally? And there will be this Kurdish insurgency. I cannot see it ending any time soon. So I don't know. I mean, we don't know what the military are thinking. at the moment and obviously this speculation, but really no one knows. We can essentially say that from what I've seen, they're struggling, you know, within the country. Do you think this referendum that gave him more power, was a direct reaction to this coup,

to that attempted coup? No, no, I mean, they've been talking about the referendum since 2005. So, well, they were talking about, you know, the constitutional changes since then. So this was just, you know, he's his kind of, he, it was, it was, it was. is an opportune time to bring it to the people. But what was very surprising about that referendum was when you actually look at the margin. And I've been speaking to people who are in exile. I mean, this is another thing that's not widely reported. A lot of the academics and journalists that fled Turkey right before the travel ban, which is when, you know, they can no longer leave the country,

when they, when they left, most of them went to Germany. They now are essentially stateless people. So their passports have been revoked. So these guys are just sitting in Germany stateless. And I was in communication with them a lot during the referendum. And they were very surprised at the result. And everybody was pretty happy with it. Now, obviously, they would have preferred if it was a no vote. But given the campaign and the money thrown into the yes vote and, you know, the overall crackdown on the no campaign,

they were really surprised at the margin. And also, he lost the biggest six. I mean, that's something you really have to think about too. So all this referendum seems to have done is polarise his country to the point where I have no idea what the future will hold for him. And also think about it from the economy. I mean, tourists just aren't going to Istanbul anymore. Everybody's afraid to travel to the country now.

And tourism is a huge part of their economy. And also, again, the Kurdish insurgency in the Southeast is costing them an awful lot of money. So he has a declining economy. He has a polarized country ideologically. And then he has a Kurdish insurgency emboldened by what's happening in northern Syria, a area that is called Rochava. So he's really sitting on a Tinder box, if you want to put it like that, you know? Yeah. I mean, you make it sound, some people here in the West said that that referendum was a rejection of democracy by the Turkish people. But you make it sound like the exact opposite. Well, obviously it passed, you know.

So, I mean, there was, but you've got to look at a lot of the irregularities that went on. And I think when you think about the margin, again, he was shocked, I think. I think the AKP did not expect it to be as close as it was. Because essentially, they had thought that they'd won, you know, they thought that there was enough. It was kind of an interesting campaign. You see, we're going to save you from the PKK terrorists. We're going to save you from ISIS terrorism. And then they went and picked at, you know, the boogeybed in Europe and sent their guys to Germany and to the Netherlands.

And I think in the Netherlands, the Turkish foreign minister referred, I think, to the Dutch as fascists and Nazis. And obviously the Dutch who bore the brunt of a lot of a lot of Nazi aggression were not too pleased with that. So they created, you know, this imaginary fictitious war between Europe, the Crusaders. And then reverting to that language as well was very interesting. So he did a series of things to sort of, you know, incite, a sort of distrust for the West and also fearmongering in his own country. But it wasn't as successful as he imagined. And losing those big cities is quite shocking, you know. To switch tracks, this just occurred to me.

As you were talking about, they refer to the PKK and the Kurds as terrorists. don't those alleged terrorists kind of stand between them and ISIS? You, okay, this is obviously, you know, the kind of thing that you have to break down kind of simply for people. And I also have to be cautious what I say here as a journalist because I could be brought up for PKK propaganda next time I'm there. Turkey, Turkey's relationship with the PKK is that. venomous. Okay, the state's relationship with the PKK is venomous. Now, the PKK are an extreme Marxist-Leninist group who carry out suicide attacks. They're not, you know, they're not, they're not, we're not talking about puppies here, you know, but obviously for us, as we perceive this in the

West, we would say, obviously you have to stop ISIS because ISIS, you know, we know what they're doing. We know what they did in Shingal with the Ysidi women. We know that they, they hate us. I mean, look, I follow them on their signal channels. I spend a lot of time researching them. And I mean, I kind of, ISIS hate everything and everybody all the time. And that's, it's not just the West. It's everyone. They hate Turkey. They call him a kaffar as well. He's, you know, he's, I think that their reaction to Erdogan is that he's too close to the West. But there is a relationship between Turkey and ISIS. So essentially Turkey have a sort of a softer stance to the Islamic State than we, can imagine or perceive, especially if you compare it to their reaction to the PKK. Now, obviously,

you know, we've all seen the images of the Kurds in Syria, the YPG fighting ISIS, and we've been, you know, wow, this is, you know, these women fighting ISIS and whatever. But the Turks are now attacking the YPG, which is ironically funded by America at the moment. And there's also kind of an interesting story that sums up how much Turkey hates the Kurds and will do anything to stop the a Kurdish state on their border. Because you have to remember as well, they could lose a lot of land if this Kurdistan, if the Kurdish question gets resolved in the way the Kurds wanted to. They lose a lot and they lose a lot of valuable minerals and resources.

So that's not a part of Middle East that they want to give over anytime soon. So ISIS being sort of a contained problem as far as they would see it, the Kurds have always been the biggest issue because Turkey won't lose anything to ISIS, but they could lose an awful lot of land if the Kurds unite. But there's kind of a good example of this would be Barazani, who is in Iraqi Kurdistan. He is quite friendly with Erdogan, ironically. And Erdogan and Barazani have a very strong relationship. Now, before journalists used to cross freely between Iraq into Syria and we'd kind of, you know, flip between the two areas. But then it was St. Patrick. day actually last year. When I tried to cross, we were told that the border was no longer open

and that it was closed. That was due to political pressure by Turkey. They didn't want, because you've to remember, this was an area where fighters were flooding through. They were going from candle in Iraq into Syria and then fighting and then coming back. And, you know, they would, so they were kind of going Turkey, Iraq, Syria, you know, so you've Kurdish militias just moving freely around these areas. So Turkey put a stop to that. Now, then this week we found out that, you know, that Donald Trump has essentially, you know, given the sign off for heavy arms for the Kurds. But yesterday or the day before, an American YPG fighter, so a volunteer who was fighting with, you know, the militia that Trump is just after arming, was arrested for being a member of the

YPG in Iraqi Kurdistan. So I think the charge they threw at him was something like illegally crossing the border. But so on the one hand, you have America saying, yes, YPG, we're with you, we're with you. But then America obviously has a very powerful NATO ally in Turkey. And then you have, and I think this American fighter is kind of symbolic of that. You know, he's caught in that where all those conflicting interests meet, which has led him to an Iraqi prison and has sort of, you know, I think it's high. highlights really have confused and messy all these alliances are at the moment. And now ill thought out as well because Trump matters, let's say.

I don't think that they really, really thought, they must have thought what this means for Turkey. But I mean, the relationship between the PKK and the YPG has been completely misconscrewed just to suit America's narrative. So by separating those two militias, they're kind of keeping the Americans happy, but it's just totally untrue. I mean, those two militias are incredibly linked. Why do we need to, here in the West and in America need to believe that those two are separate, just because of the ideological differences? No, no, because of Turkey. There's zero ideological differences between the YPG and PKK. No, there is.

I mean, there is some in the methods and modus operandi of joining, but they both follow the teachings of Abdux, that Oshalan, they both are socialists. They're both. I mean, the similarities outweigh the differences, you know. And they're fraternal organizations, really, because they, you know, they both fly the same flag. I think, well, they're not the exact same flag, but for the Kurdish, you know, they both fly the Kurdish. They want, they want, you know, Kurdish rights and autonomy for Kurdish people. I think America's narrative on this is just essentially to try.

try and keep Turkey happy by saying that we would never, ever arm the PKK, we're just giving weapons to the YPG. And then this ridiculous claim of how they're going to keep track of those weapons, which is hilarious. I have no idea because, you know, well, you, an Albanian Kalishnikov in the Middle East could go through, you know, the entire spectrum of countries. So I have no idea how they intend on doing this. And it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's political fluff, you know? Right. Long term, do you think it's going to affect relations between America in Turkey at all? Definitely, definitely 100%.

I mean, they have armed a group that the Turkish Authority sees a terrorist organization. So Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist organization. And they have armed them and they're emboldening the Kurds and they're enabling them to link to cantons and create a conjoined Kurdish state, which has always been Turkey's number one fear. So it's, you know, you have to see. But I mean, like I've been speaking to commanders with the female units and they've said, you know, we know that they're using us about the Americans, that they're just using us now because they want to have this victory where they can celebrate that they've gotten ISIS out of Raka when really, you know, our people will die and we're the one doing the actual on the ground fighting. And Trump just wants to be able to celebrate this and say, look, you know, I did what Obama couldn't. And then the minute that that's done, they'll turn their back. on us and go back to their

NATO circle, you know, their elitist NATO circle, I think was what she called it. But obviously there's a lot of truth in that. All right, War College listeners, we are back here with Norma. It's been about a month since we recorded what you just listened to, and

Norma, the last time we had spoken, we talked a little bit about Turkey and the Islamic State, but there were some stories that I think you were a little bit hesitant at the time to tell us, and you are less hesitant now. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously that's due to what's happened between now and then. And it was two weeks ago, I was refused entry into Turkey now. It wasn't wholly, you know,

it wasn't a shock. It didn't come out of the blue. I was expecting it. And, you know, I'm not going to be kind of incredibly dramatic about this. The police were quite nice to me when I asked them why I was being refused. They told me, you know, and interrogated me for four to five hours, which really wasn't that horrendous. It might sound like it was much worse than it actually was. So the things that I guess, you know, as journalists working in Turkey, we have to be incredibly careful about what we speak about. And obviously as a journalist who's very invested in the Southeast,

I have to be even more careful about what I say publicly. But now obviously I have, unfortunately, the liberty to speak at ease about this. in 2015 I first started to cover what was happening on the borders between Turkey and Syria. Now that sort of started for me personally in Surich and talking to survivors of the terrorist attack that happened there, which was at the time completely the Turkish authority said this is ISIS, this is Daesh. They have attacked a rally of left-leaning socialist students. Now that actually I wrote about that for war is boring at the time, but there were some details of that that we really couldn't speak about because obviously you couldn't travel back through those regions or even enter Turkey if you speak freely about this. Turkish, these civilian accounts, they all concur.

Like there's no difference. You could talk to somebody who is an old lady and then you could talk to someone who's a young student activist and these two people have never met but their accounts are exactly the same. And what they all said was the Turkish authorities were very slow to provide any aid to any of the students that were attacked at that time. So that laid in the form of, let's say, ambulances initially secondary medical treatment was slow to happen. And there was a sort of general consensus amongst all the local population that this was an attack on the Kurds, perhaps by the Islamic State, that was sort of condoned from Ankara. This has been a running motif between Turkey and ISIS. When we talk about the Kurds, you have to look at it in the context of your enemy's enemy is your friend. And they would be slow to offer any help to the Kurds when they know that they're establishing their own autonomous state in Rojava in Syria and that they could end up encircled by a Kurdish insurgency that could be.

very damaging for the country. So there was a lot of rumors at the time and a lot of ongoing. I mean, all I can tell you is from the accounts that I've collected, I'm actually sitting here in my apartment looking at reams and reams of notes, which all have audio recordings to back them up from a disparate group of people that would all say that, yes, that was an attack that was, even through the states in action, condoned by the state. So then fast-futable. forwarding from Surge onto what we saw then in D'Arbacar. So this was 2016. 2016, what was happening at the time was the, basically they were destroying civilian and PKK.

You can't, you know, you have to be careful here because, yes, the PKK were operating in these areas, but it doesn't mean everybody in these areas supported the PKK. So the military offensive that happened then led to a lot of civilian casualties. they were dumping bodies behind Deha University, which we know about. They were taking bodies out in the rubble and dumping them in other parts. But what had happened was doctors in the hospital in Diarbacar had started to protest. And I managed to grab some interviews with these people who were, you know, you cardiologists to plastic surgeons. And one thing that they had all complained about at the time was that they were being woken up at, you know, in the middle of the night and brought.

by Turkish military vehicles to Gaziantep, which we all know is a hotbed for ISIS. I mean, I don't know if you've ever been to Gaziantep or flown to Gaziantep, and everybody on the plane with you back then was essentially Dight in the making. And they were being brought and they were being told that you had to treat these people. Now, every one of the doctors that I spoke to said that everybody that they treated was not Turkish, not Kurdish, and that they were Arabs, but they didn't think that they were. Syrian. So they were rendering aid to ISIS fighters, is what they, they allege. Yeah. What the, well, the doctors said it bluntly. They said, we are being forced to treat ISIS fighters and we are not allowed in to

treat the civilians in Soar, which brings me back to the civilian, you know, the civilian casualties of what was happening in the southeast. So these doctors were furious because what you had, like, you had a tragedy happening, let's say, five kilometers down the road where civilians were being massacred. But at the same time, time they weren't allowed in to treat them, but they were being driven in the middle of the night to Antep to treat ISIS fighters. So these doctors were interesting as well because not all of them were Kurdish. You have to be quite careful because the, you know, the historical issues between the Kurds and the Arabs go back a long way and you are constantly being fed propaganda on both sides.

But these doctors, they were, you know, a mix of everything. You know, you could have Arabs, you could have Kurds, you could have Turks, but they all said this story and this was something that continued to happen. Since the time that I interview these doctors, we are no longer in touch and we're no longer able to communicate. And I have a feeling which I have tried to find out about one of the doctors in particular, but I think he's been arrested. Now, I can't say that, you know, until I can confirm it, but right now it looks highly likely that he's been taken by Turkish authorities, possibly for speaking to me about what happened. And then, I mean, we'll go on to the next level, which is then what you see. So the foreign fighters,

who kind of their motley crew of sort of disenfranchised ex-military to kind of ideological socialists that are fighting with the YPG against ISIS. They're telling me the same story over and over again. So, for example, when they were in Man Bej, they were saying that the minute that they would get a village or a town, you know, or anything in that area, it's a simple soldier's story, but they would say, we used to love it when we could kind of access the dye shop. or the Dish houses because all of their produce was coming from Turkey.

So it was always amazing stuff that we managed to get. So they would talk about the types of food that they were able to get, the types of cigarettes, the types of. So I mean, that is a very, and I have photos of all of this stuff, but that is a very, again, a tangible, you know, a tangible kind of representation of how Turkey was allowing this freedom of movement of goods at the time between Syria and Turkey. So all of the shops were well stocked with Turkish products.

I mean, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that that shows that the border was porous and, you know, that people were allowed to pass by with supplies. Now, another, and I think the most poignant story that I myself personally witnessed was at the border with Killis, where I spent a day sitting watching what was happening at the border. It was February, maybe April or February 2016. and what I saw was convoy after convoy of fighters that you knew they weren't local. They used to get dropped off at a certain point if they were going in illegally and the taxi drivers would pick them up from the airport and they wouldn't even have to show them the GPS coordinates because they would know where to bring them.

This is how frequent this was happening. But let's say the guys that were going in officially through the border. You had guys that were definitely not native to the region, happily being waved through by Turkish authorities. In the same time that you had this, you had a pedestrian crossing where I saw, and I mean, it's one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen as a journalist covering this region. I saw a 14-year-old boy with a colostomou bag who was literally being led back to his death, and everyone had agreed and said this.

There was two old men bringing him back because they said it's better that he dies in Syria. I mean, he was so frail. his legs look like, you know, twigs. And he had to queue up in the sun for six, seven hours to cross back in to die. Yet at the same time, kind of in this parallel universe, you're just seeing these guys floating through the border who are not from the region. Now, I mean, these are anecdotal stories that I can tell you. Obviously, people are still working on the details to this.

And a lot of the details that are coming out are usually. from sort of ISIS operatives that have been captured by the YPG and they've been interrogated. But, you know, we don't know how much of this is forced confession as well. We also have, I guess, the oil is the biggest kind of finger-pointing thing we can do to Turkey. But there was a lot more, there were many elaborate ways that the state funded and continues to fund ISIS. And there's one point that I'll bring up about the FSA soldiers, which is the, that they've been repurposed now to fight against the Kurds in the Southeast under the banner of Salafist Islam, which isn't that different to what ISIS are doing.

And they've been told, you know, you have this idea of the Qafar and it's a shared and common enemy. So I think when people talk about, you know, Erdogan supporting ISIS, they would like to say it along the lines of, well, you know, he's a Salafist and he's Wahhabi. and he's all these things. Okay, yeah, maybe he is, but one thing he really hates is the Kurds. So if he can use proxies, be they the FSA or be they ISIS, to fight the war that he is fighting, but getting overwhelmed by, he'll happily do it. So the idea that, you know, he would be supplying them with basic necessities or allowing freedom of movement, it's, you know, it's just normal. Can you talk about just briefly the oil convoys? Because I think that's kind of one of the more high-profile stories that really

that has, you know, some footage and some... That's been well documented. There's been an awful lot of investigative journalism done on that. I think we won't see the fallout from that until we'll see what they call the Raka scatter, which is when senior commanders from ISIS will flee Raka and desperately try, because these guys are really into preserving their own lives.

They're not these fatalists people assume that they are. You know, they have tourniquets, they have everything. They've Israeli bandages. they're not fatalists and they're not martyrs for the cause despite what their propaganda says. They will desperately try to reach Turkey and then Europe and then obviously they hopefully will get intercepted on the way and then we'll get more of the details out about that.

Do you think that long-term Erdogan will harbor any of these people if things turn bad for ISIS or? Well, we can jump off the cliff here. Okay, let's do it. Yeah, let's jump. Well, essentially, I think, think you have to look at where he's rallying his support from. Now remember, I think I spoke about this, how the referendum really left him in the lurch. He expected to get an overwhelming majority

and that just never materialized. And there's one very telling picture, you know, where he's looking behind the curtain and he looks nervously out into the audience. And he's worried because he's seeing these people and he's going, oh my God, crap, I thought that they were all at my side. And it turns out that I'm in a divided country. Who will support him? Okay, so let's look at this. Who will support him. People who like the idea of the strong leader, of the sultan of, you know, the Ottoman legacy. I mean, there's ridiculous photos of him and his palace with surrounded by guys dressed up like Ottoman soldiers and it's just laughable. But the people who would support this would be people who want this sort of, well, you know, he's Islamic. At least he's Islamic and he's a strong leader and he'll

lead us. So if, for example, if I was part of the Rakhos scatter and I wanted some more easy to hide out? Oh, I think I think I would have a nice time in Anatolia. Like, I don't think I would have too many problems there. I mean, the link between MIT and ISIS is ongoing. Like, we're seeing this all the time. So, you know, even if the Turkish police try to arrest ISIS operatives, sometimes MIT blocked them from doing that, you know? So it's kind of interesting how the upper echelons of his private army seem to be running down the Salafas line. So, no, I mean, it's a perfectly reasonable assumption to think that Islamists could go to Turkey when all else fails. Norma Costello, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. Thank you for listening to this week's show. War College was created by Jason Fields and Craig Hecht. Matthew Galt hosts the show and Wrangles the Guests. It's produced by me, Bethelhabte. You can tweet us suggestions for future shows. We're at war underscore college. Thanks for listening.