100 out of 600 Turkish jihadists fighting in Syria killed: minister

PanARMENIAN.Net - More than 100 of the 600 Turkish citizens that have gone to fight along with jihadist groups like the Islamic State (IS) have been killed in battles, according to intelligence estimates, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said late Tuesday, Nov 24 evening.

Some 7,000 foreigners have been banned from entering Turkey and 1,100 people were deported on suspicions that they may join jihadist groups, the minister said in reply to questions by lawmakers in parliament during budget discussions.

The minister, according to Hurriyet Daily News, said it was unfair to expect Turkey, which has a 1,000-kilometer-long border with Syria and Iraq, to tackle alone the problem of foreign fighters crossing through Turkish territory. He asked Western countries “to share more intelligence with Turkey on suspected militants so that Turkish authorities can stop them from entering the country.”

Turkey has been subjected to criticism that it has turned a blind eye to extremists using its territory to cross into Syria. Since 2013, Ankara has stepped up its efforts to tackle the crossings of foreign fighters through its territory, particularly at airports.

Foreign fighters from Western countries mainly come from Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium to fight with al Qaeda-linked groups like the al-Nusra Front and IS.

European countries, for their part, argue that they cannot arrest suspected fighters departing from their territory because they do not have concrete evidence that these people are going to join the Syrian war, and they cannot restrict their citizens’ freedom of movement.

In September, a member of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Atilla Kart, claimed that at least 16 people from his constituency of Konya, in central Turkey, had traveled to a recruiting center at Turkey’s border with Syria where they met up with other families, some with children. They were then smuggled across the border in small groups, Kart said.

He said the information was based on some family members of the 16 and on security officials who confirmed that the group had traveled to the border.

Turkish and Azerbaijani Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria, released a video recently in which one militant, named as Ebuzer Sahin, talks about "slanders" against IS. The group has been named as the "Cundullah Jamaat," according to RFE/RL.

Another Turkish militant, Abu Yusuf al-Turki of al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, was said by the United States to have belonged to the so-called Khorasan Group, an allegedly secret al Qaeda cell that was planning attacks on Western targets. However, video and other reports from pro-jihadi groups described

Turki not as a shadowy figure but as an elite sniper who ran a sniper training facility in Aleppo province. A Turkey-based pro-Jabhat al-Nusra website, Ummet-i Islam, said that al-Turki had previously fought in Afghanistan.

Cavusoglu's comments about Turkish nationals fighting in IS come after Turkey's Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said last week that Turkey has remanded 16 IS militants in custody but that he was not aware of their nationalities. Three alleged IS militants suspected of involvement in an attack in Nigde province are currently on trial in Ankara.

One foreign militant who was fighting in Syria and who is apparently in custody in Turkey is a Daghestani national identified as Abu Banat or Magomed Abdurakhmanov. Abdurakhmanov was arrested in Turkey in 2013, two months after he apparently appeared on a video in which he beheaded a Catholic priest and two other men. Abdurakhmanov's trial began in Turkey in May but there has been little news since. His former associate, another Daghestani named Abu Hanif, is now part of Islamic State in Raqqa and leads a group of predominantly North Caucasian, Russian-speaking militants in that city.