Turkey’s role in Syria (arming and supporting extremists)

(Note: the below comes from my previous Canary article here.)

As the BBC has noted, Turkey has been a key part of Syria’s ongoing war:

The Turkish government has been a staunch critic of Mr Assad since the start of the uprising in Syria…

Turkey is a key supporter of the Syrian opposition…

its policy of allowing rebel fighters, arms shipments and refugees to pass through its territory has been exploited by foreign jihadists wanting to join IS [Daesh].

And as the Century Foundation thinktank wrote in late 2017:

Weapons had begun trickling into Syria as early as 2011, through backdoor channels organized by Islamist networks, smugglers, merchants, and Bedouin clans, but also with increasingly overt support from Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia…

Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia delivered thousands of tons of military equipment delivered to Syria from 2012 onward…

In early 2015, the Gulf States and Turkey sent a stream of no-questions-asked ammunition crates into northern Syria, alongside quality anti-tank rockets released by the United States.

In fact, Daesh (Isis/Isil) commanders previously spoke about relying on “full cooperation with the Turks”. Jihadis reportedly had safe houses in southern Turkey where they stayed before crossing into Syria. There was [paywall] also a “porous” border, through which a “steady stream [paywall]” of jihadis went into Syria. And Turkey consistently failed to cut off Daesh supply lines.

Columbia University’s David L Phillips has been outlining the alleged ties between Turkey’s government and Daesh-style jihadis for years.