Islamic State commander says Erdogan ordered 2014 ISIS attack in northern Syria

The Communist daily Morning Star is hardly a reliable source. However, there is nothing unbelievable about this report. Turkey’s support for the Islamic State in its heyday was obvious in numerous ways. Back in 2015, in my book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to ISIS, I noted that Erdogan was aiding the Islamic State in the ultimate hope of co-opting its caliphate and making it part of his own revived Ottoman caliphate. Even though the Islamic State has lost its domains in Iraq and Syria, Erdogan has not given up on that hope. His connections to the Islamic State should be investigated, with Turkey’s alliance with the U.S. and NATO membership on this line.

“Senior Isis commander alleges Turkey’s President ordered 2014 attack on Kobane,” by Steve Sweeney, Morning Star, October 30, 2019 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

TURKEY’S authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered the deadly 2014 jihadist attack on Kobane in northern Syria, a senior Isis commander alleged today.

Taha Abdurrahim Abdullah, a close confidant of Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – who died earlier this week – was captured by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces militia alliance in March this year.

He told his captors Mr Erdogan had insisted that Isis attack the largely Kurdish border town in northern Syria in September 2014, despite the jihadists’ reluctance.

“We [Isis] were preparing war, but our goal was to move to Damascus, not Kobane,” he claimed under interrogation.

“[Former Isis leader] Baghdadi wanted Kobane to be attacked. We objected to this situation. But he refused. We suffered heavy losses in Kobane.

“Later, we learned that the reason why Bagdadi turned our direction to Kobane overnight was the insistence of the Turks. The Turks wanted to attack Kobane. Erdogan insisted,” Mr Abdullah alleged.

The jihadists captured around 350 largely Kurdish villages surrounding Kobane during the offensive, causing some 300,000 people to flee for their lives, and also conquered some districts of the town.

A six-month siege followed, with Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG) putting up fierce resistance.

The YPG lifted the siege in January 2015 and retook control of the villages by mid March, helped by US air strikes.

However, around 70 per cent of Kobane was destroyed in the battle.

Mr Abdullah also claimed that the slain Isis leader’s replacement was chosen for his close links to the Turkish state.

Abdullah Qardas, also known as Haci Abdullah, was announced as the new Isis leader following Mr Baghdadi’s death.

Saying that Mr Qardas also calls himself “Ebu Omer Turkmeni,” Mr Abdullah claimed: “He uses this name to appease the Turkish state and to deepen his relations with them.”…

November 3, 2019 | 1 Comment »

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  1. The US cooperated with the Turks to double cross its allies the SDF (Kurds & Arab fighters against ISIS)? Is that why the US started using the Turkish rhetoric calling the YPG terrorists and PKK instead of the SDF? Why the double cross? The US had the SDF take down their bases with the artillery before the Turkish attack and then let Erodgan and his Islamist terror affiliated army attack the SDF and clear Kurds out of their homes.

    What did the US know about Turkey’s Syria invasion plans?
    The US never saw the SDF as anything more than as tool, a cynical partnership to be maintained as a fiction until the US could figure out what to do with the oil and ISIS detainees.

    Almost a month after the momentous phone call that led US President Donald Trump to decide to withdraw from parts of eastern Syria many questions remain about what Trump’s closest advisors knew about Turkey’s plans to invade northern Syria. The October 6 decision by the President to withdraw took many by surprise and has been portrayed as a “betrayal” of America’s Kurdish allies that enabled Turkey and Turkish-backed extremists to attack a peaceful area, displacing more than 200,000 in a month.

    The original US statement by the White House said that Turkey would be “moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria.” The US would not support or be involved. Trump claimed the US had defeated ISIS and that captured ISIS fighters would now be the responsibility of Turkey. We now know that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was, at that very moment being tracked to a compound just a few kilometers from the Turkish border in the Idlib province. Twenty days after Trump’s phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan which caused him to decide to withdraw, Trump would sit in the Situation Room and watch the raid.

    The raid, on October 26, would kill Baghdadi and several ISIS members. It would also reveal that the US did not trust Turkish intelligence to catch Baghdadi, even though he was found in an area where Turkey has observation posts. Trump watched the raid with Brig. Gen. Marcus Evans, the deputy of special operations on the Joint Staff, and Robert O’Brien, his national security advisor, as well as secretary of defense Mark Esper, chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley. Vice-President Mike Pence was also there. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was not present.

    Pompeo and the State Department’s envoy for Syria James Jeffrey played a key role in working with Turkey in the lead-up to Turkey’s invasion of Syria on October 9. Yet Jeffrey told US Senators on October 22 during a hearing that he was not consulted by Trump regarding the October 6 decision. A survey of State Department official press releases shows that Pompeo did not speak or appear to speak publicly about the Syria crises from October 6 to 9 and that after the Turkish invasion the US role was unclear.

    The depiction of Jeffrey being kept out of the loop on Syria policy appears to dovetail with the December 2018 decision when he also wasn’t consulted by Trump before the President first chose to withdraw. But what about Pompeo during this crucial period? He spoke to the Iraqi Prime Minister on October 8 and the readout doesn’t mention Syria. But Iraq must have been worried about the fate of ISIS detainees that the US seemed to be saying the SDF or Turkey might release.

    A key statement came on October 10, after Turkey and Syrian rebel forces it supports, invaded Syria and began killing members of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which the US had been working with.

    The October 10 briefing with a senior official suddenly showed that the US switched views of the SDF. The US described the SDF as a partner, but noted that a major component of it is the YPG “which is the Syrian offshoot of the PKK.” The State Department then said the PKK had conducted “horrific terrorist attacks” against Turkey. Has the YPG conducted any attacks from Syria? The US doesn’t say. Has the US worked to make the SDF into a different group, not conducting attacks? The US doesn’t say. The US described the Kurdish population as having “their own concerns.” This was as they were being bombed. The US only had “security interests” in Syria. In this briefing the US said thatit worked with Turkey to allow it access to a depth of 30km into Syria and “Turkish air operations in accordance with our coalition air tasking order.” In short, the US worked with Turkey to establish what it calls a “safe zone” in which Turkey would then attack the SDF, America’s own partners.

    The US was also concerned about Israel and Saudi Arabia’s reactions, and sought to assure them. The Pentagon’s adventure in Syria of training almost 100,000 members of the SDF, was almost totally forgotten. The civilians in eastern Syria were expendable. In fact, they weren’t even mentioned once by US officials in October as hundreds of thousands of them fled their homes.

    Despite a commitment to religious freedom, US officials also ignored Christian minorities forced to flee the Turkish bombardment and the threats of being beheaded by extremist groups taking over the “safe zone.”

    Full article at https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/What-did-the-US-know-about-Turkeys-Syria-invasion-plans-606758