Proof that Turkey Collaborates with ISIS

In an exclusive interview, in late September, with journalist Amberin Zaman of "The Economist", senior commander of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) Cemil Bayik provided irrefutable proof that Turkey collaborates with ISIS (Daesh). To read the entire interview click on Al-Monitor.

Amberin Zaman: How is the Islamic State [IS] onslaught against Kobani [the Syrian Kurdish-majority town of Ayn al-Arab on the Turkish border] affecting the peace process in Turkey?

In an exclusive interview, in late September, with journalist Amberin Zaman of "The Economist", senior commander of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) Cemil Bayik provided irrefutable proof that Turkey collaborates with ISIS (Daesh). To read the entire interview click on Al-Monitor.

Amberin Zaman: How is the Islamic State [IS] onslaught against Kobani [the Syrian Kurdish-majority town of Ayn al-Arab on the Turkish border] affecting the peace process in Turkey?

Camil Bayik: The attacks by IS against Kobani helped elucidate two things. One was whether Turkey’s collaboration with IS is continuing or not. The other is whether the peace process is continuing in the north [i.e., Turkey] or not. What emerged is that Turkey is continuing its relations with IS and that Turkey will not solve the Kurdish problem in the north. Because a Turkey that supports IS attacks against Kobani, that seeks to depopulate Kobani and lobbies for the establishment of a buffer zone cannot sever its ties with IS. Because if it did so IS would expose all of Turkey’s dirty laundry, and document the links between them.

AZ: Are you able to prove that these links exist?

CB:  Before IS attacked Kobani, Turkish officials contacted the YPG [the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units] official responsible for Kobani. They warned him that should the YPG attack the Shah tomb [the Ottoman Tomb of Suleiman Shah inside Syria, which is guarded by Turkish troops and considered Turkish territory] that Turkey would retaliate in kind. I repeat, they said this before we were aware that IS would attack. Isn’t this strange?

Second, two days after the campaign against Kobani started, a Turkish train stopped at an Arab village near [the IS-controlled] Tell Abyad border gate and unloaded weapons and ammunition that were taken by IS. There are eyewitnesses to this transfer. And during this period the [Turkish] hostages [held by IS in Mosul] affair is supposedly resolved.

These events are all interlinked. Turkey then opens the Mursitpinar border gate with Kobani just as IS fires Katyusha rockets at Kobani and surrounding villages to sow panic among the people. Turkey opens the border gate on the third day of the attack so that the people can flee to Turkey. This is what IS wants as well. This proves the collusion between them. Because Turkey has long wanted the establishment of a buffer zone. Its aim is to prevent the Kurds in Rojava [Syrian Kurdish areas in western Kurdistan] from winning a formal status. By emptying Kobani and provoking a mass exodus of people, Turkey can then claim before the international community that its own security is at stake and set about establishing a buffer zone.

Shield wall: Turkish soldiers block access to the Mursitpinar crossing near the Syrian border, as Syrian Kurdish people try to pass, in the southeastern town of Suruc

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