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ISIS Draws Steady Stream of Recruits From Turkey
ANKARA, Turkey — Having spent most of his youth as a drug addict in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Turkey’s capital, Can did not think he had much to lose when he was smuggled into Syria with 10 of his childhood friends to join the world’s most extreme jihadist group.

After 15 days at a training camp in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto headquarters of the group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the 27-year-old Can was assigned to a fighting unit. He said he shot two men and participated in a public execution. It was only after he buried a man alive that he was told he had become a full ISIS fighter.

“When you fight over there, it’s like being in a trance,” said Can, who asked to be referred to only by his middle name for fear of reprisal. “Everyone shouts, ‘God is the greatest,’ which gives you divine strength to kill the enemy without being fazed by blood or splattered guts,” he said.

Hundreds of foreign fighters, including some from Europe and the United States, have joined the ranks of ISIS in its self-proclaimed caliphate that sweeps over vast territories of Iraq and Syria. But one of the biggest source of recruits is neighboring Turkey, a NATO member with an undercurrent of Islamist discontent.

As many as 1,000 Turks have joined ISIS, according to Turkish news media reports and government officials here. Recruits cite the group’s ideological appeal to disaffected youths as well as the money it pays fighters from its flush coffers. The C.I.A. estimated last week that the group had from 20,000 to 31,500 fighters in Iraq and Syria.

The United States has put heavy pressure on Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to better police Turkey’s 560-mile-long border with Syria. Washington wants Turkey to stanch the flow of foreign fighters and to stop ISIS from exporting the oil it produces on territory it holds in Syria and Iraq.

So far, Mr. Erdogan has resisted pleas to take aggressive steps against the group, citing the fate of 49 Turkish hostages ISIS has held since militants took over Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, in June. Turkey declined to sign a communiqué last Thursday that committed a number of regional states to take “appropriate” new measures to counter ISIS, frustrating American officials.

For years, Turkey has striven to set an example of Islamic democracy in the Middle East through its “zero problems with neighbors” prescription, the guiding principle of Ahmet Davutoglu, who recently became Turkey’s prime minister after serving for years as foreign minister. But miscalculations have left the country isolated and vulnerable in a region now plagued by war.

Turkey has been criticized at home and abroad for an open border policy in the early days of the Syrian uprising. Critics say that policy was crucial to the rise of ISIS. Turkey had bet that rebel forces would quickly topple the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, but as the war evolved, the extremists have benefited from the chaos.

Turkish fighters recruited by ISIS say they identify more with the extreme form of Islamic governance practiced by ISIS than with the rule of the Turkish governing party, which has its roots in a more moderate form of Islam.

Hacibayram, a ramshackle neighborhood in the heart of Ankara’s tourist district, has morphed into an ISIS recruitment hub over the past year. Locals say up to 100 residents have gone to fight for the group in Syria.

“It began when a stranger with a long, coarse beard started showing up in the neighborhood,” recalled Arif Akbas, the neighborhood’s elected headman of 30 years, who oversees local affairs. “The next thing we knew, all the drug addicts started going to the mosque.”

One of the first men to join ISIS from the neighborhood was Ozguzhan Gozlemcioglu, known to his ISIS counterparts as Muhammad Salef. In three years, he has risen to the status of a regional commander in Raqqa, and locals say he frequently travels in and out of Ankara, each time making sure to take back new recruits with him.

Mehmet Arabaci, a Hacibayram resident who assists with distributing government aid to the poor, said younger members of the local community found online pictures of Mr. Gozlemcioglu with weapons on the field and immediately took interest. Children have started to spend more time online since the municipality knocked down the only school in the area last year as part of an aggressive urban renewal project.

“There are now seven mosques in the vicinity, but not one school,” Mr. Arabaci said. “The lives of children here are so vacant that they find any excuse to be sucked into action.”

Playing in the rubble of a demolished building on a recent hot day here, two young boys staged a fight with toy guns.

When a young Syrian girl walked past them, they pounced on her, knocking her to the floor and pushing their toy rifles against her head. “I’m going to kill you, whore,” one of the boys shouted before launching into sound effects that imitated a machine gun.

The other boy quickly lost interest and walked away. “Toys are so boring,” he said. “I have real guns upstairs.”

The boy’s father, who owns a nearby market, said he fully supported ISIS’s vision for Islamic governance and hoped to send the boy and his other sons to Raqqa when they are older.

“The diluted form of Islam practiced in Turkey is an insult to the religion,” he said giving only his initials, T.C., to protect his identity. “In the Islamic State you lead a life of discipline as dictated by God, and then you are rewarded. Children there have parks and swimming pools. Here, my children play in the dirt.”

But when Can returned from Raqqa after three months with two of the original 10 friends he had left with, he was full of regret.

“ISIS is brutal,” he said. “They interpret the Quran for their own gains. God never ordered Muslims to kill Muslims.”

Still, he said many were drawn to the group for financial reasons, as it appealed to disadvantaged youth in less prosperous parts of Turkey. “When you fight, they offer $150 a day. Then everything else is free,” he said. “Even the shopkeepers give you free products out of fear.”

ISIS recruitment in Hacibayram caught the news media’s attention in June when a local 14-year-old recruit came back to the neighborhood after he was wounded in a shelling attack in Raqqa. The boy’s father, Yusuf, said that the government had made no formal inquiry into the episode and that members of the local community had started to condemn what they saw as inaction by the authorities.

“There are clearly recruitment centers being set up in Ankara and elsewhere in Turkey, but the government doesn’t seem to care,” said Aaron Stein, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. “It seems their hatred for Bashar al-Assad and their overly nuanced view of what radical Islam is has led to a very short- and narrow-sighted policy that has serious implications.”

The Interior Ministry and National Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.

On a recent afternoon in Ankara, Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Davutoglu came to pray at the historic Haci Bayram Veli Mosque, just over 100 yards away from an underground mosque used by a radical Salafi sect known to oversee ISIS recruits.

When news of their visit reached the neighborhood, several residents scurried down the steep hill hoping to catch an opportunity to raise the issue.



At the same time, a 10-year-old boy lingered in his family’s shop, laughing at the crowd rushing to get a glimpse of the two leaders. He had just listened to a long lecture from his father celebrating ISIS’ recent beheading of James Foley, an American journalist. “He was an agent and deserved to die,” the man told his son, half-smirking through his thick beard.

To which the boy replied, “Journalists, infidels of this country; we’ll kill them all.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/w...is-a-steady-source-of-isis-recruits.html?_r=0
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@Sinan
as you can see here, another evidence that AKP supports terrorists in Syria, by allowing them to freely roam in Turkey and cross the border easily, in addition to recruit terrorists.
 
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ISIS Draws Steady Stream of Recruits From Turkey
ANKARA, Turkey — Having spent most of his youth as a drug addict in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Turkey’s capital, Can did not think he had much to lose when he was smuggled into Syria with 10 of his childhood friends to join the world’s most extreme jihadist group.

After 15 days at a training camp in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto headquarters of the group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the 27-year-old Can was assigned to a fighting unit. He said he shot two men and participated in a public execution. It was only after he buried a man alive that he was told he had become a full ISIS fighter.

“When you fight over there, it’s like being in a trance,” said Can, who asked to be referred to only by his middle name for fear of reprisal. “Everyone shouts, ‘God is the greatest,’ which gives you divine strength to kill the enemy without being fazed by blood or splattered guts,” he said.

Hundreds of foreign fighters, including some from Europe and the United States, have joined the ranks of ISIS in its self-proclaimed caliphate that sweeps over vast territories of Iraq and Syria. But one of the biggest source of recruits is neighboring Turkey, a NATO member with an undercurrent of Islamist discontent.

As many as 1,000 Turks have joined ISIS, according to Turkish news media reports and government officials here. Recruits cite the group’s ideological appeal to disaffected youths as well as the money it pays fighters from its flush coffers. The C.I.A. estimated last week that the group had from 20,000 to 31,500 fighters in Iraq and Syria.

The United States has put heavy pressure on Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to better police Turkey’s 560-mile-long border with Syria. Washington wants Turkey to stanch the flow of foreign fighters and to stop ISIS from exporting the oil it produces on territory it holds in Syria and Iraq.

So far, Mr. Erdogan has resisted pleas to take aggressive steps against the group, citing the fate of 49 Turkish hostages ISIS has held since militants took over Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, in June. Turkey declined to sign a communiqué last Thursday that committed a number of regional states to take “appropriate” new measures to counter ISIS, frustrating American officials.

For years, Turkey has striven to set an example of Islamic democracy in the Middle East through its “zero problems with neighbors” prescription, the guiding principle of Ahmet Davutoglu, who recently became Turkey’s prime minister after serving for years as foreign minister. But miscalculations have left the country isolated and vulnerable in a region now plagued by war.

Turkey has been criticized at home and abroad for an open border policy in the early days of the Syrian uprising. Critics say that policy was crucial to the rise of ISIS. Turkey had bet that rebel forces would quickly topple the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, but as the war evolved, the extremists have benefited from the chaos.

Turkish fighters recruited by ISIS say they identify more with the extreme form of Islamic governance practiced by ISIS than with the rule of the Turkish governing party, which has its roots in a more moderate form of Islam.

Hacibayram, a ramshackle neighborhood in the heart of Ankara’s tourist district, has morphed into an ISIS recruitment hub over the past year. Locals say up to 100 residents have gone to fight for the group in Syria.

“It began when a stranger with a long, coarse beard started showing up in the neighborhood,” recalled Arif Akbas, the neighborhood’s elected headman of 30 years, who oversees local affairs. “The next thing we knew, all the drug addicts started going to the mosque.”

One of the first men to join ISIS from the neighborhood was Ozguzhan Gozlemcioglu, known to his ISIS counterparts as Muhammad Salef. In three years, he has risen to the status of a regional commander in Raqqa, and locals say he frequently travels in and out of Ankara, each time making sure to take back new recruits with him.

Mehmet Arabaci, a Hacibayram resident who assists with distributing government aid to the poor, said younger members of the local community found online pictures of Mr. Gozlemcioglu with weapons on the field and immediately took interest. Children have started to spend more time online since the municipality knocked down the only school in the area last year as part of an aggressive urban renewal project.

“There are now seven mosques in the vicinity, but not one school,” Mr. Arabaci said. “The lives of children here are so vacant that they find any excuse to be sucked into action.”

Playing in the rubble of a demolished building on a recent hot day here, two young boys staged a fight with toy guns.

When a young Syrian girl walked past them, they pounced on her, knocking her to the floor and pushing their toy rifles against her head. “I’m going to kill you, whore,” one of the boys shouted before launching into sound effects that imitated a machine gun.

The other boy quickly lost interest and walked away. “Toys are so boring,” he said. “I have real guns upstairs.”

The boy’s father, who owns a nearby market, said he fully supported ISIS’s vision for Islamic governance and hoped to send the boy and his other sons to Raqqa when they are older.

“The diluted form of Islam practiced in Turkey is an insult to the religion,” he said giving only his initials, T.C., to protect his identity. “In the Islamic State you lead a life of discipline as dictated by God, and then you are rewarded. Children there have parks and swimming pools. Here, my children play in the dirt.”

But when Can returned from Raqqa after three months with two of the original 10 friends he had left with, he was full of regret.

“ISIS is brutal,” he said. “They interpret the Quran for their own gains. God never ordered Muslims to kill Muslims.”

Still, he said many were drawn to the group for financial reasons, as it appealed to disadvantaged youth in less prosperous parts of Turkey. “When you fight, they offer $150 a day. Then everything else is free,” he said. “Even the shopkeepers give you free products out of fear.”

ISIS recruitment in Hacibayram caught the news media’s attention in June when a local 14-year-old recruit came back to the neighborhood after he was wounded in a shelling attack in Raqqa. The boy’s father, Yusuf, said that the government had made no formal inquiry into the episode and that members of the local community had started to condemn what they saw as inaction by the authorities.

“There are clearly recruitment centers being set up in Ankara and elsewhere in Turkey, but the government doesn’t seem to care,” said Aaron Stein, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. “It seems their hatred for Bashar al-Assad and their overly nuanced view of what radical Islam is has led to a very short- and narrow-sighted policy that has serious implications.”

The Interior Ministry and National Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.

On a recent afternoon in Ankara, Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Davutoglu came to pray at the historic Haci Bayram Veli Mosque, just over 100 yards away from an underground mosque used by a radical Salafi sect known to oversee ISIS recruits.

When news of their visit reached the neighborhood, several residents scurried down the steep hill hoping to catch an opportunity to raise the issue.


At the same time, a 10-year-old boy lingered in his family’s shop, laughing at the crowd rushing to get a glimpse of the two leaders. He had just listened to a long lecture from his father celebrating ISIS’ recent beheading of James Foley, an American journalist. “He was an agent and deserved to die,” the man told his son, half-smirking through his thick beard.

To which the boy replied, “Journalists, infidels of this country; we’ll kill them all.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/w...is-a-steady-source-of-isis-recruits.html?_r=0
________________________________________________________________________
______________

@Sinan
as you can see here, another evidence that AKP supports terrorists in Syria, by allowing them to freely roam in Turkey and cross the border easily, in addition to recruit terrorists.

You will see these BS articles a lot. As Turkey refused contribute to coalition that has been deviced by US to fight ISIS.

Iranian media was writing these BS articles, now Western media started the same BS and they will continue to do so, until we agree to attack on ISIS (which will never happen)
 
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You will see these BS articles a lot. As Turkey refused contribute to coalition that has been deviced by US to fight ISIS.

Iranian media was writing these BS articles, now Western media started the same BS and they will continue to do so, until we agree to attack on ISIS (which will never happen)
and why did Turkey refused to fight ISIS? remember that leaked conversation? they were about to invade Syrian under the name of fighting ISIS, and now when the whole world is getting together they refused? :crazy: what Turkey fear? AKP knows that ISIS cells are inside Turkey, thus they refused to go to war with ISIS with the rest of the world?
 
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and why did Turkey refused to fight ISIS? remember that leaked conversation? they were about to invade Syrian under the name of fighting ISIS, and now when the whole world is getting together they refused? :crazy: what Turkey fear? AKP knows that ISIS cells are inside Turkey, thus they refused to go to war with ISIS with the rest of the world?

49 Turkish hostages being held by ISIS. What do you expect us to do ?

Sacrifice them like lambs ?
 
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Rebels only control some of the countryside. That's bad in term of logistics, no?
Syria has 3 major resources:

1) Oil & gas.
2) Agriculture.
3) Water & hydro-energy.

All of these are lost to Assad. He is a walking dead.
 
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Syria has 3 major resources:

1) Oil & gas.
2) Agriculture.
3) Water & hydro-energy.

All of these are lost to Assad. He is a walking dead.
Don't forget he control the sea and that's very important .

About the oil well I agree they must have bombed those facilities ages ago .

And by the way those vast grey area is desert not farmland .
 
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Who's going to stop those brazen Yankees? They meddle into everything just. Here in Middle East region they've made such a stir that we have to pacify things up to present moment. Biggest trouble is that they bring mostly radical elements into power who create complete chavoc
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Here those are tough Islamists and I see source of the future big trouble in It!
 
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PKK/PYD killed more than 40 Sunni Arabs, mostly civilians as a retaliation around Hasakah.

http://www.sirajpress.com/مقال/الـ-...-أكثر-من-40-شهيداً-بعضهم-أُعدم-ميدانياً/3451/

Bullshit claims, I would have nothing against if true to be honest but it's not. Only a fool would belive that, I mean YPG don't even allow pictures of dead rats to be taken. These civilians refused to work with IS against YPG and therefore got killed who are pushing really hard and have already liberated more than 10 villages on the way to Til Hamis.

Don't forget he control the sea and that's very important .

About the oil well I agree they must have bombed those facilities ages ago .

And by the way those vast grey area is desert not farmland .

Most of farmlands are in the Kurdish regions and so is most of the oil. Problem is that the regime built all the refineries in central-western Syria pumping it all the way there. So the little oil coming out and being refined is more of health risk than anything else.
 
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Since the old thread disappeared,
Why the "SYRIA CIVIL WAR" title? Syria has been invaded and attacked by foreign forces...From Turkey, Israel and Jordan...

All of these are lost to Assad. He is a walking dead.

you said that since of the beginning of the Syrian invasion...He still there, and he will be there after Netanyahu, and the two larvae minions king o the sauds and the Jordanians..
 
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Why the "SYRIA CIVIL WAR" title?
Because its a war between Syrians. There are some foreigners who fight for rebels and some foreigners who fight for the regime, same happened during the civil war in Spain for example. But it does not change the fact there is a civil war.

Even Syria's main ally Russia says there is a civil war.

From Turkey, Israel and Jordan...
No one came from Israel. There are couple Israeli Arabs who joined ISIS, but they did not come in Syria from Israel but went abroad and entered Syria from other countries.

There are some Israeli Druze who went to fight for Assad though.

you said that since of the beginning of the Syrian invasion...He still there, and he will be there after Netanyahu, and the two larvae minions king o the sauds and the Jordanians..
Yes I said that and as u see I was right. Assad lost all the resources and mots of the territory.

Note, I never said that his days are numbered or something like that. I know that he can prolong that agony for many many years.

As for Netanayhu, he is not the Israeli regime. The Israeli regime is a democracy and it is not going anywhere unlike the Netanyahus.
 
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Seems it was true that the 3000 men gathering is aimed to take over Kobane region. It's over an year since the siege yet they have just lost more land in favor of YPG.


c5970e20aca36e2f5348df634b50cef2.jpg


A Zagros sniper, seems like PKK moved the production of these to Rojava. Those humvees looks to have belonged to ISOF perhaps?


Also YPG's mission in Til Hamis has been concluded.

9185164594b14acb2f10d45d577d798b._.jpg
 
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Iranian media was writing these BS articles, now Western media started the same BS and they will continue to do so, until we agree to attack on ISIS (which will never happen)
What makes you believe it? Iran is under embargo, the JEWS leaders rule JEW NATO countries: Obama, Sarkozy, Hollande, Cameron, Fabius...

Even with their massive lies they must sometimes admit they command zionist ISIS
 
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818c9d5945b8071f967a917a4f70ca55.png


Report: Al Qaeda Rebels Seize UN Arms, Uniforms in Syria
Syrian envoy accuses Israel of 'letting' Nusra Front take control of Syrian side of the border, confirms rebels now control Syrian Golan.

By AFP

First Publish: 9/16/2014, 9:48 PM

0d35497832c65c5806909168a5f7cf9e.jpg

Nusra Front fighter in Syria Reuters
Syrian rebels linked to Al Qaeda have seized UN weapons, uniforms andvehicles from peacekeepers in the Golan and set up a "safe zone" to wage attacks, the Syrian ambassador said Tuesday.

The United Nations on Monday was forced to pull back hundreds of peacekeepers to the Israeli side of the Golan after Syrian rebels advanced on their positions.

Syrian Ambassador Bashar Jaafari confirmed that fighters from the Nusra Front "had succeeded in occupying all of the Syrian side" of the Golan, driving out the troops from the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF).

"The terrorists are now using United Nations cars, which hold the emblem of the United Nations forces in the Golan. They are using the uniform of the UNDOF, the weapons of UNDOF, the positions of UNDOR to shell on the Syrian army as well as on the civilians in villages," Jaafari told reporters.

The UN Security Council is due to discuss the crisis on the Golan during a session on Wednesday after more than 40 Fijian UNDOF troops were held hostage for two weeks by Al-Nusra.

Jaafari accused Israel, Qatar and Jordan of being behind a "very big plot" to destabilize Syria by "letting" the Syrian rebels take control of part of the buffer to set up a "safe zone" from where it can wage attacks.

A new report by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon listed several clashes on the Golan since May, but said UNDOF must stay the course and continue to fulfill its mandate.

UNDOF monitors a 1974 ceasefire between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights.

Israel captured the 1,200 square kilometers (460 square miles) of the Golan during the Six-Day War of 1967, then annexed it in 1981.

Some 510 square kilometres of the Golan remain on the Syrian side of theceasefire line, with UNDOF overseeing a buffer zone stretching some 70kilometres from Lebanon in the north, to Jordan in the south.

UNDOF's mandate is renewed every six months, and currently runs until December 31.

Six countries contribute troops to the 1,200-strong UN force on the Golan: Fiji, India, Ireland, Nepal, the Netherlands and the Philippines.

Arutz Sheva Staff contributed to this report.
 
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