Silence for Turkish Youth Press Ganged Into al-Qaeda
The majority of the Turkish press is focusing on the fate of two Bosnian girls who have allegedly been taken through Turkey to Syria by terrorist groups. However, it remains silent on the hundreds of Turkish youths tricked into fighting for these groups.
Units from Interpol and Turkish intelligence have begun an intensive operation to find two young girls of Bosnian origin thought to have made their way to Syria through Turkey. Newspapers in Turkey have thrown their hats in, printing headline news stories about the girls. They remain silent, however, about the hundreds of Turkish youths tricked by terrorist groups like al-Nusra or ISIL into going to wage jihad in Syria. The fate of the youths sent to fight for ISIL in Syria one and a half months ago from Istanbul’s Güngören district, as Aydınlık reported on 21 April, is still unknown.
The plight of the Bosnian girls has brought this issue to the agenda in Turkey, but as we have seen in the case of the boys from Güngören, for a long time hundreds of Turkish youths have been pressed into the service of terrorist groups such as ISIL. Unlike for the Bosnian girls, there is no operation underway to bring them home. In fact, the lack of control on the border actually eases the way for these young men to cross over to Syria and fight. When the five boys from Güngören disappeared to Syria without leaving word to their families, their parents asked the police for help, but they were told there was nothing to be done for their sons. Aydınlık newspaper has applied to the Istanbul governorate and the police department for help, but no reply has yet come.
Meanwhile, many voices in Turkey continue to blame the AKP for allowing terrorist groups to operate without obstruction across the country. Hüseyin Aygün, the CHP MP for Tunceli, summed up the charges against the governing party, saying:
“Apparently al-Qaeda’s activities are continuing unfettered even in the heart of Istanbul. I know that district governors, AKP councils, and AKP officials including the Prime Minister approve of and facilitate these transfers of militants. The real issue here is the support our government is giving to the export of terrorism.”