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Saturday 5 March 2016

U.S. Supplies ISIS through Turkey

Eric Zuesse

 

On Friday, March 4th, the leading opposition newspaper in Turkey, Zaman, was taken over by the Government; and, today, March 5th, one of the other opposition newspapers, Cumhuriyet, reported that Zaman’s separate news-service to other news-media, Cihan News Agency, has now also been disabled on the Internet. (Anyone who goes to the site obtains an error-message.)

The Turkish Government is trying to prevent the Turkish public from knowing that Turkey has been serving as the transit-route by which the U.S. government and its allied Arab oil monarchies (especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar) have been supplying foreign jihadists and weapons (largely U.S. but paid for with Saudi funds) into Syria to oust Bashar al-Assad from power.

Zaman’s editor has been imprisoned for publishing such prohibited truths, but somehow his newspaper continued reporting on a court case in which Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdoğan is accused of breaking Turkish law by aiding terrorists. That continued resistance by the newspaper might be a reason why the Turkish Government has now (as of Friday March 4th) shut it down.

On March 1st, Cumhuriyet, headlined, “Former Justice Minister of Turkey: Erdoğan Will Stand Trial,” and reported that, "Former Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk, said that Erdoğan's actions 'do not comply with the decision of the Constitutional Court.’ He criticized [Erdoğan] by saying … 'One day this matter must be settled by the judiciary’.”

Russian Television had first reported on the case, in English, back on 26 November 2015, headlining, "Turkish newspaper editor in court for 'espionage' after revealing weapon convoy to Syrian militants.” This news-report said that:

In May, the outlet [Cumhuriyet] published photos of weapons it said were then transferred to Syria by Turkey’s intelligence agency. … The articles, published on Cumhuriyet's front page in May, claimed that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) is smuggling weapons in trucks into Syria and was caught doing so twice in 2014. The trucks were allegedly stopped and searched by police, with photos and videos of their contents obtained by Cumhuriyet.

According to the paper, the trucks were carrying six steel containers, with 1,000 artillery shells, 50,000 machine gun rounds, 30,000 heavy machine gun rounds and 1,000 mortar shells. The arms were reportedly delivered to extremist groups fighting against the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, whom Ankara wants ousted from power.

The Erdoğan government alleged the weapons were "aid to Syrian ethnic Turkmen tribespeople and labeled their interception by local police an act of ‘treason' and ‘espionage’.”

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