Terrorists are freely crossing the Turkish border back and forth with Ankara providing militants with logistical support, military spokesman for the Iraqi militia told RT, citing “crystal clear” evidence gathered from prisoners and on the battlefield.
According to Karim al-Nouri, spokesman for the Popular Front’s Badr Organization, one of Iraq’s most prominent Shiite militias, their forces were able to secure enough data from the dead ISIS terrorists’ bodies to directly implicate Turkey in involvement with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) affairs. While the terrorists meticulously destroy any possible evidence in possession of their fighters by burning their corpses along with any electronic devises carried by them, Shiite militia was able to secure some hard data.
“Recently we found a few of their phones which have messages of their orders, coordinates and data on movement of their people,” Nouri told RT. “The problem of ISIL did not just appear out of the blue, somebody is allowing them to freely cross borders… I want the audience to know the extent to which Turkey openly supports ISIS.”
Among the evidence which Nouri claims is now in possession of Iraqi intelligence are photos showing Turkish President Erdogan’s son doing business with ISIS representatives.
“We have photo material and comments on Erdogan’s son, material where he meets with ISIS heads,” Nouri said. “There is nothing fabricated in this case, there is no photoshop. These shots are real. They were made public by ISIS commanders themselves.”
Nouri hopes that Iraqi special forces will eventually come across audio recordings directly implicating the Turkish leadership in shady ISIS deals. The data collected is also being analyzed by Iraq's intelligence to the “degree of participation of the Turkish secret services and their involvement in ISIS affairs.”
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Turkey, Nouri is certain, is responsible for treating ISIS fighters on their territory and offering them “safe havens” and transit points for jihadists to move freely and even go back to their home countries.
“From the contents of these conversations it becomes clear that, for example, a specific field commander says that such and such [militant] should be sent to Turkey for treatment,” he explained to RT.
He says fighters come from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, and Saudi Arabia, among other countries. The spokesman acknowledged that data in possession of the Iraqi intelligence reveals that communications between ISIS and Turkish side are conducted in different languages – Kurdish, Turkuman, English, while they “rarely speak in Arabic.”
“We have documents that prove that the largest logistical support and supply routes are supplied by the Turks,” the spokesman claimed.
Nouri has personally seen one ISIS fighter’s confession of traveling back and forth from Turkey, as well as taking part in the massacre of some 600 Iraqi soldiers in June last year at the Speicher military base in Iraq’s Tikrit.
“Turkey became safe haven for them,” Nouri said. “They go to Turkey. There they are trained and recruited.”
Turkish affair with ISIS began with an aim to topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but now that campaign has spread to Iraq, the spokesman says.
“Their goal was to topple Bashar Assad’s regime. And then they started supporting fighters in Iraq. In Syria and Iraq you have the armed groups that they [Turkey] persistently help,” he said.
In Iraq, Ankara’s strategy, according to Nouri, is to arm and supply the Islamic State to “dismember” Iraq along sectarian lines.
“He [Erdogan] wants to create a Sunni district in Iraq. It is very dangerous. Erdogan intends to contribute to the dismemberment of Iraq. That is why Turkish forces have not left the Iraqi territory till now,” Nouri said about the Turkish December 4 intrusion condemned in Baghdad as violation of country’s sovereignty.
After “checking and rechecking” all the evidence, Nouri says, the allegations will be made public.
“Everything is crystal clear to us here, but we need additional confirmation,” Nouri explained. “We have prisoners, we have some confessions that we want to show the world so that the world can be convinced of the magnitude of threat the Turkish regime poses to the region and to the entire world.”