An idea of just how angry the American right-wing and the Jewish lobby are with Turkey – a commentator calls for the expulsion of Turkey from NATO.
Turkey: The Jihadists’ Fifth Column in NATO?Turkey may well be the jihadists’ fifth column in NATO.
Turkey’s autocratic Islamist president, Tayyip Erdogan, has allowed Turkey’s border to become a passageway for jihadist fighters streaming into Syria to join ISIS and the al Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra.
Oil from fields in Iraq and Syria under ISIS control has been regularly transported into Turkey, and sold to black market traders at below international oil market prices. Turkey itself is reportedly a major buyer of the cheap black market oil. The income from ISIS’s oil sales through the black market, as much as $30 million a month, helps finance ISIS’s expansion, making Turkey one of ISIS’s key bankrollers and enablers.
Turkey has also allowed ISIS recruiting networks operating online and through religious study groups to flourish within its borders. Turkey’s Milliyet newspaper reported that as many as 3,000 Turks have joined ISIS. For a government that has cracked down harshly on Kurdish dissidents and on journalists reporting inside Turkey who dare to question Erdogan’s policies, Erdogan’s regime has not appeared to have discouraged ISIS recruitment within its borders or the flow of recruits from Turkey, and the flow of recruits from other countries traveling through Turkey, who are joining ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria.
Despite pressure from the United States, Erdogan has held back from making any significant contributions to the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition, fearing that Syria’s Assad regime and Kurds would benefit to Turkey’s detriment. Even after Turkey secured the release of its citizens held by ISIS – reportedly through a prisoner exchange with ISIS – Turkey is not acting like an active NATO partner.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph ... n-in-nato/