Turkey Seizes Truckload of Arms Bound for Syria Rebels

Driver Claimed Truck Was Full of Humanitarian Aid

The Turkish government has seized a truck filled with weapons and ammunition in the southern Hatay Province. The truck was bound for Syrian rebel territory.

The driver claimed to be transporting humanitarian aid on behalf of the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a major Turkish aid group active throughout the world. The IHH denied having anything to do with the arms, and the drivers likely just used that as an attempt to avoid a search.

Turkey has been the preferred route for smuggling weapons into Syria throughout the civil war, to the point where control over the border crossings has been a top priority for rebel factions looking to demand a cut of any shipments into the nation.

As the secular rebels have fallen by the wayside and al-Qaeda has come to dominate a lot of the region, Turkey appears to be looking to limit some of those shipments in a way that early on they simply didn’t care to.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.