Testimony Confirms Turkish Spy Agency Helped Arm ISIS

Arms Shipments Played Key Role in ISIS Gains

Witness testimony obtained by Reuters has once again shown that the Turkish government was dishonest about their involvement in the rise of Islamist rebels in northern Syria.

The testimony of officials revealed that Turkey’s MIT state spy agency repeatedly accompanied cargoes of weaponry across the border into Islamist rebel-controlled territory in January of 2014, and threatened border police who objected.

The weapons shipments were distributed among various rebel factions, and are believed to have played a significant role in ISIS gains in that area of Syria, which they control to this day.

Prosecutors dubbed the arms smuggling process a “total massacre of the law,” though President Erdogan insisted that the spy agency’s trucks were full of humanitarian aid, and other officials insisted anyone who said otherwise was just trying to embarrass the government.

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.