Exclusive: ISIS Starts Recruiting in Istanbul’s Vulnerable Suburbs

W

Exclusive: ISIS Starts Recruitingin Istanbul’s Vulnerable

Suburbs

hen Deniz Sahin’s ex-husband phoned out of the blue to say he wanted to seetheir two young children, the call came as a welcome surprise. The father, aformer alcoholic, who had kicked his addiction and turned instead tofundamentalist Islam, had shown little interest in his children for the past

year, but she thought they missed him.

“I told him not to be more than two hours,” says 28-year-old Deniz, who weeps silently as shepores over photographs of Halil Ibrahim, 4, and Esma Sena, 10. After their father, Sadik,picked them up from their home in Kazan, near Turkey’s capital Ankara, in April, she neversaw them again.

In one of the pictures, which were sent by Sadik a week after their disappearance, a smilingHalil Ibrahim clutches a pistol. The index finger of his other hand is held skyward in a gestureassociated with the Middle East’s most feared armed group: the so-called Islamic State, alsoknown by its former acronym Isis. The children now live with their jihadist father in Syria’sIsis-controlled Raqqa province. They are among an unknown number of Turks – potentially inthe thousands – being abducted or lured into Syria and Iraq either to populate Isis’self-declared caliphate or to fight in its bloody sectarian war.

Newsweek Magazine is Back In Print

Stories shared with Newsweek in recent days by Deniz and others show the group has sunk itstendrils deep into Turkey, a country that may now be in its firing line after being named as partof a Nato alliance to combat the jihadist group. Many fear Isis has the capacity to wreak havocin a nation that attracts 35 million tourists a year and whose porous border adjoinsIsis-controlled territory.

Sign in

By Alev Scott and Alexander Christie-Miller / September 12, 2014 5:55 AM EDT

Exclusive: ISIS Starts Recruiting in Istanbul’s Vulnerable Suburbs http://www.newsweek.com/2014/09/19/exclusive-how-istanbul...

1 of 11 9/14/14, 8:37 PM

Basileus Zeno

Basileus Zeno

Basileus Zeno

Basileus Zeno

Basileus Zeno

Basileus Zeno

Last week at a Nato summit in Wales, US President Barack Obama said Turkey was part of a“core coalition” to fight Isis. However, Deniz and other victims of Isis recruitment questiontheir government’s willingness or ability to tackle the terrorist organisation’s infiltration ofTurkey. They speak of their frustration at police inaction and of their powerlessness to retrievetheir loved ones. In her extended family alone, Deniz says, 15 people – including five children –have gone to live under Isis rule or fight in its ranks in recent months.

Her story is echoed by others in Istanbul, who describe an organised recruiting networkoperating online and through religious study groups, targeting young men from Sunni Muslimdistricts plagued by poverty and drug addiction. One family, whose son joined Isis, says that hewas among 19 young men from their neighbourhood alone who left for Syria recently, with atleast four others planning to join them soon.

In June, Turkey’s Milliyet newspaper reported that as many as 3,000 Turks have joined thegroup. “No other Nato country is as exposed to the threat of Isis jihadism as Turkey is,” saysSinan Ulgen, a former diplomat and head of Edam, an Istanbul-based foreign policy think tank.In the past, Western diplomats have accused Turkey of indirectly facilitating the flow of armsand foreign fighters to Isis by operating an open-

border policy with Syria in its eagerness to help the rebels seeking to topple President Basharal-Assad. After the group overran Turkey’s consulate in Mosul in June and took dozens of staffhostage, however, most now agree that authorities in Ankara has woken up to the seriousnessof the threat, but may now have its hands tied in responding to it.

Forty nine Turkish citizens, including the consul general, remain Isis’ prisoners. In the pastmonth it has beheaded two American journalists it was holding hostage in retaliation for USairstrikes.

“Turkey is not ‘soft’ on Isis,” a Turkish government official says. “It just avoids unnecessaryrhetoric, in particular on the issue of hostages in Mosul.” He adds that “all necessary actionsand precautions are being taken” to combat the domestic threat posed by the group.

ISIS IN ISTANBUL

That claim is disputed by the family of Ahmet Beyaztas, a 25-year-old Kurdish car mechanic,who joined the group last month. Speaking at home in the bleak factory town of Dilovasi, apolluted and poverty-stricken community on the fringe of Istanbul, his brother Kenan tells ofhow local Isis supporters openly displayed its flag in the windows of their cars and homes.


2 of 11 9/14/14, 8:37 PM

Basileus Zeno

Basileus Zeno

A month ago, Ahmet was among 19 young men from the neighbourhood who boarded twominibuses and headed to Syria to join the fighters. A member of parliament for an oppositionparty recently told a local newspaper that he believed 90 young men from another nearby townhave made a similar journey in recent weeks.

“There are many, many more who are joining. And the police are doing nothing,” says Kenan,30, a schoolteacher. “I’m Kurdish and a leftist. If four Kurds get together the state will breakthem apart. Of course they can stop them if they choose to.”

Dilovasi has long been notorious in Turkey as an industrial dystopia. A town of 45,000, it hostssome 150 factories focused around dirty industries such as scrap metal smelting and paintmanufacturing. The air is thick with an acrid chemical stench, and a study by a local universityin 2004 found that cancer rates here are two and half times higher than the national average.Meanwhile, Kenan says, it is a haven for cemaats and tarikats – conservative religiousmovements, which were suppressed by Turkey’s secularist governments but have flourishedunder the Islamist-rooted administration of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Like many children in the town, Ahmet left school at 13. Like Deniz’s husband Sadik, he had ahistory of drug addiction before turning to a hardline religious group around two years ago.

“His psychological situation wasn’t good. He had taken drugs for two years, but was off themwhen he joined Isis,” Kenan recalls. While many people in the community are devout,according to Kenan, the Isis mentality is not “natural” to the area, but an extreme version ofexisting religious communities. “Until two years ago, Ahmet wasn’t very religious – he wasreligious like the rest of us, but not radical.”

After joining the local Isis sympathisers, Ahmet and his friends began to withdraw from theirfamilies. They stopped attending mosques, which in Turkey are run by government-appointedimams, whose sermons are approved by the state. He and his friends described them asmünafik – a derogatory term referring to a debased or insincere form of Islam. “They stoppedwatching television,” says Kenan. “[Ahmet] told us to keep men and women in the familyseparate, and he refused to be in the same room as my wife.”

Kenan believes he and his friends didn’t fully realise what they were becoming involved in.“The local Isis people here don’t really understand the reality of it. They don’t believe thehorror stories.” Nevertheless, Kenan himself avidly follows the news from Syria and is all tooaware of the danger facing his younger brother. “From the first day Ahmet got involved . . . weknew something bad was going to happen and we knew one day he would go on jihad. Thepolice wouldn’t do anything, because they said they had no reason to hold him. Ahmet told us


3 of 11 9/14/14, 8:37 PM

not to meddle. There was nothing we could do.”

Now the family calls his mobile phone daily in the vain hope that he will answer. “Every hour,”according to his 65-year-old mother, Fezile, who weeps quietly as she recalls her son. Hisphone is always off. “Ahmet was gentle and kind,” she recalls. “If there was a plate of lokum[Turkish delight] he would always offer it around. He thought that if you were Muslim youshouldn’t kill . . . We hope that if he goes there and sees what they are about he will change hismind.” If she could speak to him, she says, she would tell him: “Don’t hurt anyone; just comeback.”

Kenan hopes his brother may indeed return if he changes his mind about Isis when he sees thereality, or else that he is injured and left in a Turkish hospital. “We know they hurt people andthey behead people. We know about the rapes, about what they did in Şengal,” he says,referring to the Iraqi town that Isis last month purged of its inhabitants, who belonged to areligious minority that the group considers devil-worshippers. “We’re under no illusion as towhat he’s doing.”

CALL OF THE FAITHFUL

While typical Isis recruits are young men like Ahmet, other stories show that the group alsotargets women and children – often online – in its drive to populate its self-professed state. Atthe opposite end of Istanbul, Sahin Aktan, 44, a powerfully-built, unsmiling man, is strugglingto understand what has happened to his ex-wife and son. In marked contrast to the Beyaztasfamily, his background is prosperous. He owns a clothing company and lives in Buyukcekmece,a bustling, secular suburb on the city’s western edge. Two months ago, his ex-wife, Svetlana, a25-year-old Kyrgyz woman and native Russian speaker, took their three-year-old son Destan toRaqqa after deciding to join the Islamic State.

Aktan has devoted himself to working out the story of her indoctrination by posing onFacebook as an Islamic woman with similar ambitions, befriending and stalking Svetlanaonline. He employed taxi drivers to follow her while she was still in Istanbul and managed tofind the Isis safe house where she briefly lived after their divorce. He is determined to track herdown.

“Believe me, I’ve been working like a policeman,” he says, as he pores over the file he carrieswith him everywhere, containing photographs of his ex-wife, maps of Syria, divorce papers andFacebook transcripts, all of which he has shared with Turkish police. His primary aim is to findand rescue his son. “If she blows herself up, then the child will stay in Syria. How will I findhim then? I will have zero chance, and who will look after him?”


4 of 11 9/14/14, 8:37 PM

He shows one photograph of himself and his ex-wife embracing. The picture was taken sixyears ago, soon after they married. “Svet was 19 when we married, she spoke hardly anyTurkish but I taught her quickly – she is very clever,” he says, adding that he met her throughthe clothing industry.

“We had a loving relationship. She was from a Christian family, I don’t think she even knewwhat Islam involved. She drank whisky, we went on holidays. There was no problem.”

Svetlana was isolated in her new home, he admitted. With little social life, she spent more andmore time online. “This was her only friend”, he says, holding up his smartphone. “This, andme. She learnt about Islam online and decided to convert from Christianity. One day she said,‘I want to cover myself,’ and I said, ‘Ok, then, cover yourself.’ She was on the internet all thetime. I didn’t realise where it would lead. She told me to grow a beard, she said we had to prayfive times a day and read the Quran for two hours. Of course, I didn’t want to do that.”

Aktan is morose on the subject of his wife’s religious transformation: “It was as though adifferent woman had entered my life.” He recalls how Svetlana appeared to lose interest in themarriage, she stopped cooking and stopped caring for the couple’s pet rabbit and dogs.

“When she said she wanted a divorce, I was not surprised,” he says. “She told me that shewanted to take our son and live in the way of Islam and tevhid [in unity with God]. I said shecould do that here in Istanbul. She said, ‘No’.”

Within 15 days, the divorce was complete, granting custody of Destan to his mother andweekend visits to his father. Aktan started keeping tabs on his ex-wife via Facebook andlearned that she had gone to live in a house in central Istanbul with other women and childrenfrom central Asia under the guidance of an Afghan man.

Aktan panicked and rushed to the house to rescue his son after receiving a message fromSvetlana on July 30th that read: “The people who live under the black banner are good people,and I am going to live in the land of Sham [Greater Syria].”

He was too late – when he reached the house the door was opened by a young girl who told himeveryone else had gone. The girl had no knowledge of Svetlana and Destan – it seemed theyhad been given Islamic names: Assia and Abdullah. Aktan later discovered from their Facebookcorrespondence that his ex-wife had been in contact with an Afghan mujahideen for fourmonths before their divorce and was hoping to go and join him. “He convinced her that she hadto live in the land of Isis. He was based in Raqqa but he came in and out of Turkey.”


5 of 11 9/14/14, 8:37 PM

Finally, Svetlana went to Gaziantep and the Afghan man came and took her into Syria, viasmuggling routes. Aktan lost contact with her on September 1st, when she deleted herFacebook account after realising his true identity. Like Ahmet Beyaztas’ family, Aktan isscathing about government efforts to combat Isis, and claims many other families are in asimilar situation to himself, but are too scared of the group to speak out.

“Between Syria and Turkey there is essentially no border. Everyone knows this. The stateknows this, but they do nothing about it. The Turkish police are weak and deaf . . . Isis is aterrorist organisation, but there’s no case against them in any court.”

INTERNAL THREAT

It remains to be seen what ability Isis has to strike inside Turkey, however there have beenwarning signs of the threat it poses. In March, Isis members murdered a Turkish soldier, apolice officer, and another civilian when the militants were stopped in a car en route toIstanbul, according to the government official. Meanwhile, disputed evidence has emerged thatthe group was linked to two bomb attacks last year in the town of Reyhanli on the Syrianborder, in which 52 people were killed, and which was among the deadliest in Turkey’s history.

The Quiet Town That Became an Isis Recruiting GroundAt first glance, this might seem like an everyday urban scene in Turkey – holiday paradise, member of Natoand aspiring EU country. But this town on the fringe of Istanbul is the recruitment ground for the ruthless

zealots of Isis

VIEW GALLERY


6 of 11 9/14/14, 8:37 PM

Basileus Zeno

There are also fears that Isis supporters could become embroiled in a violent struggle insideTurkey with armed leftist groups linked to Kurdish rebels fighting it in Syria. Recently, theyouth wing of the PKK, the Marxist Kurdish group whose Syrian affiliate is currently battlingthe jihadists, claimed to have killed an Isis organiser in an attack in an Istanbul suburb.

Bunyamin Aygun, a Turkish photojournalist who was held for 40 days by Isis fighters, saysTurkish members of the group had boasted to him of their ability to devastate the country withbomb attacks. During his captivity in November and December last year, he was almostconstantly blindfolded, with his hands cuffed behind his back, and never saw his captors’ faces,but in between interrogations they had long conversations in his presence.

Many were Turkish, recalls the 42-year-old. Some had accents from the country’s conservativeeastern region, others were Turkish-German, and a couple were from Istanbul. They spoke oftheir hatred for Turkey’s conservative government, saying current President Erdogan was not areal Muslim. “Turkey fears us,” they told him. “We can set off bombs in all four corners of thecountry. If they close the borders we will cause civil and economic chaos.”

Aygun was told he was “worse than a Christian” because he worked for Milliyet, a mainstreamdaily newspaper that publishes pictures of scantily-clad women. Eventually, he was sentencedto death by a sharia judge with whom his captives corresponded via telephone and email, butwas freed by moderate rebels who killed the militants holding him following a five-day gunbattle. He fears Turkey is now left dangerously exposed to the Isis threat: “America gavesupport to the rebels at the start of the Syrian war, but now it has left Turkey on its own.”

In Turkey, a broader ideological debate is taking place among conservative Muslims about thevalidity of Isis and their worldview. Suleyman Mehmet is an Istanbul-based tailor and amember of the Saadet Party, a conservative political party that unites various orthodox Islamicsects in Turkey, and is considerably further to the right than the ruling Justice andDevelopment Party (AKP). However, a recent survey conducted by Metropoll found that only62.5% of AKP supporters consider Isis a terrorist organisation, compared to 82.1% of SaadetParty supporters, highlighting the sensitivity of the more religious party to ideologicaldifferences with Isis.

Mehmet’s tailoring shop is the headquarters of the local community’s cemaat or Islamicbusiness network in downtown Beyoglu, and he says that he and his colleagues were at firstappreciative of Isis’ apparent efforts to protect Sunnis from Assad’s regime in Syria, but laterchanged their minds.

“Isis represented many basic tenets we believe in, we had hope. But now we have heard the


7 of 11 9/14/14, 8:37 PM

Basileus Zeno

news, we know they are murderers. How can they call themselves Muslim? Only Allah can takesomeone’s life. They call us küfür (infidel) but they are the fakes. Not a single one of them willgo to heaven.”

Mehmet is scornful of Isis’ aim to rule entirely by Sharia law, and thinks it could not work inTurkey: “We are a democracy. That can’t happen here. In Turkey, if you say you are Christian,Jewish, Shia, fine. We are [Sunni] Muslim but we accept you. Isis do not accept anyone butthemselves – they do not even pray in normal mosques, only private mosques.”

The real objection to Isis, however, seems to be straightforward disgust at their war crimes.Suleyman’s son, Ali, brings the conversation back to beheading: “I can’t even bring myself toslit the throat of a chicken. How can they do that to a human being? Imagine it.” While theviews of conservative Sunni Muslims like Suleyman and his son show that Isis ideology is farfrom mainstream in Turkey, the group is increasingly successful in grooming individuals indeprived areas. While there is a blanket media ban on the Turkish consular hostage situation,stories of Isis indoctrination are slipping into domestic media.

When Sahin Aktan’s story appeared in a local paper, Deniz Sahin decided to get in touch withhim. She knew they had similar stories and similar frustrations with the authorities. On the dayof the Newsweek interview, she travelled up from Ankara to meet Sahin in Büyükcçekmece todiscuss the possibility of forming a support group for other affected families. While the primaryaim of their meeting is to make a plan of action, the two bereft parents find solace in thesimilarities in their stories, such as the increasing spiral of internet dependence by theirex-spouses, and their feelings of gradual alienation.

Deniz has intermittent access to information about her daughter via a distant relative in Raqqa,but she has been sent no news of her son, bar the one photograph of him holding a gun. “I don’teven know if he is still alive... They’ve told me that my daughter cries all the time, that shealways asks for me. I know how sensitive she is, and I know that she misses me.”

Deniz cries again as she points at two photographs of her daughter – in one, taken shortlybefore the kidnap, she is smiling in a vest and shorts. In another, taken on the road to Raqqa,she is already covered by a black chador, despite being only nine years old.

Both Deniz and Sahin are in an agony of indecision. While entirely consumed with finding theirchildren, they are forced to face the reality that a rescue foray into the heartland of Isis territorycould become a suicide mission, and they cannot rely on official help from any government.Deniz puts her choice in stark terms: “I must protect my children. But I am an infidel in theeyes of this group – if I go there, they might kill me, or they might not let me leave. What can I


8 of 11 9/14/14, 8:37 PM

do?”

Join the Discussion


9 of 11 9/14/14, 8:37 PM

Add a comment 36 comments

Gentil Aquitaine · · Top Commenter · Université de KinshasaExcellent work and a very troubling story.Reply · Like · · Follow Post · September 12 at 10:30am

Follow

9

Mike McInnis · Sehome High SchoolOur family was in Turkey this summer and we had a wonderful time. On our last day in Istanbul wecould hear a political rally taking place a few blocks away in the Hippodrome. The tenor andcadence of the speaker really got the whole family a little uncomfortable as it had a very Fascisttone to the delivery. I wandered up to check it out and ran into a massive gathering for The FelicityParty (Turkish: Saadet Partisi). This is a tiny but extreme political party in Turkey which waspreviously banned under another name and reformed. They were protesting the bombing of Gazawhich is completely understandable but still, the speaking style was very troubling. This is possiblythe primary group this article is referring to regarding IS recruiting.Reply · Like · · Follow Post · September 12 at 4:10pm

View 6 more

4

Mehmet Sinan · Top Commenter · Nicosia, CyprusAll political speeches in Turkey have a similar delivery. We often think that ourunderstanding of politics s practiced in the same way everywhere. This is not the case.In the "democratic" environment in Turkey the state will make decisions for the peoplestating that it is for their own good. And the people accept this as democraticprcedure. Anyone who complains about this kind of application is labelled at the veryleast an activist against the state and at most a terrorist. Soon we will all be invited toenter room 101 where they will program everybody to adapt. The problem btween ISISand Turkey is that the Turkish President also wants to be Caliphate. I am curious as towhat will happen but I don't want to be anywhere near Turkey when it does.Reply · Like · · Yesterday at 6:37am6

Mehmet Sinan · Top Commenter · Nicosia, CyprusOh and the Saadet party is far from tiny. AK Party was actually formed by a breakawaygroup of Saadet Party members.Reply · Like · · Yesterday at 6:39am6

Tunc Yilmaz · · London, United Kingdomu r talking from your stomach if I may say soReply · Like · Yesterday at 8:54am

Follow

John W Chain · Top Commenter · Wichita State UniversityTurkey is rapidly descending into Islamic fanaticism. A member of NATO with a seculargovernment, as well as a friend of Israel just a few years ago, it now appears well on the way tobecoming just another fundamentalist Islamic state. Turkey's military, which for decades enforcedits secular status, now appears powerless to stop the slide (and/or under the control of Islamistsitself). I don't know if continuing NATO membership is of any concern to the Turks, but if it is it'stime NATO set down a few rules for its members.Reply · Like · · Follow Post · Yesterday at 1:24am2

Mehmet Sinan · Top Commenter · Nicosia, CyprusTurkey cannot become a complete Islamic state until the powers tht be establishKurdistan (which has been the whole plan of the last 15 years) once that happensTurkey will have a complete regime change. Everybody in any position of governmentis a Neo-Ottoman anyway. So go figure.Reply · Like · · Yesterday at 6:43am2

Saber Khalil · Top Commenter


10 of 11 9/14/14, 8:37 PM


11 of 11 9/14/14, 8:37 PM

Date post:	19-Jul-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	basileus-zeno
View:	3 times
Download:	1 times

Exclusive: ISIS Starts Recruiting in Istanbul’s Vulnerable Suburbs

Documents