Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

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There were likely elements within Turkey that either funded ISIS directly or provided indirect assistance to them as they've seen ISIS as a useful tool in the fight against the Kurds.

ISIS basically tied the hands of Syrian and Iraqi Kurds and prevented them from being able to exert any political or military pressure on Turkey and other contested territories.

For Tureky it's a win win, either ISIS crushes the Kurds or creates enough mess for Turkey to get involved and hen it can bomb the Kurds just as much as they bomb ISIS if not more.

People don't have visibility into that conflict as much as they do in others since Turkey seems to be able to keep a much better lid on the media and there seem to be far fewer Kurdish lobbies in the west than for some other groups.

The same and possibly much more could be said about Syria and Russia. Remember in the early days of the civil war when ISIL had just entered the Syrian theatre and was capturing territory? Back then ISIL seemed to target anti-Assad areas more than Assad.. Rebels would complain that the Syrian air force would soften rebel targets prior to ISIL assaults. In fact, look at who has benefited the most from the rise of ISIL, i would argue it is Assad. The west and Turkey have almost completely abandoned their mission of deposing him because of ISIL. Also Russia has hardly done much against ISIL (much less than Turkey it could be argued). But nobody talks about Syria (and by extension Russia) supporting ISIL.

I see where you're coming from and i admit there seems to have been murky dealings on some level between the two, but I think whatever connection may have existed between Turkey and ISIL is overstated. Undoubtedly Turkey's past open border policy had been used by ISIL, buts it had also been used by the other rebels and even the Kurds and western govts like the Americans. Also Turkey has other better client groups to do their bidding; in fact groups like Nusra front and Ahrar al sham have long been giving the Kurds a hard time. And unlike ISIL, none of these other groups have ever attacked Turkey.

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