Monday, July 1, 2019

Turkey bans documentary on Islamic State jihad attack victims

JUN 30, 2019 9:31 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER13 COMMENTS

“The Kobane siege had a dramatic impact in Turkey, where many Kurdish citizens perceived the Turkish military’s failure to support the town’s defenders as tacit support for the Islamic State.”

Indeed, and not just Kurdish citizens, either. Turkey’s support for the Islamic State was obvious in numerous ways. Back in 2015, in my book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to ISIS, I noted that Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was aiding the Islamic State in the ultimate hope of co-opting its caliphate and making it part of his own revived Ottoman caliphate. Even though the Islamic State has suffered severe losses in Iraq and Syria, Erdogan has not given up on that hope.

“Turkey bans documentary on ISIS attack victims in south eastern town,” Ahval News, June 28, 2019:

Turkish authorities have banned the screening of a documentary that tells the story of 33 people killed in an Islamic State (ISIS) bomb attack in the southeast Turkish town of Suruç in July 2015, news site Bianet said on Friday.

The Islamic State killed 33 young activists in the Turkish border town of Suruç in a bomb attack on July 20, 2015.

The activists had gathered to discuss the reconstruction of the neighbouring Syrian town of Kobane, the site of a siege that made international headlines the previous year, when ISIS forces attempted to take the majority Kurdish town from the Syrian Kurdish militants defending it.

The Kobane siege had a dramatic impact in Turkey, where many Kurdish citizens perceived the Turkish military’s failure to support the town’s defenders as tacit support for the Islamic State.

Though the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) have been internationally praised for their part in defeating ISIS, Turkey views it as a terrorist organisation due to its links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which began an armed struggle for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey in 1984.

The police department and district governorship of Istanbul’s Şişli banned the premiere of the documentary “Gitmek” (Going) and said in a written statement that the film was “making propaganda for a terrorist organisation.”…