War on Isis: Flood of jihadi volunteers to Syria is 'unstoppable', warns Turkish Prime Minister
Patrick Cockburn
January 21, 2015
The tide of foreign volunteers crossing from Turkey into Syria to fight for Isis cannot be stopped, the Turkish Prime Minister has warned, with authorities unable to close the porous 510-mile border between the two countries.
Ahmet Davutoglu, whose government has been accused of not doing enough to stop jihadi fighters from Britain and other countries crossing into Syria, told The Independent that Turkey could not put “soldiers everywhere on the border”. He added: “In any case, there isn’t any state on the other side [of the frontier].”
Turkey plays a crucial role in the Syrian crisis because of its long border with the country, part of which is now controlled by Isis. Mr Davutoglu described how Turkey’s close relations with Bashar al-Assad – “I visited there 62 times in 10 years” – soured in 2011 when “Assad started to kill his own people”.
Mr Davutoglu said Isis was the creation of the war in Iraq and the US occupation after 2003. And Turkey – which is home to 1.5 million refugees who fled President Assad, and a further 500,000 who fled from Isis in Syria and Iraq – had nothing to do with the rise of Isis.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-on-isis-flood-of-jihadi-volunteers-to-syria-is-unstoppable-warns-turkish-prime-minister-9993740.html
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