...embracing their inner Islamic Brute...leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was holed up, they had good intelligence from various sources in Iraq and Syria that confirmed the terror leader’s location. They were also just a few kilometres from the
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
and Russia about the request to raid the area. They didn’t tell them all the details of the operation.
| Mildly damning, thus far. Darning, perhaps? |
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis....
ally, as sophisticated as Turkey, with UAVs and signals intelligence and observation posts throughout Idlib where Baghdadi was living not know he was there?
| To be fair, they’ve purged all the Gulenists they could find, and nobody else understands how to use all that stuff. Besides, it’s not Turks but their allied paramilitaries manning the observation posts. They know how to rape and torture, but not much about soldiering. |
But
Turkey says it is also fighting ISIS. Turkey invaded Afrin, another Kurdish area, in January 2018, also under the pretense of "security concerns." Yet, its intelligence agencies could not find Baghdadi, even though Turkey asserts that he had "YPG-ISIS ties." Turkey claims that its intelligence "played a key role in the death of ISIS terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi," because it detained and extradited a local aide to Iraq. This man was named Ismael al-Ethawi.
"He provided US authorities with critical information." Turkey claims it found him in Sakarya province on February 8, 2018. Turkey says he "entered Turkey through a PKK-linked controlled area." But wait, he entered Turkey, so shouldn’t Turkey have stopped him when he entered?
| Why would they do that? Waiving ISIS people through is part of the Turkish border guard job description. And since the Gulenists there were rounded up, too, it isn’t realistic to expect the remainder to actually think about anything. |
| Q.E.D. |