Turkey ‘Created a Monster and Doesn’t Know How to Deal With It’

…
The November report “Bordering on Terrorism: Turkey’s Syria Policy and the Rise of the Islamic State” details Turkey's apparent willingness to allow extremists — including militants from ISIS — and their enablers to thrive on the border, part of Ankara's ongoing attempts to trigger the downfall of Assad's regime.

Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy and a coauthor of the report, described Turkey's predicament to Business Insider in November.

“They've inadvertently created a mechanism that can yield blowback for them that could be extremely painful,” Schanzer, a former counterterrorism analyst for the US Treasury Department, told Business Insider.

“You have a lot of people now that are invested in the business of extremism in Turkey. If you start to challenge that, it raises significant questions of whether” the militants, their benefactors, and other war profiteers would tolerate a big crackdown.

The “Bordering on Terrorism” report cites an email from Turkey-based BuzzFeed reporter Mike Giglio that highlighted his concern about the “level of ISIS support among the 1 million-plus Syrians living in Turkey. I don't see how they can successfully weed out ISIS supporters from among these refugees.”
…
Read full article here.