Turkey’s Erdogan Regime Heightening Attempts to Unite Terrorist Groups in Syria

Arab media sources revealed on Monday that Ankara has intensified attempts to unite different terrorist groups to coordinate their plots and actions against Damascus.
Al-Hayat daily reported that Turkey is endeavoring to gather the dissident and terrorist groups, including the so-called Ahrar al-Sham Movement and Jeish al-Islam, to unite them against the Syrian people and government.

This is while the so-called Filaq al-Sham terrorist group is due to emerge with Ahrara al-Sham Movement in the next few hours.

According to the report, Turkey’s move is in line with implementing its plot to gather 70,000 terrorists in the Northern and Central parts of Syria as well as the areas near Damascus.

Earlier media reports also said that Washington and Ankara will start training 15,000 armed men in the coming days to be sent to Syria under the guise of campaign against ISIL.

“Although the US and Turkey claim that they want to train the Syrian opposition fighters to fight the ISIL, they are actually going to be sent to the country to combat government forces and the army,” senior military analysts Mohamed al-Hasoun said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu said that the US-led program will start on May 9, adding that the US and Turkey are still insisting on their stance that Syria should be run in the absence of Bashar Assad.

US officials have said they plan to train about 5,000 Syrian fighters a year for three years as part of a campaign against Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, while US Vice-President Joe Biden said a few months ago that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey that are the main US allies in the region are behind the creation of the terrorist groups, specially the ISIL, in the region.

Details on the training — due to take place in Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — have been scant, although it had previously been planned to start this month.

On Saturday, a Syrian dissident leader said that the US and Turkey’s support and financial aids to the Takfiri terrorists in Syria have made reaching a political solution to the problems in the Arab country difficult.

“The attacks of the militant groups in Northern Syria show that those regimes that are supporting them in the region and the world do not care for political solution to the Syrian crisis and are still after meeting their interests in Syria without caring about the Syrian nation and government’s fate,” Adel Naeesah, a member of National Change and Freedom Front’s Political Office, told FNA.

Noting that the militants’ attacks against Syria have intensified concurrent with the endorsement of an agreement between Ankara and Washington over training the militias, he said, “This shows that the plots to destroy Syria are still in place and the US and Turkish governments don’t care for the political solution demanded by the Syrians.”

Senior Iraqi and Syrian officials have repeatedly criticized Turkey over links to the militants, including Turkish involvement in buying oil from both the ISIL and al-Nusra Front, and providing a corridor for thousands of terrorists to get into Syria.

A UN report said in December that Turkey is being used as a main route for smuggling weapons to terrorist groups operating in Iraq and Syria.

Militant groups such as the ISIL and the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front in Iraq and Syria have been receiving weapons and equipment smuggled “primarily by routes that run through Turkey”, read a report by the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Implementation Monitoring Team.