Turkey’s War on ISIL Aimed at Increased Interference in Syria: Analyst

A former Syrian minister and senior political analyst deplored the motivation behind Ankara’s ongoing attacks on the ISIL terrorist group, saying the attacks are actually aimed at supporting other terrorists in Syria.

Turkey recently launched airstrikes allegedly against the PKK bases in northern Iraq as well as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) positions in Syria after a deadly bomb attack left 32 people dead in the southwestern town of Suruç, across the border from the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani.
Mahdi Dakhlallah, a former Syrian information minister, told the Tasnim News Agency on Saturday that Turkey’s move is apparently right, but the objectives behind the military operation are wrong.
“The move is right because ISIL is a terrorist group, but it is wrong because Turkey aims to reinforce (its) military interference in Syria by supporting terrorist groups other than ISIL,” he explained.
He went on to say that Ankara is targeting one of the terrorist groups in its anti-terror campaign, but is still supporting other terrorist groups such as al-Nusra front.
Dakhlallah further noted that Turkey is just trying to curb ISIL terrorists and does not want to destroy them.
“Turkey, on the one hand, is fighting ISIL forces in northwestern Syria, but at the same time supports the group’s terrorists in northeast of Syria,” he stated, reiterating that such policy reveals the wrong purposes behind the campaign.
The Turkish government is believed to be one of the main supporters of the terrorist groups fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2011, with reports showing that Ankara actively trains and arms the militants operating in Syria, and also facilitates the safe passage of would-be foreign terrorists into crisis-hit areas.