There are 1,200 ISIS fighters in Turkey, and now Erdogan is threatening to send them into Europe. According to a report from N Word:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned EU nations on Tuesday that his country could send ISIS prisoners back to Europe, in response to sanctions over Cyprus.

Mr Erdogan also said before his visit to the US that Turkey would continue to repatriate foreign ISIS militants, even if their home nations declined to take them back.

His comments were in response to the EU’s announcement on Monday of a system for imposing sanctions on Turkey for its unauthorised gas drilling in the Mediterranean off Cyprus.

“You should revise your stance towards Turkey, which holds so many ISIS members in prison and controls them in Syria,” Mr Erdogan said.

…

Last week Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said Turkey was not a “hotel” for ISIS fighters.

Mr Soylu criticised western nations for their reluctance to take back citizens who had joined the extremist militant group as it sought to establish a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria.

He said last week that about 1,200 foreign IS fighters were in Turkish prisons and 287 members, including women and children, were recaptured during Turkey’s offensive in Syria.

For one thing, there is nothing surprising about Turkey sending terrorists back to their countries of origin. If a criminal or terrorist is, lets say, a US citizen, and he did a crime in Turkey, then the Turks have the right to send that criminal back to the US where he is to be held in confinement. The United States does this with Mexican citizens who get caught on drug charges or other offenses; they are charged, serve a prison sentence and are sent back to Mexico. This is nothing new.

Weeks before an Islamic terrorist attack hit Brussels in early 2016, Turkey deported one of the terrorists involved, Ibrahim el Bakraoui, to the Netherlands. The Dutch then released him and he went to Belgium where he was a citizen. Erdogan said that Turkey had deported Ibrahim back to Europe after informing the Belgian embassy about his terrorist ties. Erdogan went on to say that his government warned Brussels about Ibrahim back in 2015. Yet, the Belgians did nothing to stop Bakraoui’s terrorist attack that murdered 32 people. The Belgians should have stopped him, but they did not and it makes one wonder if it was allowed to happen intentionally. 

Turkey sending terrorist back to their countries of origin or where they are citizens is not something to be shocked by. The problem is that people are credulous enough to think that Erdogan and European countries like Germany or the Netherlands are actually enemies, or to think that European sanctions on Turkey actually mean anything but a show to give the perception that they are not in cahoots with the Turks. Remember, Trump put sanctions on Turkey only to quickly rescind them after Turkey supposedly agreed to a ceasefire in Syria regardless of the reports on Turkish war crimes being done against civilians.

Supposedly the Europeans are upset with Turkey because she is drilling in Cyprus’ maritime territory for natural gas. But, we should remember that in the first five months of 2019 Germany sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth in weapons to Turkey during her military action in Syria and (more important to the present discussion) when Turkey affirmed her claim over Cypriot territory. As we read in a report from Ahval:

German arms exports to Turkey remains uninterrupted despite the ongoing rift over drilling rights in the island of Cyprus, European news outlet Euractiv reported on Thursday.

German firms sent €184,1 million ($207 million) worth of arms to Turkey in the first five months of 2019, Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economics said in response to a question submitted by the opposition Left party (Die Linke), Euractiv said.

The exports were mainly deliveries for the 214 submarines to be built in Turkey with the involvement of the German ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, according to the news site.

Tensions have escalated between Turkey and the Greek Cypriot government and Greece over drilling rights in the Eastern Mediterranean after a series of rich hydrocarbon discoveries. Nicosia and Athens disagree with Ankara’s claims of drilling rights in the region. Turkey, the only nation to recognise Northern Cyprus, maintains that attempts by Cyprus to conduct gas exploration are a violation of the rights of the Turkish Cypriot.

Even when EU politicians were putting sanctions on Turkey, these German defense corporations were making money for arms with the Turks, as the same report states:

European Union member states and U.S. officials have objected to Turkey’s increasing drilling efforts in the region and, the bloc on Monday announced sanctions on Turkey, including a freeze to 146 million euros of pre-accession assistance for Turkey for next year, the suspension of negotiations for an aviation agreement, and a review of lending to Turkey from the European Investment Bank, worth 386 million euros last year.

Turkey is bombing and killing civilians? Doesn’t matter. Money is to be made, even at the expense of human life. Turkey could be doing another Armenian genocide, ss long as the defense industry wants to make money from death, war will happen, genocide will be done, arms will be sold, regardless of the objections of politicians. When the Germans decided to fight in the First World War, they knew that they had to win because if they didn’t they would be left with massive amounts of debt and they would not have new territories on which German industries could operate and gain more profits. German industrialists, in fact, wanted the German empire to take north-eastern France and Belgium to boost the German armament industry. This plan was backed by General Ludendorff (see JP Taylor, Course of German History, ch. 9, ch. 10, pp. 195, 202). After the war,  these very Right-wingers within Germany’s elite class still supported Ludendorff within their own inner circles (see Brownell, The First Nazi, ch. 10, p. 191).

Arms deals have been going on for a very long time between Turkey and Germany. You can go all the way back to 1453 and you will read about the largest cannon in the world, designed by German engineers, being used by the Ottomans in their siege of Constantinople. There is a document that can be found on Wikileaks from 1973 from the German embassy in Bonn, which talks about a major arms deal between Turkey and Germany:

“A FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIAL HAS CONFIRMED NEWS REPORTS OF THIS PAST WEEK THAT GERMAN ARMS FIRMS PLAN TO SELL A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF MILITARY EQUIPMENT TO THE TURKS. THE OFFICIAL SAID THAT THE SALES WOULD AMOUNT TO APPROX- IMATELY DM 1.4 BILLION. THE SALES PROGRAM CONSISTED OF THREE ELEMENTS: LEOPARD TANKS, MILAN ANTI-TANK ROCKETS AND THE DIESELIZATION OF M48’S. THE OFFICIAL DID NOT SAY HOW MANY LEOPARDS WERE INVOLVED, BUT NEWS REPORTS INDICATED THE NUMBER WAS 150. … THE GREEKS HAVE REACTED TO THE PROSPECTIVE GERMAN- TURKISH DEAL VIA THE FRG AMBASSADOR IN ATHENS.”

Where there is money to be made through the selling of the means of death, the standard of ethics has been surpassed, and beyond that threshold into darkness, the voices of politicians have no effect.