Is Turkey using foreign jihadists as a bargaining chip?

On several occasions since 2014, Turkey has sent dozens of foreign jihadists, including EU citizens, to Syria as part of prisoner exchanges with ISIS. This has shed new light on anti-terrorist cooperation with Ankara.

Everything about Mohamed's journey -  since his departure for Turkey at the end of the summer 2014 -  is "mind-boggling," noted the police officer who collected the first statment of the young man upon his return to France.

Mohamed, born and raised in south of France, attempted to join ISIS in Syria, but was arrested by Turkish forces in Akçakale before he could cross the border. He was detained for 12 days, until the 19th of September. Then, Mohamed claims, he was sent to Syria “against his will” in the middle of the night, in a ‘’secret prisoners exchange’’ between Turkey and the so-called caliphate. According to Mohamed, two Turkish undercover police officers who spoke perfect French took him on a ride and it was when he saw a black ISIS flag that Mohamed realized they had arrived in Syria.

What followed is equally epic. A few weeks after his arrival, the French militant became wounded on the frontlines while fighting in Deir-Zor. Then, his parents, both of whom are doctors, and his two younger sisters decided to travel to Syria to bring Mohamed back to France, at the risk of their own lives. The family lived in Raqqa and the parents told ISIS authorities that they wished to work for the so-called caliphate. The father worked at hospitals until he found his wounded son. The family, with their son, crossed into Turkey. Mohamed was sentenced to 7 years in prison in 2017. His appeal hearing is set to be held on April 12.

According to the account Mohamed gave during his interrogations, he flew to Turkey on Sept. 4 and arrived that evening in the small border town of Akçakale. While wandering in the middle of the night, he was arrested by Turkish soldiers and placed in detention at the local police station. The following day, he called his family and informed the French Embassy in Ankara. Mohamed said that he was regretful of having joined ISIS and wished to return home. But on the night of the Sept. 19th, Mohamed vanished. As of 3 o'clock in the morning, his phone was out of reach. He had crossed over into Syria.

At the same time, only a few hundred meters away - on the other side of the border - a long diplomatic crisis for Turkey was unraveling.

The 49 hostages of the Turkish consulate in Mosul, captured by Daesh in June, were being released after being detained for more than three months. The consul, his wife, diplomats and their families were greeted with relief in Ankara by President Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

"Early this morning, we recovered our citizens and brought them back to Turkey," Davutoglu said.

Former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu (R) with a released hostage.

According to Turkish official sources, the hostages, who arrived from Raqqa, had gone through Tel Abyad before returning to Turkey to Akçakale, escorted by the Turkish secret service, MİT. The detention of diplomats had caused a deep crisis in Ankara. The hostages' fate justified Turkey's reluctance of any military intervention in Syria or Iraq. At that time, Ankara did not allow for American planes to take off from the Incirlik Air Base.

Cooperation between Westerners and Turks on combatting terror was also experiencing turbulance. On September 23, three days after the disappearance of Mohamed at the border, three French jihadists were deported by Turkey.

Imad Djebali, Gael Maurize and Abdelouahed el-Bagdali, were all expected to arrive at Paris Orly airport. They were boarded on a flight to Marseille without Paris being informed. Upon arrival, the three men walked freely on the Canebière and surrendered to the police the next day.

A few days later, on Sept. 26th, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve flew to Ankara. During this last minute meeting, his Turkish counterpart committed  himself to communicate to France the list of his nationals held in detention centers and to immediately alert the French intelligence services when a French national is detained on the Turkish-Syrian border. This well-intentioned decision arrived a bit too late.

By late September, the Turkish press and the British daily, The Times, had revealed, based on police sources, that Turkey released 180 ISIS members it was holding in Turkish prisons in exchange for the release and return of Turkish diplomats. Among these 180, details the London newspaper, were two Macedonians, two Swedes, a Belgian, a Swiss, two British and three French citizens.

Shabazz Suleman, one of the two British jihadists, was caught by the Turkish authorities at the border and thereby "disappeared" in 2014. The British Foreign Office, had stated that such an exchange seemed "probable.’’

A Yemeni jihadist who was part of an exchange, had confirmed that tens of ISIS militants - among them high-ranking officials - had been released. The release was welcomed as a victory in Raqqa. Several names were quickly identified, such as the Belgian Johann Castillo Boens and the Swede Emil Magshoud.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not really deny the talk of bargaining. On Sept. 22, during an international summit he participated in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, he was asked about a prisoner exchange. This was his response:

"I can tell you that there was no ransom or exchange of fire ... For the rest, you will understand that I do not disclose to you details of the affairs of the secret services. We are talking about an exchange? (...) This kind of thing is possible.”

A former Turkish anti-terrorist police chief, stationed in Urfa until 2014, acknowledged the existence of this prisoner exchange organized by MİT.

"That night, the secret service headquarters in Urfa, backed by the police headquarters and the security headquarters, was particularly agitated. We saw dozens of people, vehicles, gathered in the courtyard in the middle of the night, it was the diplomats who had just been released, "says Ahmet Yayla, now a refugee in the U.S., accused of being part of a terrorist organization.

A memo from the DGSI (police intelligence services) dating back to 2015, states that "three individuals are known to have been the subject of a prisoner exchange between the 20th and the end of Sept. 2014".

A partial list of the exchange of 20 September 2014, which we obtained from Turkish police sources, shows 112 detailed identities of jihadists held in prison or detention centers in eight provinces of Turkey. They are from the Caucasus,  Russia, Central Asia, from the Muslim Chinese province of Xinjiang ... Two Macedonians, the two Swedes, the Belgian Boens and the French el-Khayari are also listed along with their passport numbers.

Two names emerge from this list of prisoners exchanged for the Mosul consulate diplomats. Ahmed Diini is the grandson of former Somali dictator Siad Barré. He returned from Egypt where he spent several months in prison because of his Islamist activism. Barre, who held a Dutch passport and a U.S. issued warrant, was arrested at Istanbul’s Atatürk airport in March 2014.

Another big catch for Daesh, was Austrian Mohamed Mahmoud, or Abu Oussama Al-Gharib. A veteran of jihad, despite his young age of 29, Al-Gharib joined joined Ansar Al-Islam in 2002, jihadist group linked to Al Qaida, established in northern Iraq.

In 2007, Al-Gharib was suspected by Austria of preparing terrorist attacks and imprisoned. The Al Qaeda group in the Islamic Maghreb demanded his release in exchange for two Austrians he holds captive. After his release from prison in 2011, he appeared in a video in 2013, in which he burns his Austrian passport, near the Turkish-Syrian border. He was arrested by the Turkish authorities who have refused to extradite him to Vienna.

Some time after the exchange of prisoners in Sept. 2014, Mohamed Mahmoud became an important member of Daesh. As a figure of the jihadist movement from German-speaking Europe, he appeared in a video shot in German amongst the ruins of Palmyra in August 2015. The Austrian, his German sidekick Abu Omar al-Almani, killed two Syrian soldiers and threatened Germany with terrorist attacks in retaliation for their participation in the war in Afghanistan.

In 2016, however, the country would experience a series of unprecedented terrorist attacks, including the attack in the Christmas market in Berlin.

What about the case of Qendrim Ramadani? A Swiss of Kosovan origin who would have been part of the exchange of Sept. 20, according to The Times?

Ramadani is behind one of the first Daesh attacks on Turkish soil: a shooting at a roadblock near Niğde, Central Anatolia, committed a few months earlier, in March 2014. Along with a German and a Macedonian national, Ramadani shot dead a Turkish policeman, a gendarme and a truck driver.

The trio was arrested and tried. Ramadani received five life sentences. But for the delivery of the verdict, he appeared only on video from prison. Was this reputedly dangerous terrorist secretly released  and returned to Daesh by Turkey before the conclusion of his trial?

Ramadani was on a list of jihadist detainees claimed by ISIS in June of  2014. And the parents of the policeman killed by the terrorist said they had received strange visitors, whom they suspected were MİT agents, to probe them for a possible release - information which reinforces suspicions.

These prisoner exchanges are based on the question of anti-terrorist cooperation with Turkey. If Ankara is able to have coined the exchange of a terrorist sentenced to life for the murder of Turkish policemen, what will it do for nationals of countries with whom it is not on good terms with?

Thousands of foreign jihadists intercepted by the Turkish authorities have been returned and delivered to their countries since 2014, with Ankara ensuring that it appears as an indispensable partner for the West in the fight against terrorism. But how many others have possibly served as a bargaining chip for Erdogan?

On Sept. 20, 2014, Western countries "may have been faced with a fait accompli," said Ahmet Yayla.

This type of operation would have been repeated. In February 2015, a few months later, Turkey found itself in trouble again. The tomb of Suleiman Shah - grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire - in Karakozak on the bank of the Euphrates in Syria, was threatened by the Islamic State. The site of the burial, considered a sovereign Turkish territory under the Franco-Turkish agreements of 1921, is encircled. The quarantine of soldiers who guard it had not been supplied for ten months.

On Feb. 22, an agreement was finally reached for the evacuation of the enclave. With the help of Syrian Kurds, 39 Turkish tanks entered Syria and delivered their soldiers. But to convince Daesh to let it carry out this operation without damage, Turkey would have, again, released prisoners: 89 suspected jihadists, this time along with women accompanied by young minors.

On this list that were four French nationals, including one child, two Dutch and two Germans. Their case has never been made public. Turkey regularly uses the prisoner card, get remove itself from a bad situation or to negotiate arrangements with Daesh.

In March of 2016, the Belgian press revealed the release of Yassine Lachiri in exchange for prisoners. Lachiri, an explosives expert, was sentenced to 20 years on charges of terrorism and considered close to Abdelhamid Abaoud, the organizer of the attacks of Nov.13, 2015 in Paris. He was the subject of a request for extradition.

Yassine Lachiri

In 2018, with the possible return of hundreds of jihadists through Turkish territory giving Turkey a more strategic role than ever in the fight against terrorism, it is far from having removed any ambiguity where jihadist prisoners are concerned.

This article was originally published in French in Journal Du Dimanche.