Al Qaeda Connections in Turkey’s Corruption Scandal?
The revelations of duplicity in the Turkish corruption investigations have apparently reached Premier Erdogan and his family. Could these unraveling developments destabilize relations with the Obama Administration over both Iran and Syria?
Yesterday, we posted on the Turkish gas for gold scheme with Iran. The boxes of funds uncovered by Turkish prosecutors at the state-owned Halkbank resulted in the arrest of its general manager Suleyman Aslan.
Now there is more on why Premier Erdogan wanted to quash investigations and prevent a prosecutor from making arrests; possible al Qaeda connections. Those connections involve a shadowy Saudi billionaire who the US has designated terrorist financier , Yasin al-Qadi. Also involved was the Turkish intelligence service, MIT, and Erdogan’s son Bilal. They conspired to use Muslim charities to channel funds to an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the Al-Nusrah Front.
What is troubling is that Turkey is a NATO member, ostensibly an ally of the US. Obama placed great trust in forging a partnership with Erdogan dealing with problems in the region. If these reports are confirmed it raises questions about the wisdom of the Administration’s dealing with Erdogan on Iran’s nuclear program. US policy opposes Erdogan’s covert support of the Al Qaeda’s agenda in neighboring Syria.
American Enterprise Institute Middle East Scholar, Michael Rubin, in yesterday’s Commentary blog Contentions, and Today’s Zaman columnist, Emre Uslu present the background in articles Turkey Scandal’s Al-Qaeda Angle and Yasin al-Qadi and the Erdogan Family.
Rubin in the Contentions blog post notes the al-Qadi/Erdogan connection and Al Qaeda money laundering:
Now it seems that the corruption being exposed also has an al-Qaeda angle that harkens back to the Yasin al-Qadi affair. In that case, Cuneyt Zapsu, a close Erdogan confidant, donated money to Qadi, a Saudi businessman designated by the U.S. Treasury Department to be a “specially designated global terrorist.” Rather than distance himself from Zapsu, the prime minister doubled down and lent Qadi his personal endorsement.
Fast forward to the present day: According to Turkish interlocutors, there are consistent irregularities in 28 government tenders totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, in which kickbacks and other payments were made, a portion of which Turkish investigators believe ended up with al-Qadi’s funds and charities. These funds and charities were then used to support al-Qaeda affiliates and other radical Islamist groups operating in Syria like the Nusra Front. Erdogan thought he had his plausible denial, but it seems that Turkish government funds supported the growth of these groups, which are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands and which subsumed the more moderate opposition.
Uslu, in his Today’s Zaman column tells us when the al-Qadi/ Erdogan connections first surfaced:
Saudi billionaire Qadi is a well-known figure within the security bureaucracy of the West. Right after the 9/11 attacks in the US, the EU as well as many other countries froze the Saudi billionaire’s assets. In recent years, the EU and many Western countries have unfrozen his financial assets; however, security services
Last June Mr. Qadi and his close associate Qutb were involved in a traffic accident in Istanbul and taken to a hospital. When they had the traffic accident, the prime minister’s chief of security was with them in the same car. More importantly, the prime minister’s son, Bilal Erdogan, was the first person to visit them in the hospital and “cleaned” the hospital records of the fact that they had had an accident while the prime minister’s chief of security was with them.
Even the pro-government Star daily confirmed an allegation that Qadi had met with the MIT chief. After the meeting, they returned to Istanbul and were involved in the traffic accident while Prime Minister Erdo?an’s chief of security, Ibrahim Yildiz, was with them in the car.
In that piece, I questioned Mr. Qadi’s relations with the prime minister and M?T and stressed the following: “Mr. Qadi may or may not have any relations with any illegal network; that is not important. What is important is that all of these examples create a fuzzy picture for the international community as to whether Turkey has become a center of a range of illegal activities, from nuclear smuggling to money laundering and helping terrorists.” (Today’s Zaman, Sept. 29, 2013)
Uslu tells what stopped Turkish prosecutors from arresting Qadi and Qutb this past week:
The details of the investigation have been revealed to the media. Mr. Qadi and Mr. Qutb are two key figures the prosecutor had asked the police to arrest; however, the police refused to comply with the order perhaps because Ankara did not want them to listen to what the prosecutor had ordered.
It seems that the prosecutor had gotten ahold of evidence that made AKP officials so panicked that they blocked the whole investigation process and created a political crisis that has deeply affected the economy.
Now, that these nefarious al-Qadi/Erdogan connections funding Al Qaeda affiliates are out in the open, one can understand the massive protests and calls for Erdogan’s resignation in Turkey. Will these damaging revelations in the Erdogan corruption scandals blowback against US efforts in the roiling Middle East? Could these disclosures of Erdogan family connections with alleged money laundering via Muslim charities to Al Qaeda affiliate, the Al Nusrah Front, upend the scheduled Geneva II discussions in late January 2014 seeking a truce in the 34 month civil war in Syria? Stay tuned.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.
