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Comment by afsina | Hacker News Reader

If this story is true, I think he is an idiot attacking the tr domain. Who is he punishing?. And really why?

This is debated over and over but I am quite baffled with the allegations that government deliberately and purposefully aided ISIS, even today. I have yet to see any convincing evidence on this. Sources of such allegations are mostly from usual suspects such as Gulenists or pro-Kurdish far left circles. Last month Russia joined the club as well. Related news were published in Gulenist media (especially their English press) and Turkish Left leaning groups support it without questioning the motives because they share the same sentiment (hate for Erdoğan) and purpose (removing him at any cost). Erdoğan deserves a lot of the criticism but current "hate wave" against him is far from rational IMO.

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interesting that before Turkey/Russia conflict everybody knew and wasn't really bothered, ie. business as usual, that Sunnis in Middle East, primarily Saudis and Turkey, do aid ISIS. In particular, ISIS fights Kurds and Assad - thus doing Turkey's and Saudis' bidding (Saudis need Assad gone because he blocks the Saudi gas pipeline to Europe and this is one of the reasons why Russia has been supporting him all this time :). Turkey and Saudis are US allies, while the other side - Shia like Assad, Iran, Hezbollah - are enemies of US. Everything was going great until Russia moved in and pooped the party :)

Beside global goals, like making itself important again by actively supporting the anti-US side, one of the practical Russian interest is in breaking up the flow of really cheap oil - from ISIS to Turkey to Ukraine's Odessa refinery (thus also hitting Ukraine too. In 2014, amid Russia/Ukraine conflict, Russia stopped sending its oil to the refinery, and that huge refinery has since then found another, even bigger source of oil, from Turkey :). Like Russia, Ukraine is a very corrupt state (and Odessa governor is the former president of Georgia - Saakashvili - with deep "business" ties to Turkey from his time in Georgia. It is very interesting story in itself on who, why and how put him into governor chair of strategically important large region of another, completely unrelated, country :) so nobody is asking questions about the oil provenance there, and as result there is 2 stage "laundering" of final oil products - first dilution of ISIS oil into "legal" Turkey oil and passing the result through the refinery (plus selling a lot of that cheap oil and its refined products into "no much questions asked" markets of Eastern Europe like in particular Ukraine and Poland. You may have already heard about extremely cheap supposedly Saudi oil hitting market in Poland. That flow of cheap oil negatively affects ("dumping" is the keyword here) Russian oil sales into these next-door markets and thus hits Putin's regime where and when it really hurts, and thus all this "cold war" between Russia and Turkey, and i personally have no doubts about who attacked the Turkish Internet :)

I am sure you'll be able to provide reliable citations to authoritative sources supporting these curious claims, right?

When a government starts putting newspaper editors in jail [1], what other proof do you need? Erdogan is now so internationally discredited that even The Economist, stalwart of Western establishment, routinely aligns Turkey with "Russia, Venezuela and other illiberal democracies" [2].

If you live in Turkey and you care about your country, you should really think about finding alternatives to Erdogan and his cronies.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/27/turkish-journal...

[2] http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21677997-turkeys-govern...

Of course I am not defending jailing journalists. But there is something a little deeper here. During 2013 and 2014 there was an unprecedented political power struggle between Erdogan and Gulen ( http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_4_fethullah-gulen.html ) whose cult has/had deep roots in the government especially in the police force, bureaucracy and justice system. They control many media outlets. After the breaking point, their sole aim was to overthrow Erdogan from his position, either because he started to block their spreading in the state, or because he simply did not want them anymore.

So they throw whatever they have in their hands, probably with a lot of manipulation. They attacked him and his family quite strongly with corruption claims (I would take them more seriously if there wasnt another motive behind all that). One of the attack point was about Syrian conflict. Probably government was supplying logistics help to the rebel groups fighting with Assads government but using their people in the key points they actually interfered with this action and presented this as if Government is helping IS. These journalists in question were also used as a proxy for spreading this. Now that Gulen has lost the battle big time, Government is taking his revenge by making some of their supporters lives miserable. But although they are now in the shadows they are silently continuing their attacks. From my point of view, Gulen's secret cult's utopia is more dangerous than Erdogans bravado. At least he is honest on what he says, no matter good or bad.

At first I too was most sceptical of the claims, however the speed and logistics of the ISIS franchise is very difficult to explain as a self funded exercise. Having another front open up against syria and the kurds is a very attractive thing for the Turkish government, as is an excuse to bomb the living daylights out of the kurds.

Isn't this a logical fallacy? "ISIS gets logistic support so Turkey must be providing it" does not sound right to me. Granted, government was hesitant to take any action when there was a fight between IS and Syrian Kurds, but this does not mean helped IS at all.

On the bombing issue, it was PKK who broke the truce.

Thats not exactly what I said.

Turkey was publicly pushed into invading Syria, something they wisely declined to do.

However allowing our "allies" to fund sectarian violence[1], from which the ISIS franchise grew seemed like a good compromise: Assad gets heat, and so does Kurdish nationalism.(PDP were starting to make real inroads in mainstream politics, so undermining them was a bonus, along with the right wingers) At the time it seemed like a good idea. "Islamism" eats it's self in the place where lots of the prophecies are based.

However, it didn't pan out like that.

[1]loosely the west and our oil rich friends, not just Turkey.

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