“It happened yesterday, and in his appeal the Caliphate urges Turkish citizens to “revolt against President Erdogan” who in the militants” footage referred to as “Satan” and is charged that he “sold Turkey to Kurdish rebels and the United States“. Four people were detained, the report said.
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The United States carried out its first manned air strikes against ISIL from Turkey’s southern İncirlik Air Base last week and officials have said operations will be ramped up once additional coalition forces arrive.
The regime’s gains come a day after a Syrian newspaper said the army was preparing for a large pushback in Sahl Al Ghab.
The unidentified man in the video also accuses Ankara of siding with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and the Free Syrian Army. He said there is no plan to bring more combat assets to Turkey.
Turkey, a U.S. ally and member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has become the main crossing point for would-be militants coming from Europe and other regions to live under the group’s self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr Baghdadi.
Turkey agreed to allow U.S. planes to fly from its bases and to launch airstrikes of its own against the Islamic State under a deal reached last month after the Islamic State was blamed for the bombing in the Turkish city of Suruc that killed at least 32.
“We had no idea who the Turkish fighters were, their call signs, what frequencies they were using, their altitude or what they were squawking [to identify the jets on radar]”, the source said.
Despite these steps, however, Kurds have continued to accuse Ankara of colluding with Islamic State to thwart the establishment of an independent Kurdish state across the border in Syria – charges denied by Turkey.
The video, which was widely cited on social media and reported on by mainstream Turkish media outlets, was entitled “A Message to Turkey” and said to have been produced by the “Raqqa state media office”, a reference to the Sunni hardline group’s de facto capital in northern Syria.
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German radio station Deutsche Welle reports that yesterday Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu officially informed country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the failure to form a government.
