It's time to designate Turkey as a sponsor of terrorism

On Tuesday, Islamist terrorists affiliated with the Somali group al-Shabaab attacked an upscale hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, killing at least 21. It wasn’t the group’s first attack in Kenya. The radical group, which at one point was affiliated with al Qaeda, has used Kenya’s heavy Somali refugee presence as cover for a number of attacks in Kenya and against Kenyans, most famously at the Westgate Mall in 2013. That Kenya remains a contributor of both soldiers and police to AMISOM, the African Union Mission in Somalia which seeks to defend the country against al-Shaabab, only puts it further in the group’s crosshairs.

For most countries, it would be unthinkable to support, let alone supply, al-Shabaab. Except for Turkey.

At least according to this report from Abdullah Bozkurt, the former Ankara bureau chief for Today’s Zaman, a newspaper affiliated with Fethullah Gulen, an exiled Islamic theologian and one-time ally of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Bozkurt writes that İbrahim Sen, subsequently arrested in Pakistan as an al Qaeda operative, was a liaison for Turkey’s intelligence service to groups in Syria and, more importantly, transferred $600,000 to al-Shabaab in 2012. While Bozkurt has ample personal reason to embarrass Erdogan given the Turkish leader’s closure of Zaman and imprisonment of many of Bozkurt’s colleagues, his outlet both still had tight relations with the Erdogan government at the time of the alleged transfer and the Gulen movement at the time still had a heavy presence in Turkey’s diplomatic and security services. In addition, subsequent intelligence confirmed the Gulen movement leaks about Erdogan’s secret dealings which emerged in the wake of the high-profile feud between Erdogan and Gulen.

The government dropped the 2014 investigation and sacked police chiefs, prosecutors and judges who were involved in the investigation, prosecution and trial of Sen and his associates. Wiretaps obtained by prosecutors under court order exposed Sen’s links to the Turkish intelligence agency. Investigators believed that Sen used several front NGOs including the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (İnsan Hak ve Hurriyetleri ve İnsani Yardım Vakfı, or IHH) to conceal illegal shipments to jihadists in Syria. Three people identified by the police as partners of Sen in smuggling goods to Syria are Omer Faruk Aksebzeci (who works out of the IHH Kayseri branch), Recep Camdalı (a member of the IHH in the Kayseri branch) and İbrahim Halil İlgi (who works out of the Kilis IHH branch). The transcripts of wiretaps between Sen and these operatives showed how they planned to use ambulances to transport goods to jihadists when the governor prohibited pick-up trucks from crossing into Syria.

That Turkey was actively supporting an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria and, at a minimum, passively supporting the Islamic State was the major reason why the United States cast its lot in with Syria’s Kurds. Turkey’s ongoing partnership with radical groups in Syria will also pose a lasting security challenge to the broader region and Turkey itself.

In recent weeks, Libyan authorities have repeatedly intercepted shipments of Turkish weaponry destined for Islamist militias in defiance of a United Nations weapons embargo. Some Turkish and Libyan Islamist authorities have reported that the weapons in questions turned out to be starter rifles and blanks. But not only does the provision of 4 million blanks to Libya defy logic, but the explanations also only account for a portion of the shipments.

With Turkish weapons shipments to Islamist insurgents in Nigeria and Hamas, a designated terror organization, a broader pattern emerges for which support for al-Shabaab is only part.

President Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Special Envoy James Jeffery may find it expedient to ignore Turkey’s actions, just as the Clinton and both Bush administrations found it expedient to ignore Pakistan’s terror sponsorship. Alas, in that case, reality caught up with the wishful thinking of policymakers, and ultimately led the United States to engage in its longest (and still ongoing) war.

As the smoke clears in Nairobi, it would be prudent to investigate which foreign states have backed or enabled al-Shabaab and publicly shine the spotlight on such finance. Foreign policy and national security must be based on reality, not wishful thinking.

Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.