Tag Archives: Turkey

Walls and watchtowers rise as Turkey tries to seal border against Islamic State

ELBEYLI, Turkey (Reuters) – Slabs of concrete wall have sprung up and military patrols have intensified, but local people say this stretch of Turkey’s border facing Syrian territory under Islamic State control is still far from water-tight.

Ankara is under intense pressure from its NATO allies to seal off the 40-mile strip that stretches from just east of the Turkish town of Kilis to Karkamis, long a conduit for fighters, smuggled goods and war materiel.

Beyond a string of tiny villages nestled in undulating fig and olive groves lies the last stretch of Syrian territory on Turkey’s southern frontier that Islamic State militants still hold, following advances by rival Kurdish rebels.

European governments fear that their own citizens who have fought with the jihadists could still cross back into Turkey before heading home to stage attacks.

Likewise, the United States believes Turkey, which has NATO’s second largest army, must close the frontier if Islamic State is to be defeated in Syria.

Soldiers patrol in armored vehicles along a border delineated in some places by little more than razor-wire fence. Additional watchtowers and huts have appeared in recent months, and three-meter (10 foot)-high concrete slabs are being erected along some of the most vulnerable sections.

But the efforts by a nation which had long been criticized for failing to do more to prevent the passage of foreign fighters appear to have come too late to stop Islamic State networks developing inside Turkey.

Washington and Ankara have been discussing for months how to seal this stretch of border. Senior U.S. officials said last month they would offer Turkey technology including surveillance balloons and anti-tunneling equipment.

Border security is now undoubtedly tighter but, for those wanting to sneak over, not absolute – and help remains available for a price.

“It’s difficult, but not impossible,” said Ismail, a 37-year old who described himself as a trader, smoking a cigarette in a tea house near the village of Akinci.

“Let’s say you want to cross. You tell me where and when and I can call people who will make it happen,” he said. “But you would have to pay more.”

The military’s own figures suggest attempts to cross into Islamic State-held Syrian territory have continued, showing 121 people tried over the past 10 days alone. Almost half were children, and at least a dozen were foreigners.

Nevertheless, it is cracking down on those trying to spirit people over the border.

“The security is very tight now, soldiers give the smugglers no respite,” said Abbas, 51, a farmer near the Turkish border town of Elbeyli, as two soldiers carrying rifles passed by his house, walking toward their outpost a few hundred meters away.

Last year, Abbas was so alarmed by the numbers of people crossing illicitly into Syria under his nose that he emailed a government bureau, set up years ago for citizens to register complaints, queries and concerns. It receives more than a million inquiries a year and Abbas said he never heard back.

“It was literally a flood of people here,” he said, describing how some in his village made a fortune shuttling people back and forth to the border fence, often doing a dozen trips a night, until the flow largely stopped about a month ago.

Several residents in other border villages and towns confirmed security had been tightened, but emphasized that did not mean the two-way traffic had dried up.

KILLINGS IN TURKEY

Turkey launched what it called a “synchronized war on terror” last July, opening up its Incirlik air base to countries in the U.S.-led coalition bombing Islamic State. Most of its own air strikes, however, have been against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants battling for Kurdish autonomy in its southeast.

Turkish tanks and artillery bombarded Islamic State positions in Syria and Iraq in the days after a suicide bomber blew himself up among groups of tourists in the heart of Istanbul last month, killing 10 Germans.

The security forces have also stepped up raids against Islamic State in cities across Turkey, detaining more than 1,000 alleged members and uncovering urban cells.

“We have never allowed Islamic State to use our territory to cross into Syria and we will not allow them … We see Islamic State as an extremely serious threat and we don’t want them on our border,” a senior government official told Reuters.

Turkey has increasingly become a target itself for the Sunni Muslim radicals. The Istanbul bombing followed a suicide attack in Ankara in October that killed more than 100 people and a bombing in the border town of Suruc last July, both of which were blamed on Islamic State fighters.

Diplomats and analysts say Ankara woke up late to the threat, allowing Islamic State to develop networks of sympathizers, a charge the government rejects.

“These networks are tapped into well-established al Qaeda networks inside Turkey … They were already there and they operated with little interference until March 2015,” Aaron Stein, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council said, nothing a marked increased in arrests thereafter.

Aside from the high-profile suicide bombings, Islamic State sympathizers have been able to carry out targeted attacks inside Turkish territory along the border in recent months.

Naji Jerf, a Syrian activist and documentary maker who made a film about Islamic State and had lived in Turkey’s southeastern city of Gaziantep since 2012, was gunned down on the street in broad daylight last December.

A couple of months earlier, two other Syrian activists who worked for Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), a campaign group against Islamic State, were shot in the head and beheaded in the nearby city of Sanliurfa.

Jerf and the two activists had appealed to the Turkish police after they received death threats, friends and fellow activists in Istanbul and Gaziantep told Reuters.

“Naji went to the police after somebody tried to break into his car,” said his friend Manhal Bareesh, a journalist based in Gaziantep but originally from Syria’s Idlib province.

“He suspected they were trying to plant a bomb in his car. But the Turkish police wrote a report and told him not to worry,” Bareesh said.

Three people have been detained in Gaziantep in relation to Jerf’s murder, according to local media, but the killings have alarmed the Syrian immigrant community.

(Editing by Nick Tattersall and David Stamp)

Curfew widened in southeast Turkey, clashes kill 23

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Security forces killed 20 Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey while three Turkish soldiers died in a rebel attack, the military said on Wednesday, as authorities widened a curfew in the mainly Kurdish region’s largest city, Diyarbakir.

Hundreds of locals, including children and the elderly, fled curfew-bound areas of Diyarbakir’s Sur district as gunfire and blasts resounded and police helicopters flew overhead, a Reuters witness said. Some people cried as they carried away possessions.

The southeast has endured the worst violence in two decades since a 2-1/2-year-old ceasefire between the state and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants collapsed in July, reviving a conflict that has killed 40,000 people since 1984.

The army said 11 PKK members died in the town of Cizre, near the Syrian border, and nine more in Sur on Tuesday, bringing the militant death toll in the two towns to some 600 since security operations began there last month.

It said three soldiers were killed in a militant attack in Sur, where security sources said militants opened fire with rifles and a rocket launcher.

The ancient Sur district, enclosed by Roman city walls, has suffered extensive damage in the fighting and much of it has been under a round-the-clock curfew since Dec. 2.

The district governor’s office said the curfew was extended to five more districts so security forces could remove explosive devices and barricades and fill in ditches set up by militants.

Turkey, the United States and the European Union all classify the PKK as a terrorist organization. The PKK says it is fighting for autonomy for Turkey’s Kurdish minority.

Rights groups and locals have voiced growing concern about the civilian death toll in the security operations since last month. The pro-Kurdish HDP party puts the toll at nearly 120.

Rights groups have highlighted the plight of some 28 people sheltering in a Cizre cellar, where four have died and three are in a critical condition, according to information obtained by Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch.

“Medical attention is not being provided to those in need. This is an urgent situation that the Turkish government needs to address imminently to prevent loss of life,” she told a news conference in Istanbul.

In Diyarbakir, healthcare groups including a doctors’ association and union called for ambulances to be allowed to rescue the wounded in Cizre, where ongoing clashes and the curfew are preventing people from moving about.

(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul, Gulsen Solaker in Ankara; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and Mark Heinrich)

At least 43 migrants drown as boats capsize off Greek islands

ATHENS (Reuters) – At least 43 people, including 17 children, drowned when their boats capsized off two Greek islands near the Turkish coast on Friday, coastguards said, marking one of the deadliest days for migrants risking the perilous route to Europe from Turkey.

According to survivors’ testimonies, dozens were on board a wooden sailboat which went down off Kalolimnos, a small island in the Aegean Sea close to Turkey’s coast, one coastguard official said.

Twenty six people were rescued and at least 35 migrants drowned in one of the worst incidents in months, the official said. It was not clear why the vessel capsized, but witnesses said strong winds were blowing at the time.

Fishing vessels assisted the search and rescue operation which lasted hours.

“They weren’t wearing life jackets, I don’t understand. They couldn’t swim,” Michalis, a local fisherman, told Reuters.

He rescued three migrants but one of them, a 50-year old man, later died in his small fishing boat. “The hospital is now full of dead people.”

Survivors said that more people were missing, he said. “There must have been a lot of people on board. It was one of those closed yachts with a small hatch. You can imagine what happened if it had a lot of people on board,” the fisherman said.

In the sinking at Farmakonisi, another small island also close to the Turkish coast, six children and two women drowned when their wooden boat crashed on rocks shortly after midnight. Another 40 migrants on the vessel managed to swim to the shore.

“Once again, last night ruthless human smugglers at the Turkish coast crammed dozens of refugees and migrants in risky and unseaworthy vessels and led innocent people, even young children to perish,” the shipping ministry said in a statement.

The International Organization for Migration said the deaths of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean already make this “the deadliest January on record”.

The latest incidents bring the number of people killed on the eastern Mediterranean route in the past year to at least 900, said IOM spokesman Joel Millman in Geneva.

The total number of arrivals in Europe by sea rose to about 37,000 in January, more than six times the combined figures for the same month in 2014 and 2015, usually a slow month due to the bad weather.

Fleeing war, thousands of mainly Syrian refugees have braved rough seas this year to make the short, but precarious, journey from Turkey to Greece’s islands, from which most continue to mainland Greece and northward into wealthier western Europe.

Winter conditions make the journey even more dangerous.

(Reporting by Renee Maltezou, George Georgiopoulos and Theodora Arvanitidou in Athens and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Istanbul bomber entered Turkey as refugee from Syria, PM says

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – An Islamic State suicide bomber who killed 10 German tourists in the heart of Istanbul’s historic district entered Turkey as a refugee from Syria and went undetected as he was not on any watch lists, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday.

The bomber, who blew himself up among groups of tourists on Tuesday near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, the top sites in one of the world’s most visited cities, had registered with immigration authorities in the city a week ago.

Turkey has kept an open border to refugees from Syria’s civil war and is now home to more than 2.2 million, the world’s largest refugee population. But its border has also been used by foreign fighters seeking to join Islamic State or return from its ranks to commit atrocities abroad.

“This individual was not somebody under surveillance. He entered Turkey normally, as a refugee, as someone looking for shelter,” Davutoglu told a news conference, adding he had been identified from fragments of his skull, face and nails.

“After the attack his connections were unveiled. Among these links, apart from Daesh, we have the suspicion that there could be certain powers using Daesh,” he said, using an Arabic name for Islamic State.

Turkey accuses Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and his allies including Iran and Russia, of cooperating with Islamic State in the Syrian regime’s effort to destroy Syrian opposition forces.

Turkey, which like Germany is a member of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, has become a target for the radical Sunni militants.

It was hit by two major bombings last year blamed on the group, in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border and in the capital Ankara, the latter killing more than 100 people in the worst attack of its kind on Turkish soil.

Asked if Turkey planned retaliatory air strikes on Islamic State, Davutoglu said Ankara would act at a time and in a manner that it saw fit. He pointed out the Turkish military had hit Islamic State targets abroad after the Suruc and Ankara attacks.

But he said Russia’s entry into the Syrian war was a complicating factor. Turkish war planes have not flown in Syrian air space since Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet in late November, triggering a diplomatic row with Moscow.

“They (the Russian air force) shouldn’t obstruct Turkey’s fight against Daesh … Right now unfortunately there is such a barrier,” Davutoglu said. “Certain countries are in an obstructive attitude in terms of Turkey’s air bombardments. They should either destroy Daesh themselves or allow us to do it.”

TOUR GUIDE YELLED “RUN”

Asked about a report in the Turkish media that the bomber had registered at an immigration office in Istanbul a week ago, Interior Minister Efkan Ala earlier confirmed that his fingerprints were on record with the authorities.

The Haberturk newspaper published what it said was a CCTV image of the man, named in some local media as Saudi-born Nabil Fadli, at an Istanbul immigration office on Jan. 5. Turkish officials have said he was born in 1988.

Foreign tourists and Turks paid their respects at the site of the attack early on Wednesday. Scarves with the Bayern Munich soccer club emblem were left along with carnations and roses at the scene, before Turkish police sealed off the area.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, visiting Istanbul, said there were no indications Germans had been deliberately targeted and that he saw no reason for people to change travel plans to Turkey. He said Germany stood resolutely by Turkey’s side in the fight against terrorism.

“If the terrorists aimed to disturb, destroy or jeopardize cooperation between partners, they achieved the opposite. Germany and Turkey are becoming even closer,” he said, adding there was no link to Germany’s role in the fight on terrorism.

Davutoglu praised the German group’s Turkish guide who, according to the Hurriyet newspaper, yelled “run” after seeing the bomber standing among the tourists and pulling a pin on his explosives, enabling some of them to get away.

Witnesses said the square was not packed at the time of the explosion, but that several groups of tourists were there.

“I didn’t finish the tour, you know, the tour I had bought,” said Jostein Nielsen, a wounded Norwegian tourist, as he waited on a stretcher at Istanbul airport, his left leg bandaged.

“I still have to go to the Blue Mosque and the old Turkish Bazaar … We have no hard feelings towards Turkey. We know there are some mad people out there,” he said.

DETENTIONS CONTINUE

Davutoglu said the security forces had detained four people suspected of links to the suicide bomber, and that six of those wounded were still in hospital. The German foreign ministry said earlier five Germans were still in intensive care.

A Peruvian national was also injured in the blast.

Turkey has rounded up hundreds of suspected Islamic State members since launching what it called a “synchronized war on terror” last July, raids which continued on Wednesday.

Since the attack, police have detained a total of 65 people including 16 foreign nationals in six Turkish cities, the Dogan news agency reported.

The Russian foreign ministry confirmed three of those detained were Russian nationals, but it was not immediately clear whether there was any connection to the Istanbul attack, for which there has been no claim of responsibility.

Turkey has faced criticism at home and abroad for failing to do more to fight Islamic State networks, but Ala, the interior minister, defended Turkey’s record, saying 200 suspects had been detained just a week before the Istanbul blast.

He said Turkey, which has repeatedly called on foreign intelligence agencies to do more to prevent would-be jihadists from traveling to its shores, had detained 3,318 people for suspected links to Islamic State and other radical groups since Syria’s conflict began. Of that number, 847 were subsequently arrested, most of them foreigners.

(Additional reporting by Melih Aslan in Istanbul, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Michelle Martin in Berlin, Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Giles Elgood and Janet McBride)

Syrian bomber suspected as blast kills 10 in Istanbul tourist hub

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A suicide bomber thought to have crossed recently from Syria killed at least 10 people, most of them German tourists, in Istanbul’s historic heart on Tuesday, in an attack Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed on Islamic State.

All of those killed in Sultanahmet square, near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia – major tourist sites in the center of one of the world’s most visited cities – were foreigners, Davutoglu said. A senior Turkish official said nine were German, while Peru’s foreign ministry said a Peruvian man also died.

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said the bomber was believed to have recently entered Turkey from Syria but was not on Turkey’s watch list of suspected militants. He said earlier that the bomber had been identified from body parts at the scene and was thought to be a Syrian born in 1988.

Davutoglu said he had spoken by phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to offer condolences and vowed Turkey’s fight against Islamic State, at home and as part of the U.S.-led coalition, would continue.

“Until we wipe out Daesh, Turkey will continue its fight at home and with coalition forces,” he said in comments broadcast live on television, using an Arabic name for Islamic State. He vowed to hunt down and punish those linked to the bomber.

Merkel similarly vowed no respite in the fight against international terrorism, telling a news conference in Berlin: “The terrorists are the enemies of all free people … of all humanity, be it in Syria, Turkey, France or Germany.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Islamist, leftist and Kurdish militants, who are battling Ankara in southeast Turkey, have all carried out attacks in the past.

Several bodies lay on the ground in the square, also known as the Hippodrome of Constantinople, in the immediate aftermath of the blast. It was not densely packed at the time of the explosion, according to a police officer working there, but small groups of tourists had been wandering around.

“This incident has once again shown that as a nation we should act as one heart, one body in the fight against terror. Turkey’s determined and principled stance in the fight against terrorism will continue to the end,” President Tayyip Erdogan told a lunch for Turkish ambassadors in Ankara.

Norway’s foreign ministry said one Norwegian man was injured and was being treated in hospital.

The White House condemned the “heinous attack” and pledged solidarity with NATO ally Turkey against terrorism. U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon said he hoped those responsible for “this despicable crime” were swiftly brought to justice.

Turkey, a candidate for accession to the European Union, is part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State fighters who have seized territory in neighboring Syria and Iraq, some of it directly abutting Turkey.

“UNIMAGINABLE” SCENE

The dull thud of Tuesday’s blast was heard in districts of Istanbul several kilometers away, residents said. Television footage showed a police car which appeared to have been overturned by the force of the blast.

“We heard a loud sound and I looked at the sky to see if it was raining because I thought it was thunder but the sky was clear,” said Kuwaiti tourist Farah Zamani, 24, who was shopping at one of the covered bazaars with her father and sister.

Tourist sites including the Hagia Sophia and nearby Basilica Cistern were closed on the governor’s orders, officials said.

“They attacked Sultanahmet to grab attention because this is what the world thinks of when it thinks of Turkey,” said Kursat Yilmaz, who has operated tours for 25 years from an office by the square.

“We’re not surprised this happened here, this has always been a possible target,” he said.

Ambulances ferried away the wounded as police cordoned off streets. The sound of the call to prayer rang out from the Blue Mosque as forensic police officers worked at the scene.

“It was unimaginable,” the police officer who had been working on the square said, describing an amateur video he had seen of the immediate aftermath, with six or seven bodies lying on the ground and other people seriously wounded.

Just over a year ago, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a police station for tourists off the same square, killing one officer. That attack was initially claimed by a far-left group, the DHKP-C, but officials later said it had been carried out by a woman with suspected Islamist militant links.

TURKEY A TARGET

Turkey has become a target for Islamic State, with two bombings last year blamed on the radical Sunni Muslim group, in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border and in the capital Ankara, the latter killing more than 100 people.

Violence has also escalated in the mainly Kurdish southeast since a two-year ceasefire collapsed in July between the state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has been fighting for three decades for Kurdish autonomy.

The PKK has however generally avoided attacking civilian targets in urban centers outside the southeast in recent years.

Turkey also sees a threat from the PYD and YPG, Kurdish groups in Syria which are fighting Islamic State with U.S. backing, but which Ankara says have close links to the PKK.

“For us, there is no difference between the PKK, PYD, YPG, DHKP-C … or whatever their abbreviation may be. One terrorist organization is no different than the other,” Erdogan said, vowing that Turkey’s military campaign against Kurdish militants in the southeast would continue.

Davutoglu’s office imposed a broadcasting ban on the blast, invoking a law which allows for such steps when there is the potential for serious harm to national security or public order.

The attack raised fears of further damage to Turkey’s vital tourism industry, already hit by a diplomatic row with Moscow which has seen Russian tour operators cancel trips.

But Yilmaz, the tour operator, said he had sold a package to a tourist from Colombia just an hour after the blast.

“The reality is the world has grown accustomed to terrorism. It’s unfortunate, and I wish it weren’t true, but terrorism now happens everywhere,” he said.

“The agenda changes quickly in this age. If tourism is affected by this, it will be temporary. These things pass, but the Hagia Sophia and the Sultanahmet mosque are eternal.”

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Ece Toksabay in Ankara, Humeyra Pamuk, Daren Butler and Melih Aslan in Istanbul, Madeline Chambers in Berlin and Joachim Dagenborg in Oslo; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by David Stamp and Gareth Jones)

Erdogan says attempted Islamic State attack vindicates Iraq deployment

ANKARA/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – An attempted attack by Islamic State on a military base in northern Iraq shows Turkey’s decision to deploy troops there was justified, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, suggesting Russia was stirring up a row over the issue.

Turkey deployed a force protection unit of around 150 troops to northern Iraq in December citing heightened security risks near Bashiqa, where its soldiers have been training an Iraqi militia to fight Islamic State. Baghdad objected to the troop deployment, however.

The head of the Sunni militia said his fighters and Turkish forces launched a joint “pre-emptive” attack on Islamic State around 10 km (6 miles) south of the base on Wednesday because the militants were building capacity to launch rockets at it.

“Our forces managed to detect the position of these rockets so they conducted a preemptive strike,” Atheel al-Nujaifi, former governor of the nearby Islamic State-controlled city of Mosul, told Reuters.

“This operation was ended without a single rocket being launched at the camp,” he said.

Erdogan said no Turkish soldiers were harmed while 18 Islamic State militants were killed.

“This incident shows what a correct step it was, the one regarding Bashiqa. It is clear that with our armed soldiers there, our officers giving the training are prepared for anything at any time,” he told reporters in Istanbul.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi accused Ankara last week of failing to respect an agreement to withdraw its troop deployment, while majority-Shi’ite Iraq’s foreign minister said Baghdad could resort to military action if forced.

Erdogan said the problems over the deployment only started after Turkey’s relations with Russia soured in the wake of Turkey shooting down a Russian fighter jet over Syria in November.

“They (Iraq) asked us to train their soldiers and showed us this base as the venue. But as we see, afterwards, once there were problems between Russia and Turkey … these negative developments began,” Erdogan said.

Turkey, he said, was acting in line with international law.

The camp in Iraq’s Nineveh province, to which Sunni Muslim power Turkey has historic ties, is situated around 140 km (90 miles) south of the Turkish border.

Iraqi security forces have no presence in Nineveh after collapsing in June 2014 in the face of a lightning advance by Islamic State.

Ankara has acknowledged there was a “miscommunication” with Baghdad over the troop deployment.

It later withdrew some soldiers to another base in the nearby autonomous Kurdistan region and said it would continue to pull out of Nineveh. But Erdogan has ruled out a full withdrawal.

Nujaifi said the international coalition bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria had supported ground forces with air strikes in Wednesday’s operation.

The coalition said it launched four strikes near Mosul on Wednesday, but a spokesman said they were not in direct support of the Turkish-Iraqi operation at Bashiqa.

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Humeyra Pamuk, Ralph Boulton and Hugh Lawson)

Journalist Who Chronicled ISIS Atrocities Killed in Turkey

A Syrian journalist and filmmaker who chronicled the atrocities committed by Islamic State insurgents was brazenly gunned down on Sunday in Turkey, according to his organization.

Naji Jerf was “assassinated” in Gaziantep, according to a statement from Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which covers how the Islamic State treats civilians in its so-called capital.

Jerf was the group’s movie director and a father of two, according to the statement.

In its own statement, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) said Jerf was also the editor-in-chief of Hentah, an independent monthly publication. The EFJ statement indicated Jerf was killed in broad daylight near a building that is home to Syrian media organizations.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the Islamic State was behind the killing, though the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) notes that ISIS has claimed responsibility for killing two journalists, both of whom had worked for Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, in Urfa, Turkey, in October.

“Syrian journalists who have fled to Turkey for their safety are not safe at all,” Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, said in a statement. “We call on Turkish authorities to bring the killers of Naji Jerf to justice swiftly and transparently, and to step up measures to protect all Syrian journalists on Turkish soil.”

According to the CPJ, Jerf had also recently helped create a documentary that highlighted the Islamic State’s actions against Syrian citizens when the group was occupying the city of Aleppo.

Russian Gunship Fires Warning Shots at Turkish Fishing Vessel

A Russian gunship fired warning shots at a Turkish fishing boat over the weekend to prevent the two vessels from colliding into each other, Russian government officials said in a news release.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said the incident happened on Sunday morning in the Aegean Sea.

It’s the latest in a series of tense interactions between the countries since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border on Nov. 24. The nations believe conflicting sets of circumstances about the incident, which has led Russia to impose several sanctions on Turkey.

According to the Russian statement, its Smetlivy destroyer was anchored near Lemnos Island in the northern Aegean Sea when sailors noticed the Turkish vessel approaching at about .62 miles off the starboard side. Smetlivy fired some signal rockets and tried to hail the ship via radio, but received no response. When the Turkish ship got within .37 miles, Smetlivy utilized its “naval small arms … at the distance of guaranteed survivability of the target” to prevent a collision.

Russia says the Turkish ship immediately changed course after that, but never hailed Smetlivy.

The Russian Ministry of Defense summoned the military attache at Turkey’s embassy in Moscow to discuss the incident. But Turkish leaders were reportedly not thrilled with Russia’s reaction.

Citing comments he made an Italian newspaper, Reuters reported that Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said firing warning shots at a fishing ship was unnecessary.

“Ours was only a fishing boat, it seems to me that the reaction of the Russian naval ship was exaggerated,” Cavusoglu reportedly told Corriere della Sera. “Russia and Turkey certainly have to re-establish the relations of trust that we have always had, but our patience has a limit.”

Turkey Accuses Russia of Wanting “Ethnic Cleansing” in Syria

Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu is accusing Russia of using bombing raids in the supposed effort to fight the Islamic State in Syria as an attempt to drive ethnic Turkmen and Sunni Arabs, considered to be rebels against the Syrian region led by Bashar al-Assad, out of the area.

According to The Telegraph, Mr. Davutoglu, while speaking to reporters at a briefing stated, “Russia is trying to make ethnic cleansing in northern Latakia to force (out) all Turkmen and Sunni populations who do not have good relations with the regime. They want to expel them, they want to ethnically cleanse this area so that the regime and Russian bases in Latakia and Tartus are protected.”

Relations between Turkey and Moscow have been tense and heated since a Russian warplane was shot down last month on the Syrian border. The BBC reported UK specialists have been asked to help analyze the flight recorder by Vladimir Putin in a direct request to Prime Minister David Cameron. Turkey maintains the act was justified and that the Russian bomber had been repeatedly warned that it was in Syrian airspace.

Ethnic Turkmen were reportedly the ones allegedly being targeted by the Russian fighter. Turkmen also have claimed to be the group that shot at and killed one of the pilots.

According to Reuters, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that accusations of ethnic cleansing in Syria are “groundless.”

Russian officials accuse Turkish president of involvement with ISIS oil trade

Russian officials have reportedly accused the president of Turkey and his family of a direct tie to the Islamic State, claiming Tayyip Erdogan and his family are linked to the group’s oil smuggling.

Multiple media outlets reported the accusation Wednesday, saying Erdogan denied the notion.

According to Russian television network RT, the country’s defense ministry briefed the media on its investigation into the Islamic State’s oil activities and funding. The country’s deputy defense minister Anatoly Antonov laid out some of the evidence, claiming it directly implicates Turkey.

RT reported the evidence included clips of Russian airstrikes on ISIS oil interests, like refineries and pumping stations. The ministry reportedly claimed those strikes, and the bombing of more than 1,000 oil trucks, have cut the Islamic State’s daily income from $3 million to $1.5 million, but a significant amount of ISIS’ stolen oil was still entering Turkey via three smuggling routes.

“Turkey is the main destination for the oil stolen from its legitimate owners, which are Syria and Iraq,” Antonov said at the media briefing, according to a NBC News report. “Turkey resells this oil. The appalling part about it is that the country’s top political leadership is involved in the illegal business — President Erdogan and his family.”

But the BBC reported that Russia did not provide any concrete proof of Erdogan’s involvement at the briefing. Russia said it was only showing a portion of the evidence Wednesday, and RT reported that the ministry would be providing additional material on its website at a later date.

Erdogan reportedly dismissed the claims as slanderous.

“No one has the right to slander Turkey, especially the slander of Turkey buying ISIS oil,” CNN quoted Erdogan as saying during a speech at Qatar University. “Turkey has not lost its moral values to buy oil from a terror organization.”

Tensions between the two countries have been high since a Turkish plane shot down a Russian plane near the Syrian border last Tuesday. The two countries have disputed the circumstances of the incident, with Turkey saying the Russian plane ignored repeated warnings and crossed into its airspace and Russia claiming no warnings were given and Turkish airspace was not violated.

Earlier this week, CNN reported Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Turkey of shooting down the plane to keep its ISIS oil activity hidden. Erdogan vowed to resign if that was proven.

Russia has imposed some economic and travel sanctions on Turkey for its role in the incident.

President Barack Obama has asked the two nations to reduce tensions.

The United States has also asked Turkey to seal off its border with Syria to prevent Islamic State insurgents from shuffling oil and manpower, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told CNN on Wednesday that Turkey plans to shut down the portion of its border that’s still not secure.