Information about Islamic State (ISIS) activities in Turkey continues to flow from a ministry board report through a court case to media outlets.
As parts of a 2021 report by Turkey’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board* (MASAK) have become public after the report was included in the case file of the ISIS bombing that killed 109 peace activists in the capital city of Ankara in 2015, the parts on providing millions of dollars worth of drone parts to ISIS and various financial transactions for the group through operations of Turkey-based companies and individuals were revealed earlier.
More recently the Turkish daily Evrensel revealed that the MASAK report also included information about an incident in which the wife of a top ISIS official was helped by Turkish state forces as she illegally crossed the border into Syria in 2014.
According to the report, Ulkar Mammadova herself, an Azerbaijan national who came to Turkey in 2010 to get married to ISIS official Mustafa Dokumacı, confessed to the incident in her statement at the prosecutor’s office after she turned herself in to make confessions about her affiliation with ISIS.
She said in her statement that she was accompanied by Turkish gendarmerie troops who carried her luggage during the crossing.
The court reportedly declined to launch an investigation concerning the troops involved.
Lawyer Senem Doğanoğlu, representing the families of the victims in the Ankara bombing case, told Evrensel that Mammadova did not actually provide any solid information about the group, but was released nevertheless.
Mammadova, who was called to testify in the latest court session as witness, didn’t show up.
ANKA news agency, on the other hand, informed that ISIS members frequently used the online messaging and payment features of the betting website bilyoner.com to communicate in 2018, according to findings in the MASAK report.
The report also presented findings that Savaş Yıldız and Muhammed Zana Alkan, the two ISIS militants accused of the bombing of the offices of the pro-Kurdish opposition People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in the southern cities of Adana and Mersin, used these messaging applications as well.
Alkan was also registered as a taxpayer in the Tax Office in the southeastern city of Adıyaman in 2017 despite an arrest warrant.
Yıldız, had a credit card issued in his name at a Turkish bank in 2017 again, despite a warrant.
The DHA news agency, cited Doğanoğlu saying:
“According to the report, there’s a list for payments to the groups’s members. There’s also a mention of an individual who has been tasked to provide financial support for the families of ISIS members who are in custody in camps in Iraq and Syria (…) There’s also a statement by Kasım Güler, the ISIS leader in Turkey, saying that there is a document concerning secret caches of weapons in Turkey.”
* MASAK is a board answering to the Turkish Ministry of Finance and the Treasury
