Turkey: We don’t support IS

Justice and Development Party deputy leader Yasin Aktay

A DEPUTY LEADER of Turkey’s governing party has insisted there would be no conditions in which his country would support Islamic State.

Yasin Aktay, who is also responsible for the Justice and Development Party’s foreign affairs agenda, said during a meeting in London that extremists like IS emerged because of regimes like those of Sisi, Assad and Maliki, which he described as “implementing state-sanctioned terror”.

Mr Aktay, who was in Britain to join the Conservative Party’s conference, said during a meeting of the Union of European Turkish Democrats that Turkey favoured a political solution to the problem but that some equated this with supporting IS.

“So long as the factors that prepare the ground for organisations like IS to emerge are not removed, no intervention will solve these problems from their roots,” he said.

“It is because Israel and Syria employ state terror that these violent organisations emerge. These two countries are using state terror and no-one is preventing them. So long as these countries employ state terror IS and similar organisations will continue to emerge.

“Western countries draw particular attention to those organisations that affect their own interests – but we need to catch them at their source.”