Turkey sending weapons to Syria militants: Video

Newly released footage purportedly shows trucks belonging to Turkey’s intelligence agency carrying weapons to the Takfiri terror groups operating in neighboring Syria.

The video, which center-left Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet posted on its website on Friday, shows trucks of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) being inspected by security officers.

The inspectors then spot cardboard boxes inside the metallic container with the “fragile” marking on them. They open the boxes, but find a considerable amount of munitions hidden in crates below boxes of medicine.

Cumhuriyet said the trucks were carrying around 1,000 mortar shells, hundreds of grenade launchers and more than 80,000 rounds of ammunition for light and heavy weapons. 

Meanwhile, the Turkish Today’s Zaman daily also reported on Friday that the Cumhuriyet’s publication prompted the government to immediately secure a gag order from a judge in order to contain the fallout from the scandal.

Turkish prosecutors have launched an anti-terrorism probe into Cumhuriyet’s story.

The daily’s editor-in-chief, Can Dündar, has said the investigation targeting him is because the newspaper “publicized information that must have remained confidential.”

The Cumhuriyet video, which has been shot by a bystander, appears to be genuine and consistent with previous reporting of the Turkish media on the controversial consignment of weapons spotted on the Turkish-Syrian border last year.

The interception of Syrian-bound weapons consignments took place in January 2014 in Turkey, when a convoy of MIT trucks loaded with arms and ammunition was stopped and searched near the Syrian border in the southern provinces of Hatay and Adana.

The incident triggered a huge controversy in Turkey with many bashing the government for explicitly supporting terrorism in neighboring Syria.

Earlier this month, Ankara arrested four prosecutors who had ordered the search of the MIT trucks.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to link the case to his top challenger, Fethullah Gülen, a US-based cleric.

Erdogan accuses Gülen of running a “parallel state” and says the interception of the Syria-bound consignment and the ensuing controversy were directly orchestrated by Gülen and his followers in the judiciary and police, a charge Gülen supporters have repeatedly dismissed.

Investigation into the case has been underway in utmost secrecy with the government strictly filtering media coverage of the issue.

Despite government denials, numerous reports have revealed Turkey’s covert support for terrorist groups in Syria.

On May 25, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said militants are currently being trained and equipped in the central Turkish city of Kirsehir under a joint Ankara-Washington program. 

The mission, which officially started earlier this week, will see more than 15,000 foreign-backed militants trained on the Turkish soil in a three-year time period.  Over 120 US soldiers are reportedly in Turkey to train the militants.

MP/MKA/HRB

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