ISIL Has Blockaded Turkish Troops In Süleyman Şah For Past 11 Months

Journalist Metehan Demir claimed on his personal blog on Wednesday that Turkish troops guarding the tomb of Süleyman Şah, in northern Syria, have not been allowed to go to Turkey since March 2014, as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants have surrounded the tomb since then.

Claiming that the soldiers have been trapped in the tomb for the past 11 months, Demir wrote that ISIL has been providing water and food to the soldiers, as supplies from Turkey have not been delivered since March. Demir also wrote that there is usually a change of guard every two or three months, but the 40 soldiers stationed there have not changed since last March.

According to Demir, based on the information he received from his sources, ISIL has surrounded the Süleyman Şah tomb and blocked the roads that the guards had been using to transport their rations and to move across the border when it was time to change guard. ISIL has not let the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) enter the tomb as it sees it as cooperating with Western powers, Demir added.

Demir asked the TSK staff and the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government whether the changing of the guard has not taken place because of the ISIL blockade. His sources say the ISIL militants have “psychologically exhausted” the soldiers, Demir wrote.

Pointing to the desperation of the AK Party government, Demir claimed that ISIL dominated the agenda of the most recent Cabinet meeting, which was headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Jan. 19. He stated that according to sources close to the Cabinet, three large-scale terrorist attacks in Turkey were prevented over the past two months, one organized by ISIL and two by al-Qaeda.

Saying there is an alarming terror situation going unaddressed in Turkey, Demir further wrote that more than 20,000 members and sympathizers of radical terrorist groups have entered the country via the country's border with Syria. Demir asserted that these militants pose a great threat to the metropolitan cities and provinces near the border, such as Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa.

Referring to allegations that more than 10,000 militants have used Turkey as a crossing point from Europe to Syria, Demir also claimed that Turkey has started keeping a close eye on people of African and Middle Eastern origin entering Turkey with German, French and British passports.

Spokesperson of the Presidency İbrahim Kalın said at a press conference on Wednesday that despite ISIL attacks in northern Syria, Turkish soldiers are being provided with supplies and that none of the soldiers have been harmed by the militants. Kalın added that media should refer to official statements instead of allegations.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)