War on the Rocks
By Berkay Mandıracı and Nigar Göksel
Once a month, since being detained sneaking back across Turkish border
from Syria two years ago, Hamza (all names used are pseudonyms) must
check in at his local police station as he awaits his court appeal to
a 6-year jail sentence. He hates having to do so and is thankful he
has little other contact with Turkish state officials he calls
“kafir,” or infidel.
“I still hold on to my previous convictions elhamdülillah…. My views
of the Turkish state have not changed,” Hamza said in comments that
echoed those of other returnees we spoke with for a new report
published by the International Crisis Group. Turkey is among many
countries grappling with how to deal with citizens who left for Syria
and Iraq. A small fraction of them, like Hamza, have been convicted on
charges of membership in a terrorist group. Many others were killed in
Syria and Iraq. The fate of the rest remains murky.
Enduring interest in living under a caliphate doesn’t in itself mean
Hamza or other returnees are poised to strap on a suicide vest, but it
may speak to the dangers of future recruitment or mobilization cycles.
“I would consider joining again if a new caliphate was established,”
Hamza said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
ISIL’s diminished influence and the Turkish state’s security measures
have helped prevent new attacks for over three years. But while the
threat should not be overplayed, it has not necessarily disappeared.
Were ISIL to gain ground again, or other jihadists fighting in Syria —
for example, the former al-Qaeda affiliate Hei’at Tahrir al-Sham — to
turn their sights on Turkey, some returnees could potentially
mobilize. Many of those behind bars will soon be released. More
militants may cross into Turkey from Idlib, Syria’s last rebel-held
bastion.
To disrupt ISIL’s recruitment efforts, Ankara relies on
resource-intensive surveillance and short-term detention. It has been
slower than some other nations to develop social programs to help
returnees go back to lives as civilians. Ankara should explore whether
and which soft measures can complement its hard security approach to
ensure returnees turn their backs on jihadist militancy and safely
reintegrate.
Given that Turkey since 2013 has been a transit route for weapons,
supplies, and people across the Turkish-Syrian border, it is critical
for national and regional security that Turkish returnees turn their
back on militancy. It is also a matter of some concern for Western
European governments, given Turkey’s role as a transit country, the
fact that some of their nationals that travelled to Iraq or Syria
likely pass through, and that it is plausible they interact with
Turkish militant networks.
Hamza’s Story
While most Turkish citizens who joined ISIL did so early on in the
conflict in 2014-2015, Hamza travelled to Idlib province in June 2017.
Then 20 years old, he had been introduced to pro-ISIL circles in
Turkey through a friend, sharing ISIL propaganda videos of life under
Sharia in Raqqa and other places. He said he did not have much to
lose. He had dropped out of university and said he didn’t have a
vocation that would enable him to make a living or develop a career.
“I was very excited,” he said, remembering how he felt just before he
and his friend crossed the border with the help of smugglers on both
sides.
By then, however, the group had suffered territorial defeats and Hamza
instead joined former al-Qaeda affiliate Hei’at Tahrir al-Sham. Barely
a year later, he was detained by Turkish authorities trying to make
his way back to Turkey. He told us he had grown disillusioned with
infighting among different jihadist groups there and feared for his
life: “A week after I arrived the area had turned into a witch’s
cauldron.”
Turkey formally designated Hei’at Tahrir al-Sham a terrorist group in
August 2018, but the group continues to control Idlib’s main border
crossing with Turkey and, inside Idlib, the group coexists with
Turkish forces on the ground.
After his arrest, Hamza was held for 4 months in Turkey’s southernmost
province of Hatay with other inmates suspected of affiliation with
groups with designated as terrorist in Turkey – including al-Qaeda,
Hei’at Tahrir al-Sham, and ISIL. Usually prison management tries to
separate inmates who hold clashing ideologies, to prevent contagion or
physical violence. However, prison overcrowding often does not permit
this containment. “When we first entered prison, there was a single
cell for al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, [ISIL], the Free Syrian Army, other
Turkmen groups. All of them were in the same cell,” Hamza said. “There
were five different groups who had declared each other infidels. They
were praying separately and were talking behind each other’s backs.”
He described the experience as “eye-opening”, because he saw the
futility of the fierce wrangling over these polemical accusations.
It was precisely this kind of infighting that had caused him to leave
the battlefields of Idlib. His time behind bars reinforced his
disillusionment. But others grow more hardline behind bars. Among the
20 inmates sharing his cell, Hamza said those who remained longer had
become more rigid in their outlook, more committed to both jihadist
ideology and enmity toward those they deemed infidels.
The Turkish religious authority (Diyanet) has 600 imams on duty at
prisons with whom inmates can interact should they so choose. However,
their efforts to “de-radicalize” ISIL-affiliates in prison have been
unsuccessful. The vast majority of these prisoners view the Diyanet as
an extension of the Turkish state and rejects any interaction with its
officials. While the Diyanet says they are best placed to change the
minds of people who reference the Quran to justify violence, they have
little success to point to in this regard.
Foreigners are some of the fiercest among them, according to both
Turkish returnees and officials. Some 600 foreigners charged with
ISIL-related crimes are currently jailed in Turkey. Like their Turkish
counterparts, many are soon to be released.
Turkish returnees have recourse to an “active remorse” clause that
allows for acquittal or reduced sentences if they give up useful
intelligence. Even if they don’t use the active remorse clause,
convicts sentenced for membership in a terrorist organization can be
released on probation after serving three quarters of their sentences.
Hamza, who was charged with membership to Hei’at Tahrir al-Sham, pled
not guilty and refused to cooperate, is among a smaller number of
individuals likely to serve at least three to four years.
Little is known about returnees who were not caught and interrogated
upon return. In some low-income urban neighborhoods almost everyone
knows a young cousin or neighbor who joined ISIL. Some were recruited
by older veterans of past wars in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. When
in 2014, parents went to the police to stop their sons and daughters
from being drawn into ISIL, they were told their children were adults
who had not committed a crime, so there was no role for law
enforcement.
In some cases, where sons and daughters returned to parents and homes
they had fled a couple of years earlier, families told us they had
improvised their own strategies to keep relatives from going back to
Syria –going so far as to lock in and keep watch over relatives.
Families said they had nowhere to apply for guidance about how to deal
with the challenge of keeping their children from going to Syria to
join ISIL. Some appealed to respected community elders or local imams
to convince their children. “[ISIL] had brainwashed them with wrong
interpretations of Islam,” the father of one returnee who joined at
the age of 16 told us.
Hamza, who was freed in July 2018 while awaiting an appeal hearing in
his case, has returned to his hometown. Once a village, now it is a
conservative town swallowed by the urban sprawl of the industrial
province Bursa, in western Turkey. He has married and found a job, and
says he is looking forward to having children soon.
Other Challenges for Turkey
Returnees are not the only challenge. A well-informed official in the
security bureaucracy told Crisis Group that those who didn’t join also
could be motivated should the opportunity arise: “Some wanted to go,
but couldn’t. Maybe someone from their family or the state stopped
them, maybe their mother got sick and they postponed, maybe they were
waiting for a wedding date…. They can be more dangerous than those who
went, got disappointed and came back.”
Turkish authorities believe they have the problem under control.
Following a spate of attacks that killed nearly 300 individuals on
Turkish soil in 2015 and 2016, security officials say they have an eye
on potentially dangerous returnees and monitor anyone who comes into
their orbit. They claim to have cultivated informants within ISIL,
including cross-border smuggling networks. They have benefitted not
only from information traded by returnees in exchange for reduced
sentences, but also from documents seized during raids in Turkey or at
the Syria-Turkey border as well as information obtained by security
units in areas in northern Syria under Turkish control. The
authorities are less concerned with the fate of an unknown number of
other returnees, who don’t appear to have come into contact with
individuals currently being monitored.
Unlike in most Western countries, Turkish officials have only recently
started contemplating social programs aimed at helping former
militants settle back into civilian life. The belief that many
returnees who joined ISIL were not ideologically committed, and they
had no difficulty folding back upon return may have contributed to the
Turkish social ministries’ lack of action. But more generally this is
simply a feature of the Turkish state. Security responses have
developed far more than social measures in dealing with people who
have taken the route of violent extremism.
The initiatives of the Diyanet have focused on broad
information-sharing activities and promotion of conservative family
values that they argue shield against extremism. But the Diyanet has
not devised programs tailored to the reintegration of returnees. Civil
society initiatives in this area are also largely absent.
Looking Ahead
Hamza’s story offers a glimpse of the challenge Turkey and other
nations face in developing policies toward returnees, especially given
the fluidity between allegiance to ISIL and to other jihadist groups.
While he appears to have returned to a normal life and have become
disillusioned with the existing transnational militant jihadist
factions, the fact that he mellowed can seem almost accidental. There
have been no social services involved with ensuring his mental health
or opportunities. If he had happened to bump into a jihadist outlet
that attracted him, he could have gone down a different track.
Overestimating the risk can be as counterproductive as underplaying
it. In any case, hard security measures will be needed to keep under
check those most committed. The track record of so-called
“rehabilitation” or “deradicalization” efforts is patchy in other
countries. Many of these efforts have come under criticism for
involving social workers, teachers and other civil servants in
surveillance or stigmatizing communities as potential terrorists. But
in some cases, soft measures may have the potential to help ensure
returnees, including those who have yet to cross the border from
Idlib, steer clear of militancy for the longer haul.
Ankara could explore initiatives in specific areas, such as prison
after-release programs and support for families who themselves
identify children at risk. Indeed, some may turn out to be more
effective than locking people up briefly in the hope that jail deters
them. While Hamza’s brief time behind bars appears to have deterred
him, he has not rejected violence entirely. His case is only one of
thousands in Turkey.
Besides the uncertainty as to the feasibility of rehabilitation or
deradicalization, Turkey’s approach to returnees from battlefields in
Syria is complicated by the fluidity between the various armed groups
and by Ankara’s tactical relations with some of those groups based on
its own interests there. Choosing which returnees to leave to their
own devices and which to prosecute and/or rehabilitate will continue
to be complicated.
Nigar Göksel has been the Turkey Project director for Crisis Group
since April 2015. Based in Istanbul, she researches, produces reports
and conducts advocacy on regional and internal security issues in
Turkey, and between Turkey and its neighbors. She formerly worked as
editor-in-chief of Turkish Policy Quarterly and as senior analyst for
the European Stability Initiative.
Berkay Mandıracı joined Crisis Group in June 2015 and currently works
as Turkey analyst based in Istanbul. He previously worked in the areas
of judicial and security sector reform for the Turkish Economic and
Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) and the German Foundation for
International Legal Cooperation (IRZ).
