US national security adviser accuses Turkey of funding spread of extremist ideology

US national security adviser accuses Turkey of funding spread of extremist ideology
McMaster's remarks will do nothing to improve already badly strained relations between the US and Turkey. / U.S. Navy photo by James E. Foehl.
By bne IntelliNews December 13, 2017

American President Donald Trump's national security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, claimed on December 13 that Turkey has joined Qatar as a prime source of funding that contributes to the spread of extremist ideology around the world, Voice of America (VOA) reported.

"We're seeing great involvement by Turkey from everywhere from western Africa to Southeast Asia," McMaster reportedly said at a Washington, D.C. think tank conference, adding: "The Balkans is an area of grave concern now." He stopped short of accusing Ankara of funding actual terrorist groups but expressed concern that Turkey was following the path taken by Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, and more recently Qatar, by financing groups that help develop the conditions in which terrorism can flourish.

"We didn't pay enough attention to how extremist ideologies were being advanced through madrassas and mosques, and so-called charities more broadly," the news service reported McMaster as also remarking.

In a statement, Turkey's Foreign Ministry blasted McMaster's remarks as "astonishing, baseless and unacceptable".

McMaster's comments will do nothing to improve an already badly strained relationship between Ankara and Washington, with US President Donald Trump's move to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the ongoing New York trial, centred on a Turkish money laundering scheme to dodge US sanctions imposed on Iran, adding to tensions. Those tensions have built up over a number of issues including the US's arming of the YPG Kurdish militia in Syria in the battle against ISIS. Turkey says the militia is linked to terrorist groups that threaten its national security.

In further comments published in the report, to which VOA's Turkish service contributed, McMaster said: "A lot of Islamist groups have learned from [Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP)]... [It is a] model of really operating through civil society, then the education sector, then the police and judiciary, and then the military to consolidate power in the hands of a particular party, which is something we'd prefer not to see and is sadly contributing to the drift of Turkey away from the West."

Relations between the two Nato member countries were also hit by Washington's response to the failed July 2016 coup in Turkey. Ankara accuses Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of a conspiracy that led to the attempted putsch. Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in rural Pennsylvania and strenuously denies the accusation, is wanted for extraditon by Turkey. But the US has refused to extradite him.

Timothy Ash, senior sovereign strategist at Bluebay Asset Management, who has covered Turkey for 17 years, said McMasters had taken a “weird angle” and that it is “actually worrying if this is what he actually thinks about Turkey [as it] shows a fundamental lack of understanding of Turkey, the AKP and Erdogan”.

“What is more worrying in my view about Turkey at present, is the nationalist and Eurasianist course being set by Erdogan since mid-2015, towards Russia/Iran, away from the West. And ill-thought-through comments by McMasters... will only accentuate that drift,” Ash added in a note to investors.

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