"Turkish Kabuki Theater" at the Iraqi border

"Turkish Kabuki Theater" at the Iraqi border. HT: TurkaFile.

The lead article on today’s Evrensel front page reports on Turkish soldiers who "suddenly evacuated" their border post in the Suruç area of the Turkey-Syria border, with local residents reportedly stating the timing matched a passing ISIS convoy on the Syrian side.

Summarising events, the leftist daily states that the military has been increasing its number of armed vehicles stationed at the Mürşitpınar border gate for weeks, while a few kilometres away in Syria, Islamic militants have continued their seige on the Kurdish town of Kobani. According to Evrensel, on Monday night, Turkish soliders "suddenly evacuated" the Mürşitpınar border station and "withdrew".

Evrensel interviewed HDP Urfa MP İbrahim Ayhan who said the district governor stated the withdrawal was for safety reasons, because of artillery shooting by ISIS. However, Ayhan told Evrensel that there have been shootings many times and the soldiers have never withdrawn before.

The Kurdish MP told the daily that local residents who were at the border stayed at the gate to protect it after the soldiers withdrew, and they described to him what happened. According to Ayhan, the locals said the soldiers suddenly withdrew and that, after a while, lights at the nearby military headquarters went on and off, "as if signalling", and then completely went off.

"Very dark things are happening here," said the MP, stating that the people at the border said right after the soldiers withdrew, an ISIS convoy with armed vehicles and heavy artillery went past on the Syrian side, travelling from the direction of Til Abyad towards Kobani.

According to Evrensel, HDP MPs Faysal Sarıyıldız and İbrahim Ayhan, and Kamuran Yüksek, co-chairman of sister-party the DBP, all announced on their Twitter accounts on Monday night that the soldiers had withdrawn, and asked what was going on. Hmmm.....'NATO 'Ally' my....@*%^

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