Turkish President Hints That Prisoner Exchange Won Release of Hostages Held by ISIS
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Version 0 of 1. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said Monday that Turkish and American officials were in discussions about how to battle the Islamic State militant organization, now that his government had secured the freedom of 49 Turkish citizens held hostage by that group in Iraq for more than three months. Speaking and answering questions at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where Mr. Erdogan was attending the annual gathering of the United Nations General Assembly, he also hinted that Turkey had engaged in a prisoner exchange with the Islamic State as part of the effort to win the release of the hostages. All were diplomatic staff members at Turkey’s consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which Islamic State fighters overran in June. Turkey announced on Saturday that its intelligence agency had obtained the release of the hostages in a covert operation, without specifying how it had done so. Asked to explain what the Islamic State, a notoriously ruthless group, had received in return, Mr. Erdogan did not directly answer. “When we say the word operation, people only think of strikes, bombs, weaponry, but operations are also political, diplomatic, civilian, and they involve discussions, contact,” Mr. Erdogan said through a translator. “I can tell you we have not had any monetary relationship, that’s clear. Now as to the rest, you probably cannot expect us to publicly divulge what intelligence agencies do in their business, but the end result is that 49 diplomatic and consular staff have been freed. Some say maybe there’s been an exchange, you might have an exchange. But it also takes an effort to prepare for such a thing.” Asked specifically whether Turkey had given the Islamic State people it wanted in exchange for the Turkish hostages, Mr. Erdogan responded: “I just said, such things may be possible. I think what’s important is to be well prepared.” Turkey’s prolonged effort to obtain the release of the hostages weighed heavily on the level of support it had pledged in recent meetings with representatives of the United States and Arab nations on how to build a coalition to destroy the Islamic State group, which now occupies swaths of Syria and Iraq. Turkey conspicuously did not join the coalition, although it promised humanitarian support. Mr. Erdogan said he had told Secretary of State John Kerry that “we could talk about many issues after we secured the release of the 49 hostages.” Now, Mr. Erdogan said, “Turkish and American officials are talking as we speak, and those discussions continue.” The Turkish leader, who has vastly expanded his country’s role in the Middle East and presided over an economy that has tripled in size, was introduced at the event by Fareed Zakaria, the CNN foreign affairs show host, as the most important political figure in Turkey’s history since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder the Turkish republic. Mr. Erdogan devoted much of his speech to what he described as Turkey’s unique position as the epicenter in a legacy of Middle East conflicts that can be traced back to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and therefore is best suited to help solve them. “Turkey best knows the geography it’s in,” he said. “We share a common history with every people in the region.” He reiterated his deep anger at what he called a “systematic attack on Turkey’s international reputation” by news media organizations, including The New York Times, that in his view had sought to falsely imply that Mr. Erdogan and his aides tolerated the presence of Islamic State fighters in Turkey and even countenanced oil smuggling with the group, which helps finance itself via contraband sales from seized Syrian petroleum fields. Mr. Erdogan called such reporting “so unfounded, so slanderous.” The Turkish leader also reminded that Turkey was hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled the conflict in Syria, had shouldered that burden without much international help and was facing a new influx of Kurdish villagers in northern Syria, who have fled an onslaught by Islamic State fighters in recent days. Mr. Erdogan also sought to rebut accusations that he has engaged in anti-Semitism because of his severe criticism of Israel over the treatment of the Palestinians. He drew a distinction between the Israeli people and the Israeli government. “Our criticism is solely directed at the Israeli government’s policies,” he said. Referring to the 50-day Gaza Strip war this summer, in which more than 2,200 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military attacks to stop rocket fire and tunnel digging into Israel by Palestinian militants, Mr. Erdogan said, “It isn’t anti-Semitism to criticize the massacre of children and babies in their homes.” He reminded his audience that Turkey’s sizable Jewish population was a legacy of the Ottoman Empire’s religious tolerance, and that he had denounced anti-Semitism as a crime. “When Jews were expelled from Spain, they sought refuge in the Ottoman territory,” he said. “In the same way, our country embraced Jews fleeing Hitler’s persecution.” |