Thousands of Turkish citizens join the Islamic State, Turkey is now a primary ISIS recruiting ground

In Afghanistan, the Taliban and Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) are ideological enemies, with ISIS-K attracting “disaffected members of the Afghan Taliban.” The Taliban is generally considered a nationalist entity focused entirely on Afghanistan, while ISIS-K (as with all ISIS affiliates) is transnational, focused on a global caliphate. “Since the U.S. withdrawal, ISIS-K has sought to undermine the Taliban’s legitimacy in the eyes of Afghan citizens.” Hence “Many IS members fled to Turkey after the group was defeated in Syria in 2019 and the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021.” And now Turkey has an ISIS-K problem in its country. But whether its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan truly views it as a problem is not clear.

Turkey has done little to control the proliferation of ISIS-K, to the extent that this has become a matter of concern for the European Union. In fact, former Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu admitted in 2023 that Turkey “had repatriated 1,126 European-origin ISIS members to their home countries over the previous five years.” Similarly, as revealed below, ISIS-K was using Turkey “as a transit hub for fighters.”

In 2014, the Kurdistan Tribune wrote:

There is clear evidence and the whole world knows that Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has allowed jihadists to receive training in Incirlik Adana and that he has kept Turkey’s 885 km Syrian border open to the jihadists, including ISIS, providing them a safe haven over the last three years, along with logistic support. This means brutal jihadist terrorists have quite easily entered southern and western Kurdish areas and killed both civilians and security forces.

The declaration by Celik now obliges Recep Tayip Erdogan, President of Turkey, and Ahmet Davutoglu, Prime Minister, and his administration to give an explanation to the world and the Kurdish nation in particular for this very serious crime. Of course it is highly possible that they will deny their collaboration with jihadist terrorists.

Erdogan has been harboring these jihadist fighters for unspecified use. Turkey has long been accused of coordinating  with ISIS to advance its longterm interests in Syria.

All this should have been enough for NATO to eject Turkey on security grounds. Erdogan has been forthright about his longterm goal of a revived Ottoman Empire (a global caliphate), with himself as caliph. Read more about Turkey HERE and HERE. Turkey also held talks with Iran less than three weeks ago, “for closer coordination among Islamic countries in addressing regional challenges.”

What are Western countries waiting for, given Turkey’s reputation, ambition and trajectory?

“Will Turkey export home-grown ‘Islamic State’ extremists?,” by Elmas Topcu, DW, January 18, 2026:

A breaking news story on the morning of December 29 last year caused nationwide horror in Turkey: An eight-hour gunfightensued in the city of Yalova during a raid on a house where operatives from “Islamic State’s” Khorasan Province, or ISKP, group were hiding. ISKP is an offshoot of the extremist “Islamic State” group,

Three police officers were killed while eight others and a security guard were injured, some critically. According to the Turkish Interior Ministry, the officers had been following up on concrete leads that the extremist group was planning to carry out attacks on large New Year’s Eve celebrations across the country.

In view of the acute threat, the German Foreign Office also tightened its travel advice for Turkey and urged particular caution.

The fact that the six suspected terrorists killed were not foreigners but Turkish citizens came as a surprise to the public.

For a long time, the prevailing narrative in Turkey has been that these kinds of groups primarily used the country as a transit point for operations in central Asia or the Middle East. But in Yalova it turned out that the head of the cell and all the members were Turkish, with a large arsenal of weapons at their disposal.

As local media outlets later reported, two of the men who were killed had previously been imprisoned after being found guilty of being members of a terrorist organization and attempted murder. They had been released on parole after only seven months earlier, despite their radicalization being known to the authorities.

According to the case files, the men reportedly considered their own family members “sinners and enemies” for not wanting to follow their extremist religious ideology. The authorities say one of the men even tried to take his own mother by force to “IS” territories in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to get her onto “the only correct path.”

Turkish authorities also knew that the group had declared police officers legitimate targets.

The incident has since sparked a heated debate about whether the Turkish government is underestimating the threat posed by radical Islamist extremists.

Thousands of Turkish citizens have joined ‘IS’

The presence of “IS” on Turkish territory is not new. Since 2012, between 5,000 and 8,000 Turkish citizens are thought to have joined the group in Syria and Iraq…