Mar. 6, 2019

• It appears that many radical Islamists in Turkey have established an international network to sustain the jihadist terrorists in Syria.
• Because this network operates under the guise of “charity,” European governments are having difficulty monitoring its activities — particularly in jihadist-controlled territory — and holding the perpetrators to account.
• “We get most of our donations from abroad through the bank accounts we share on social media,” Fukara-Der’s president Hasan Süslü said in a 2014 interview. “And most of the donations are from the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.”

Turkish police recently raided the homes of, and detained, more than a dozen nationals suspected of “joining conflicts in Syria, providing logistics and money, and recruiting for [terrorist] organizations.”

Four days after the raids, which were carried out on January 13, all thirteen detainees were released — eleven of them pending trial and the other two on judicial control. The Turkish government-run Anadolu Agency, which reported on the detentions, later removed the story from its website and social media pages.

Among the detainees was Hasan Süslü, president of the NGO Fukara-Der (Aid and Solidarity Association for the Poor), suspected of aiding Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — a coalition of al Qaeda-affiliated groups, formerly known as the al Nusra Front, and currently the dominant jihadist force in Idlib in northern Syria.

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