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Istanbul blast blowback of Turkey's support for extremism: Analyst

Emergency responders work beside victims at the site of a blast in Istanbul's Sultanahmet district, the city's main tourist hub, on January 12, 2016. ©AFP

In this edition of The Debate, Press TV has conducted an interview with David Lindorff, an investigative journalist from Philadelphia, and Mehmet Solmaz, a news editor with Daily Sabah from Istanbul, to talk about the recent deadly blast in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

Lindorff believes that the attack in Istanbul's Sultanahmet district, which was claimed by Daesh Takfiri group, is the blowback of Turkey’s support for extremist groups in Syria and Iraq.

“We know from an endless number of reports [from] The Guardian in England, The New York Times, a research report out of Colombia University, [which is] fairly well-documented, showing that Turkey has been helping to finance ISIS (Daesh) through buying oil that [is] smuggled into Turkey and then sold on international markets,” Lindorff said.

We also know that Turkey has been training Daesh and al-Nusra Front terrorists, he underscored, adding that when a country gets involved in such kind of activities, there is always the risk of blowback.

Meanwhile, Mehmet Solmaz rejects the claims about Turkey’s support for terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq, saying that Turkey is one of the victims of Daesh terrorism.

If we look at the satellite images provided by Russian forces, the oil smuggled by Daesh terrorists pass through the regions held by the Kurdish forces in Syria and northern Iraq and not Turkish regions, Solmaz said.

“I am totally amazed with accusations that Turkey supports ISIS,” he adds.

 


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