A leaked email belonging to Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s energy minister and son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
shows weapons supply routes to the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) through the Turkish border,
in a tacit acknowledgement of Turkish support for the extremist group.
Albayrak’s email account was hacked by RedHack, a Turkish Marxist-Leninist-Maoist computer hacker
group on Friday, and the group threatened to disclose 20 GB of secret information if the Turkish government
failed to release Alp Altinörs, deputy co-chairperson of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP),
and prize-winning novelist and journalist Asli Erdogan by Monday.
The email was shared among a number of persons, including Cüneyt Arvasi, Halil Danismaz,
executive director of the Turkish Heritage Organization, a pro-Justice and Development party (AKP) institute
in the US, Energy Minister Albayrak and his brother Serhat Albayrak.
The email provides information to the energy minister and says that ISIL will launch full-scale attacks
in northern Syria against Kurdish militias that Turkey views as the enemy, after the August 2014 presidential elections in Turkey.
Maps of arms supply routes and jihadist crossings through the Turkish border to Syria are also
attached to the email, the content of the email shows.
In a striking comment, the email says the war between the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)
had turned into another fight in Syria between ISIL and Kurdish militia the People’s Protection Units (YPG).
The YPG is the Syrian extension of the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the US, the EU and Turkey.
In 2014, there was no actual fighting between the TSK and the PKK as a truce declared in 2013 was still in
place despite some problems.
The fragile two-year cease-fire collapsed last summer.
