ANKARA
Turkey’s parliamentary speaker has termed the rapid advances of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or the ISIL, in the Middle East the handiwork of a “superior power.”
Speaker Cemil Cicek made the remarks at a meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in Ankara Thursday.
"It is impossible that such a terrorist organization, attracting people from around 80 countries, escaped the attention of global heavyweights that have massive intelligence gathering capacities. They want us to believe that, but personally, I don't believe it," Cicek said.
The speaker said he spent at least two hours to convince his three children to agree on a point. But in the case of the terror group, people are joining it from 80 different countries with diverse ethnic roots, languages and cultures.
“And they don't gather for picnics, they journey for their deaths. What kind of a mechanism is this and what kind of a superior mind or directing authority is behind all this. If we don't ask such questions, then we continue to assume it was established yesterday," he said.
The speaker assured al-Jaafari of Turkey's support against terrorism.
He also condemned Western efforts for allegedly “acquitting” the proscribed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or the PKK under the pretext they were fighting against the ISIL in Syria.
"The PKK, ISIL, Khorasan or al-Nusra, all of them are the same for us. All of them are a pain in the neck of the world," he said.
Al-Jaafari also met President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Ankara.
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