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Turks rumored to be joining the Islamic State

According to a new poll, an overwhelming majority of Turks are totally opposed to the Islamic State, yet some Turks are likely joining IS ranks.
Turkish soldiers stand on top of tanks next to the Syrian-Trukish border fence near the town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province September 23, 2014. Some 138,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees have entered Turkey in an exodus that began last week, and two border crossing points remain open, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said.    REUTERS/Murad Sezer (TURKEY  - Tags: POLITICS SOCIETY IMMIGRATION CONFLICT MILITARY)   - RTR47CIB

Metropoll's latest public survey about the Turkish people’s perception of the Islamic State (IS) found that an overwhelming majority of the population, 93.6%, don't sympathize with this terror organization. The Ankara polling firm did find, however, that 1.3% do sympathize with IS. Since Turkey has a population of roughly 77 million, that could mean there could be a million potential IS militants in the country.

While Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu deny the possibility of such a potential and blame Western countries for failing to stop foreign jihadists who travel to Syria via Turkey, the facts force a broader reality check and ideally will create enough pressure for the government to take concrete steps to avert this threat. Dogu Ergil of Ankara University, who has years of expertise studying terror organizations and Islamic militancy, told Al-Monitor that the issue should not be the number of Turkish citizens joining the ranks of IS (and it is nearly impossible to come up with a reliable number) but rather whether there is a cultural base in the country to help IS-like terror organizations operate and spread in Turkey and beyond. Ergil said the presence of political Islam is the cardinal challenge in the effort to defeat radicalism in Islamic communities.

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