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ISIS emerges as threat to Turkey

Most Turks would prefer that Ankara step back from its current Syria policies and distance itself from any support for jihadist groups.
Free Syrian Army fighters stand at a former base used by fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), after the ISIL withdrew from the town of Azaz, near the Syrian-Turkish border, March 11, 2014. Syrian refugees in this border outpost were delighted to hear their home town of Azaz had been liberated - not from Bashar al-Assad's troops but from al-Qaeda fighters who subjected them to a regime that included torture and public beheadings. For Syrians who three years ago rose up against 43 ye
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Western governments have been worrying for some time now that jihadists in Syria, who traveled there from Europe to fight regime forces in the name of Islam rather than democracy, will be primed for terrorist attacks on targets in their countries of origin after they return home.

It appears, however, that rather than Western Europe, it is NATO member Turkey that militants from one of the most prominent of the al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist groups fighting in Syria — namely, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) — have chosen as their first European target.

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