The first time that Turkey faced the deadly threat of the Islamic State (IS) on its soil was in March 2014, when three foreign IS militants opened fire at a checkpoint in the province of Nigde, killing two members of the security forces and a civilian. The culprits were sentenced to life but only after a controversial trial. 

Scores of other cases against IS suspects have been marked by judicial oddities and what many observers see as obtrusive leniency on the part of the Turkish judiciary. In a country where peaceful political dissidents could languish in jail for years without conviction, many IS defendants have walked free or benefited from sentence reductions under “effective remorse” provisions, as Al-Monitor reported last month. 

Yet, few cases have been as striking as Jamal Abdul Rahman Alwi, who allegedly ordered the burning to death of two Turkish soldiers that the radical group had captured in northern Syria. A video released by IS in December 2016 showed the pair being hauled from a cage before being bound and torched. Despite the huge outpouring of fury on social media at the time, the Turkish government kept mum on the incident. 

It turns out that Alwi, who allegedly served as an IS qadi – or Islamic court judge – in northern Syria, lived as a free man and ran a bird shop in Turkey’s border province of Gaziantep, even though he had been charged with being a senior member of IS and remained under probe in connection with the gruesome execution.