NOVANEWS
According to the United Nations Comtrade database, Turkey has sent more than 47 tons of weapons to insurgents in Syria since June, reports Tolga Tanis, a journalist for Turkey’s Hürriyet newspaper. A closer look at the Comtrade database reveals that Turkey, accor-ding to the database, has exported weapons and weapons parts for USD 500.976.441 to Syria in 2012.
In an article published in the Turkish daily newspaper Hürriyet, journalist Tolka Tanis disclosed that the United Nations statistics show that Turkey has exported 47 tons of weapons to insurgents in Syria since June 2013, prompting an initial denial from the side of Turkey’s AKP government of Prime Minister R. Tayyip Erdogan.
Hürriyet quotes the Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Levent Gümrükçü, as initially claiming that the UN numbers were based on previous records from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK), which according to Gümrükçü’s initial claim, has filed the weaponry sent to Syria as “guns without military uses.”
Nonmilitary use guns would, for example include shotguns and hunting rifles, but exclude more advanced weaponry such as AK-47 assault rifles.
However, Syrian police and the Syrian Army repeatedly confiscated significant amounts of i.e. shotguns, which were used by the insurgents in close combat and initially, in 2011, to stir up violence among otherwise peaceful demonstrators, with the protesters being targeted by agent provocateurs.
Comtrade database. Turkey’s weapons export to Syria in 2012. Click on image to view in full size.
A closer look at the United Nations Comtrade databasehowever, reveals that Turkey has exported weapons for USD 500.967.441 to Syria in 2012 alone, regardless the fact that the export of weapons to a conflict zone violates international law.
The Turkish weapons export to Syria in 2012 included, according to a search in the UN’s Comtrade database, a wide variety of weapons, from weapons spare parts and assault rifles, to rocket propelled grenades and grenade launchers, as well as armed, armored fighting vehicles such as tanks.
In other words, Turkey’s weapons export to Syria is hardly limited to a variety of weapons one would expect to use for bird hunting.
The statistics, published in the UN’s Comtrade database however are, as large as the therein registered export may be, hardly more than the tip of an iceberg of the weapons export and not least weapons transit via Turkey to mercenaries in Syria.
SAM-7 missiles delivered to terrorists via Iskanderun, Turkey
In September 2012, Turkey attracted international attention when a British journalist disclosed that the, until then, largest known shipment of weapons to insurgents in Syria had arrived in the Turkish port of Iskenderun with the Libyan-registered merchant vessel Intisaar (victory), and that the weapons, including SAM-7 surface to air missiles, had been distributed among mercenary groups in Syria already.
In March 2013, Turkey attracted international attention when it became known that 3.000 tons of US-American and British tons of weapons were airlifted to Al-Qaeda linked mercenaries in Syria via Turkey.
Turkey has also been directly implicated in the trafficking of chemicals for military use, including chemicals for the production of the deadly, internationally banned nerve agent Sarin, to Al-Qaeda brigades in Syria.
Besides implicating Turkish officials, those scandals also implicated celebrities such as the Saudi – Lebanese Saad Hariri, who is the former Prime Minister of Lebanon and a key member of the Pentagon-linked think tank The Atlantic Council.
