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The Hostage Situation That Keeps Turkey From Going After Islamic State
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-02/islamic-state-holds-turkish-diplomatic-hostages-as-a-hedge-against-intervention-by-its-powerful-neighbor* I think there is more to the story than the hostages but they really had to kept this quiet. Turkey has been making money selling and buying from Isis and have so far not stemmed the tide of recruits using their border crossing.
The rise of the jihadist Islamic State in Syria and Iraq has affected both the economy and security of its powerful neighbor Turkey. Yet Turkey has not taken the fight to the militants. A prolonged hostage crisis is a big part of the reason. In early June, when the militants overran Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, they also took over the Turkish consulate there, capturing 49 people including the consul general and three children. Within days, Turkish media outlets were banned from reporting on any developments in the crisis. The hostages remain captive.
“It is very difficult now for Turkey to manage the situation,” says Yasar Yakis, a former foreign minister. “Its hands are tied. Especially after the execution of [the American journalist James Foley] it has become all the more difficult to do something which Islamic State might perceive as a wrong move.” On Tuesday, the militants claimed to have beheaded Steven Sotloff, another U.S. journalist they were holding as a “second lesson to the United States.”
Turkey officially labels Islamic State a terrorist group, but Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was elected president in August after more than a decade as prime minister, has been reluctant to label the organization as such. At the end of June, shortly after the militants captured the consulate, he warned Turkish media and the political opposition not to pressure him into making “provocative statements regarding this group.” Ahmet Davutoglu, the newly appointed prime minister, more recently referred to Islamic State as “a radical organization with a terrorist-like structure.”
STORY: Islamic State's Risky Business
That organization with a terrorist-like structure has set up shop just over an hour away by car, across the Syrian border, from Turkey’s Gaziantep province, a booming export hub in the country’s south. The war in Syria had already made a dent in the local economy, cutting off Turkish traders from markets in Jordan, Lebanon, and the Persian Gulf. A month after Islamic State overran Mosul and other Iraqi cities, the province’s exports to Iraq fell 48 percent compared with last year’s figures, according to Gaziantep’s chamber of commerce.
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In the case of the consulate it's a big deal to withdraw all consul officials, but maybe that should happen all over Iraq at this point.
quote:
In early June, when the militants overran Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, they also took over the Turkish consulate there, capturing 49 people including the consul general and three children. Within days, Turkish media outlets were banned from reporting on any developments in the crisis. The hostages remain captive.
I recognize Bob Dobbs? Church of the Subgenius? 
