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Turkish General who Discovered Qatar’s Funding of Extremists, ISIS Oil Smuggling is Executed

A member of the Iraqi security forces walks past a mural bearing the ISIS logo outside Mosul in March 2017. (AFP)
A member of the Iraqi security forces walks past a mural bearing the ISIS logo outside Mosul in March 2017. (AFP)
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Turkish General who Discovered Qatar’s Funding of Extremists, ISIS Oil Smuggling is Executed

A member of the Iraqi security forces walks past a mural bearing the ISIS logo outside Mosul in March 2017. (AFP)
A member of the Iraqi security forces walks past a mural bearing the ISIS logo outside Mosul in March 2017. (AFP)

A senior officer who discovered the funneling of illicit Qatari funding for extremists in Syria through Turkey was executed at the orders of a general-turned-war profiteer, who was identified as working with Turkish intelligence to deepen the conflict in Syria, reported Nordic Monitor.

The bombshell revelation was made by Col. Fırat Alakuş, who worked in the Special Forces Command’s (Özel Kuvvetler Komutanlığı, or ÖKK) intelligence section, at a court hearing whose transcript was obtained by Nordic Monitor.

“Testifying under oath at the Ankara 17th High Criminal Court in the Turkish capital on March 20, 2019, Alakuş revealed that Lt. Gen. Zekai Aksakallı, in charge of the ÖKK at the time, ordered the assassination of Brig. Gen. Semih Terzi because Terzi discovered that Aksakallı was working secretly with MIT in running illegal and clandestine operations in Syria for personal gain while dragging Turkey deeper into the Syrian civil war,” it said.

“[Terzi] knew how much of the funding delivered [to Turkey] by Qatar for the purpose of purchasing weapons and ammunition for the opposition was actually used for that and how much of it was actually used by public officials, how much was embezzled,” Alakuş said.

He further noted that the Qatari case was only one example of how funds were misdirected and that there were other countries whose funds were also misappropriated after their transfer to Turkey.

He added that Terzi knew all the dirty dealings of Turkish intelligence and about a gang in the military led by Aksakallı that was outside the chain of command and lacking authorization from the top brass at the General Staff, said Nordic Monitor.

He maintained that this was the backstory and the actual reason why Aksakallı gave multiple orders for the execution of Terzi, who was summoned to Ankara from a border province on the pretext of providing security at headquarters against a terrorist threat in the Turkish capital.

Alakuş, who was in a position to have knowledge of secret dealings as head of the ÖKK intelligence unit, made other claims as well.

“[Terzi] was aware of who in the government was involved in an oil-smuggling operation from Syria, how the profits were shared and what activities they were involved in,” the colonel said.

He added Terzi was also aware of the activities of some government officials who brought senior leaders of armed radical groups for medical treatment to Turkey under the guise of moderate Free Syrian Army troops and how much money they received in bribes for services rendered, a breach of Turkish law.

Alakuş is a veteran officer who served as head of the intelligence and counterintelligence bureau of the Special Forces Command between 2014 and 2016, said Nordic Monitor. He was assigned to work on a team that was set up against ISIS in Iraq from December 2015 and served six months there.

On June 8, he was appointed commander of the 3rd Contingent within the 2nd Special Forces Brigade in Ankara. Among his responsibilities were protecting the top brass, organizing a rapid response to immediate and emerging terror threats and deploying snipers and troops for special missions.

According to Alakuş’s testimony, Terzi was assigned to work on the Syria file by the General Staff, and he knew all the details of the operations the Turkish government had been conducting across the border.

He was in charge of a military base code named ÖKİ-2, located in Turkey’s southeastern border province of Kilis. The operations in Iraq were run from another base, ÖKİ-1, under the commander of Halil Soysal at the time. The base is situated in the district of Silopi in Turkey’s southeastern Şırnak province, which has a border with both Syria and Iraq.

“Now, Semih Terzi was targeted because of his intimate knowledge of affairs relating to Syria, Your Honor. What is this information? If you want, I can expand on it, some of which is critical,” Alakuş explained during a hearing.

He went on to say that Terzi knew how much arms and ammunition were provided to various terrorist groups in Syria under the pretext of assisting the Free Syrian Army. “[Terzi] was aware of which pubic officials were assisting in arms smuggling to Syria and for what purpose,” he stated, according to Nordic Monitor.

“[Terzi’s murder] had to do with a trap devised by Zekai Aksakallı, who did not want such facts to come out into the open,” Alakuş testified.

According to Alakuş, Terzi also knew a lot about what was going on in Iraq. He said the brigadier general had intimate knowledge of hostage negotiations with ISIS that were conducted by MIT in order to free Turkish hostages taken when ISIS occupied the Turkish Consulate in Mosul.

He said some of the money given to ISIS by Turkey was actually pocketed by a Turkish official who used the embezzled funds to purchase some two dozen apartments in Ankara. He did not name the official in his testimony.

“Semih Terzi knew very well how the oil taken from ISIS [in Syria] was rerouted [to Turkey] through Iraq’s [Kurdistan] Regional Government with the help of a prominent local politician [in Kurdistan] and with the cooperation of [Turkish] public officials and using the capabilities of a [Turkish] government agency and how much commission was taken,” Alakuş explained.

During a coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016, Terzi was invited to Ankara by Aksakallı despite a flight ban imposed by the General Staff, and Terzi’s flight was allowed to take off from Silopi with special permission. In the meantime, Aksakallı ordered a noncommissioned officer named Ömer Halisdemir, an aide to the lieutenant general, to kill Terzi when he arrived at Special Forces Command headquarters.

Halisdemir shot and wounded Terzi as he was about to enter to the headquarters. Terzi was taken to the Gülhane Military Medical Academy (GATA) but did not survive the gunshot wounds.

On June 20, 2019 Alakuş was convicted and sentenced to aggravated life on coup plotting charges based on dubious evidence. Aksakallı, who gave a direct order to Alakuş to go to the General Staff, was not even named as a suspect in the case because he played a role in executing the false flag coup bid in cooperation with the Turkish intelligence agency. He was later rewarded with a promotion to lieutenant general in 2016. He was commander of a Turkish military operation in Syria in August 2016. He was assigned as commander of the 2nd Army Corps and retired in July 2020.

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Features

Report: Netanyahu Relegated from Partner to Passenger in Trump's War on Iran

US President Donald Trump, right, meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, Feb. 4, 2025. (AFP)
US President Donald Trump, right, meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, Feb. 4, 2025. (AFP)
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Report: Netanyahu Relegated from Partner to Passenger in Trump's War on Iran

US President Donald Trump, right, meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, Feb. 4, 2025. (AFP)
US President Donald Trump, right, meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, Feb. 4, 2025. (AFP)

In the run-up to the February 28 attack on Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was not only in the Situation Room with President Trump, he was leading the discussion, predicting that a joint US-Israeli strike could very well lead to the demise of the regime in Iran.

“Just a few weeks later, after those sanguine assurances proved inaccurate, the picture was starkly different. Israel was so thoroughly sidelined by the Trump administration, two Israeli defense officials said, that its leaders were cut almost entirely out of the loop on truce talks between the United States and Iran,” said a New York Times report on Saturday.

“Starved of information from their closest ally, the Israelis have been forced to pick up what they can about the back-and-forth between Washington and Tehran through their connections with leaders and diplomats in the region as well as their own surveillance from inside the Iranian regime,” said the two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

“The banishment from the cockpit to economy class has potentially significant consequences for Israel, and especially for the prime minister, who faces an uphill re-election battle this year.”

“Netanyahu has long sold himself to Israeli voters as a kind of Trump whisperer,” uniquely capable of enlisting and retaining the president’s support. In a televised speech early in the war, he portrayed himself as the president’s peer, assuring Israelis that he talked to Trump “almost every day,” exchanging ideas and advice, “and deciding together.”

“He had led Israel to war in February with grand visions of achieving a goal he has pursued for decades: stopping Iran’s push for nuclear weapons once and for all. As the war began with a stunning decapitation of much of the government in Tehran, it seemed as though an even more grandiose dream might come true: the toppling of the regime.”

“But many in Trump’s inner circle had always viewed the idea of regime change as absurd. And it wasn’t long before American and Israeli priorities began to diverge more, especially after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring and pressuring Trump into agreeing to a ceasefire.”

Far from vanquished, Tehran has behaved as though it won the war, merely by surviving it. Israel, by contrast, has seen its biggest objectives for the war elude its grasp.

Netanyahu set three goals at the start of the war: toppling the regime, destroying Iran’s nuclear program and eliminating its missile program. None have been realized.

Instead of burying Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a recent American proposal called for a 20-year suspension of, or moratorium on, Iranian nuclear activity and that time frame may have gotten smaller in subsequent proposals. That raises the prospect that an eventual deal could resemble the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear accord, which Netanyahu fought against at the time and Trump exited from three years later.

With the Trump administration excluding Israel from the negotiations, Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles may have been left off the table, as far as Israeli officials know. In that respect, any deal would fail to improve on the 2015 agreement, which Netanyahu assailed in part because it did not address Iran’s missiles.

It would also be a dismaying setback for the Israeli public, for whom life largely ground to a halt as the nation was bombarded by Iranian missiles in March and April.

There are other concerns for Israel about the possible contours of a US-Iran agreement, including a lifting of economic sanctions against Tehran. Doing so could amount to an economic lifeline, flooding Iran with billions of dollars that it could then use to rearm and to help its proxy forces, like Hezbollah, replenish their own arsenals with weapons to use against Israel.

While little is certain yet about the shape of an eventual deal — and any agreement could still be postponed by a renewal of fighting — what seems clear is that Israel’s partnership with the United States has come at a steep price. A country that for generations prided itself on “defending ourselves by ourselves,” and whose leaders exasperated a succession of American presidents with their hardheaded recalcitrance, is now making little secret of its need, and willingness, to submit to Trump’s demands.

As Defense Minister Israel Katz said on April 23, as Trump threatened to resume the war and bomb Iran back to the “Stone Age”: “We are only waiting for the green light from the US.”

“That admission was a humbling climbdown from the heady first days of the war, when the two countries achieved air supremacy and were so confident of success that they urged the Iranian people to topple the regime and secure their future,” said the NYT.

Within two weeks, it became clear that the war would not produce instant victory, as Trump had hoped. The White House, and some Israeli leaders, put aside their hopes for regime change, and Trump turned his attention toward ending the fighting.

“He had viewed Netanyahu as a war ally, but not as a close partner when it came to negotiating with the Iranians,” American officials familiar with his thinking said; in fact, he considered Netanyahu someone “who needed to be restrained when it comes to resolving conflicts.”

Israel soon found itself demoted from “equal partner” to something more akin to a “subcontractor” to the US military.

Israel would often clear plans with the United States, only to have the Trump administration throw it under the bus after those plans were executed, such as when Israel struck the South Pars natural gas field and oil facilities along the Gulf in southern Iran.

Trump even pressured Israel to bring a premature halt to its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon within days after the ceasefire on April 8, forcing Israel to accept restraints on its fighting with a hostile adversary right on its border.

“The sidelining is particularly hard to take for some Israeli officials, who, speaking on condition of anonymity, noted that the country willingly shouldered some of the war’s more controversial assignments.”

For Netanyahu, it has meant repeatedly recalibrating his rhetoric, and even adjusting his description of Israel’s war objectives, in response to Trump’s frequent vacillations.

After initially telling his citizens that Israel’s goals were to “remove” the existential threats of an Iranian nuclear weapon and of its ballistic missile arsenal, by March 12 Netanyahu was articulating a new idea. This one downplayed the fact that those threats had not been removed, and instead exalted Israel’s close partnership with the United States.

“Threats come and threats go, but when we become a regional power, and in certain fields a global power, we have the strength to push dangers away from us and secure our future,” he said. What gave Israel such newfound strength in the eyes of its adversaries, Netanyahu asserted, was his alliance with Trump — “an alliance like no other.”

 

*David M. Halbfinger and Ronen Bergman for The New York Times

Features

A Grieving Father Buries His 6-Year-Old After a Land Mine Kills 3 Children in Syria’s Idlib

Idris Al-Ridah, center, weeps as he prays during the funeral of his son Mohammed, who was killed in an explosion caused by war remnants while playing with other children in the village of Abu Habbah in eastern Idlib countryside, in Abu Habbah, Syria, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP)
Idris Al-Ridah, center, weeps as he prays during the funeral of his son Mohammed, who was killed in an explosion caused by war remnants while playing with other children in the village of Abu Habbah in eastern Idlib countryside, in Abu Habbah, Syria, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP)
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A Grieving Father Buries His 6-Year-Old After a Land Mine Kills 3 Children in Syria’s Idlib

Idris Al-Ridah, center, weeps as he prays during the funeral of his son Mohammed, who was killed in an explosion caused by war remnants while playing with other children in the village of Abu Habbah in eastern Idlib countryside, in Abu Habbah, Syria, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP)
Idris Al-Ridah, center, weeps as he prays during the funeral of his son Mohammed, who was killed in an explosion caused by war remnants while playing with other children in the village of Abu Habbah in eastern Idlib countryside, in Abu Habbah, Syria, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP)

Idris al-Ridah wept as he carried the lifeless body of his 6-year-old son Amir, wrapped in a yellow and brown blanket, in northwest Syria.

The father collapsed to the ground as he laid his son to rest, his small body lowered into a grave next to two other young children who were siblings, Aya al-Fankih, 4, and Rayan al-Fankih, 6.

The three children were killed on Thursday in the village of Abu Habbah, in the countryside in the northwestern province of Idlib, when a land mine left behind from Syria's war exploded while they were playing near a well.

The deaths are the latest reminder of the dangers posed by unexploded war remnants scattered across the country years after the conflict began.

Mines and booby traps have killed and maimed hundreds of Syrians since Syria’s conflict began in March 2011, leaving about half a million people dead.

The Syrian Civil Defense said four other children who were near the well were also wounded in the blast.

"We heard a very loud explosion next to our house,” one resident, Mahmoud al-Aleiwi. He added that “when we got to the location there were a number of children’s bodies thrown around the well.”

He said one of the children was thrown 300 meters (984 feet) away by the explosion and was found on the roof of a house.

At a nearby hospital, wounded children cried as family members tended to them. One child had shrapnel wounds across his face and body, his legs wrapped in bandages. Another lay in bed with blood visible through bandages wrapped around his head.

Ten-year-old Ibrahim al-Suwadi was injured last month in a separate explosion caused by unexploded ordnance inside a damaged school in the town of al-Habit in Idlib’s southern countryside.

Sitting beside his father inside their home, al-Suwadi described how he was playing with his friends at the school when they went inside a room and found the mine.

“Two brothers picked it up and took it to the bathroom,” the boy said. “We thought it was an exploded mine so we started throwing rocks at it. All of a sudden, an older boy grabbed my hand and we ran, the mine exploded and I lost consciousness then I don’t remember anything.”

His father said the family had fled their village in 2013 during fighting and spent years living in displacement camps before returning after the fall of Bashar Assad’s government in December 2024.

Humanitarian organizations say unexploded ordnance remains one of the deadliest legacies of Syria’s war.

“Syria has ranked among the top contaminated countries around the world over the past years,” said Jakub Valenta, head of humanitarian disarmament and peace building for the Danish Refugee Council in Syria. He added that according to the data from the United Nations, around 14.3 million people are in danger of explosive ordnance in the country.

Valenta said the explosive hazards include anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines and other unexploded devices left behind in residential and agricultural areas.

“We’re estimating that around 1,200 people and probably more have been affected by explosive ordnance accidents directly,” he said. “Out of those 1,200 people there were around 740 fatal casualties. The vast majority of these people are men and children.”

According to the Danish Refugee Council, around 60% of contaminated areas in Syria are agricultural lands, complicating efforts by displaced families to return home and rebuild livelihoods.

In Damascus’ southern suburb of Kisweh earlier this month, Syrian trainees working with Danish Refugee Council teams carefully removed and destroyed unexploded ordnance during training exercises aimed at expanding local demining capacity.

The organization says it has recruited and trained new Syrian explosive ordnance disposal teams to help clear contaminated areas and educate communities about the risks.

“The number of the casualties is among the highest worldwide in terms of explosive accidents and victims,” Valenta said.

“These people suffer lifelong injuries, physical like losing a limb or their vision and suffer mental health problems," he said. “These people also lose their jobs and livelihoods."

Features

Archives Interrupted: Vintage Pics Show Gaza 'We No Longer Know'

Kegham Djeghalian, whose work is on display in the French city of Marseille, opened Gaza's first ever photo studio in 1944 © MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP
Kegham Djeghalian, whose work is on display in the French city of Marseille, opened Gaza's first ever photo studio in 1944 © MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP
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Archives Interrupted: Vintage Pics Show Gaza 'We No Longer Know'

Kegham Djeghalian, whose work is on display in the French city of Marseille, opened Gaza's first ever photo studio in 1944 © MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP
Kegham Djeghalian, whose work is on display in the French city of Marseille, opened Gaza's first ever photo studio in 1944 © MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP

When Kegham Djeghalian photographed daily life in Gaza last century, the Palestinian territory was synonymous with Hollywood-inspired brides, fancy dress parties and excursions to smoke a hookah at the beach.

They are images from a time far removed from the rubble and tent cities of the now war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

"It's a Gaza we no longer know. A joyful Gaza, one full of hope, connected to the world, with trains and an airport," said his grandson, who has curated a show of his work in France's southern city of Marseille.

Djeghalian survived the Armenian genocide of 1915 -- a term strongly denied by Türkiye -- then settled in Gaza, opening the city's first ever photo studio in 1944.

He refused to leave, despite the recurring conflicts hitting the small territory wedged between Egypt and what became Israel in 1948, spending four decades capturing images of the Palestinian society that had adopted him, up until his death in 1981.

Some 300 of his surviving photographs are on show in Marseille until September.

'Photo Kegham of Gaza: Unboxing' is to travel to Bristol in the United Kingdom in October © MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP

- 'Diverse society' -

In one image, children have clambered onto each other to form a human pyramid in the courtyard of a school for Palestinian refugees displaced after the creation of Israel.

In another, women with voluminous hair blowouts pose smiling next to a sewing machine.

In a third, French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir have just stepped off a small propeller plane.

The photograph has no caption, but the pair visited the Gaza Strip in March 1967 shortly before Israel seized the coastal territory in the Six-Day war.

"I grew up with family stories about Kegham, the Gazan photographer who survived the Armenian genocide," the curator, who inherited the same name as his grandfather and calls himself Kegham Jr, told AFP.

The 41-year-old professor of visual culture, who spent part of his childhood in Egypt, says his father discovered over 1,000 photo negatives "by chance" in 2018 in three red boxes at the back of a cupboard in the family's Cairo apartment.

They included studio portraits and family photos, images of children on balconies and at the beach, and crowds in the streets.

"We see a diverse society: Armenians, Greeks, Palestinians, Bedouins. But also those displaced in 1948," said Kegham Jr.

Today two-thirds of Gaza's population are descendants of Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations.

Efforts to complete the photo archive were interrupted by the Gaa war, its curator said © MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP

- 'Unfinished' -

Kegham Jr said he did not want any captions or context to the pictures in the exhibition titled "Photo Kegham of Gaza: Unboxing", which is to travel to Bristol in the United Kingdom in October.

The "interrupted and unfinished" archives thus illustrate "a rupture of histories, shattered by war, by genocide, by occupation", he said.

Kegham Jr was unable to visit Gaza, with the territory under blockade since Hamas seized control in 2007, and then a devastating war ravaging the territory after the Palestinian Islamist militant group attacked Israel in October 2023.

To complete his photo collections, the grandson reached out to a Palestinian called Marwan al-Tarazi who held part of the archives after his brother inherited the studio.

A part of the exhibition dubbed "Zoom call" shows screenshots of their conversation in 2021.

The collaboration was interrupted when, in October 2023, Israeli strikes killed Tarazi, his wife and grandchild, he said.

In front of the images at the Marseille Photography Centre, Houri Varjabedian, a 70-year-old Marseille resident hailing from an Armenian family in Lebanon, said it felt like looking into a family album.

Her maternal grandfather, a dentist in the Ottoman army, had himself been photographed in Gaza, she said.

She said it was heartbreaking to see "those wonderful palm trees, that beach".

"It's a bit terrible given the current events," she added.