ISIS and the Nusra Front appear to have used a similar recruitment strategy in four different Turkish cities: Istanbul, Adiyaman, Konya, and Izmir. In each case, recruiters were members of the community, with recruits culled from the local population or introduced to the recruiter through a family member. In at least two instances, the future ISIS fighter appears to have been an outsider to Turkey’s Salafi community, with reports suggesting that two such men—Savas Yildiz and Mesut Yonay—had to grow beards to fit in with their new social groups. In all cases, recruiters operated in relatively overt locations, where their activities drew the attention of the local populace and police forces. In the cases of Konya, Adiyaman, and Istanbul, members of these cells had personal/familial links to one another, further suggesting a network of like-minded individuals, collaborating to send fighters to Syria after indoctrination inside Turkey.

Istanbul: Three Cases in Gungoren

In 2013, twenty-year-old Mesut Yonay sent a letter to his family, telling them of his intention to travel to Syria to fight with ISIS. Yonay, an ethnic Kurd, travelled to Syria from Gungoren, a lower-class Istanbul neighborhood near Ataturk airport. Yonay, along with two other unnamed men, were textile workers in the neighborhood, where they came into contact with a fourth man, Mehmet Hanifi Oruc. Oruc reportedly contacted Yonay to introduce him to Kursat, an ISIS commander in Aleppo.[16] According to Yonay’s uncle, Oruc was a fixture in the neighborhood. He would chastise people for smoking and put pressure on children to be more pious. Kursat reportedly communicated with Yonay through Facebook, before convincing him to travel to Gaziantep and then Syria. During these Facebook sessions, Yonay become outwardly more pious, growing a Salafi-style beard. He also began to reject the relatively relaxed conditions in Turkish mosques, refusing to sit near women and openly complaining about the number of smokers in the area.[17]

This pattern of radicalization, as well as the neighborhood where it took place (Gungoren), is similar to that of another ethnically Kurdish ISIS fighter, Huseyin Peri. In this case, Peri, a native of Adiyaman, worked at a local bakery. In 2014, Peri began to attend religion classes at HISADER, a religious NGO based in the neighborhood. Like Yonay, Peri became more outwardly religious during his indoctrination and met often with the local ISIS recruiter, Ibrahim Usame,[18] at HISADER’s prayer room. At the outset of the recruitment process, Usame recommended that Peri read texts by Muslim Brotherhood ideologues, presumably those that justify violence in pursuit of a Salafi Islamic agenda.[19] Peri joined ISIS while in Gungoren in September 2014, travelled to Syria in November via Gaziantep, and then joined a Turkish unit. The commander of this unit, Abu Osama al-Kurdi, is another ethnic Kurd from Konya. Like other al-Qaeda/ISIS recruiters, Kurdi fought in Afghanistan before making his way to Syria, where, along with his brother, Abdussalam, the two commanded the Turkish unit with one acting as the military leader and the other as a spiritual leader.[20]

A third Gungoren-linked individual, Ilyas Aydin (who used the kunya, or war name, Ebu Ubede), has also been linked to ISIS recruitment in Istanbul.[21] Like Kursat and Usame, Aydin frequented the local mosque, where he would identify potential recruits. After making contact, he would hold informal group sessions, where the attendees would converse about Islam. According to Haber Turk, Aydin favors the imposition of Sharia in Turkey and, using rhetoric similar to other Turkish Salafis, refers to Turkey’s current government as dar al-harp[22] and its politicians as kafir.[23]

Aydin also had a presence online and would post speeches, similar to Halis Bayancuk, who is better known by his kunya, Ebu Hanzala. Both men were arrested at the same time in 2011 for links to al-Qaeda but were subsequently released. Aydin also recruited in Europe and central Asia, most probably in Germany and Azerbaijan, where there are strong ethnic and linguistic ties. It is unclear how he maintained ties to potential recruits abroad, but it was likely through various social media channels. After making contact with recruits, Aydin does appear to have helped with their journey to Syria, using a trusted network based in Gaziantep.[24]