Turkey’s Interior Ministry published a 76-page report this week that purports to document its fight against the Islamic State, part of an apparent effort to counter widespread if unjustified claims that it's doing the opposite: enabling the militants. The document’s publication coincided with a series of fresh raids on suspected IS terrorists across the country.
The first section of the report, which is accompanied by an English-language translation, rehashes the origins of the terror outfit and does little to enhance existing literature on the subject. There is also a whiff of spin in some of its references to IS depictions of Turks and their relationship to Islam as “heathens” and “apostates.” The report, by Turkey’s undeniably authoritarian government, declares, “They deem living and voting in a democratic country as infidelity.”