According to confidential information obtained by Nordic Monitor, French intelligence alerted Turkish authorities two months before an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attack on an Istanbul church, but Turkish officials dismissed the warning as disinformation and an attempt to undermine them.
The intelligence was conveyed to Turkey’s main law enforcement agency, the Directorate for General Security (Emniyet), by a French liaison officer stationed at the embassy in Ankara, amid temporary closures of about a dozen Western embassies and consulates in Istanbul and Ankara due to security concerns.
The Emniyet’s counterterrorism bureau disseminated the French intelligence to other agencies on November 30, 2023, using a confidential communication code (2023113022440984091). The intelligence warned that individuals or groups linked to ISIS might be planning attacks on Jewish and Christian sites in Istanbul, including the Neve Shalom Synagogue, the Ahrida Synagogue, the Or-Ahayim Balat Jewish Hospital and the Church of Saint Mary of Blachernae, an Eastern Orthodox church.
The counterterrorism bureau received multiple intelligence reports around the same time as the French warning, some providing specific names, locations and dates for potential attacks.
The intelligence proved accurate as evidenced by the ISIS attack on the Church of Santa Maria (Meryem Ana Doğuş Kilisesi) in Istanbul’s Sarıyer district on January 28, 2024, resulting in one fatality. A post-attack investigation revealed that ISIS had surveyed multiple sites in Istanbul before choosing Santa Maria, prioritizing it for its accessible location and optimal escape routes.
According to internal Turkish government communiqués reviewed by Nordic Monitor, the counterterrorism bureau received multiple intelligence reports around the same time as the French warning, some providing specific names, locations and dates for potential attacks. One document explicitly stated that ISIS had already deployed teams to conduct surveillance around Christian and Jewish locations in Turkey, photographing and recording potential targets and their surroundings to prepare for an operational hit team.
However, Turkish authorities not only dismissed the extensive intelligence warning of an imminent ISIS attack but also launched a campaign against Western embassies, accusing them of attempting to tarnish Turkey’s image as a safe country. Ultimately, the attack on the Church of Santa Maria was executed by ISIS’s Khorasan Province branch, commonly known as ISIS-K or ISIL-K.
Moreover, several suspects arrested for aiding and abetting the attack were already known to Turkish authorities; some had even been briefly detained and subsequently released prior to the incident.
In contrast, the intelligence regarding an imminent ISIS attack was taken seriously by foreign diplomats in Turkey. In November and December 2023 not only did the French Embassy and its consulates temporarily close, but several other Western diplomatic missions also shut their doors, citing a specific terrorist threat in the country. What is more, several consulates issued public statements warning their citizens to avoid crowded places while in Turkey.
Rather than taking the intelligence seriously and implementing enhanced security measures, Turkish authorities focused on criticizing Western countries for their terror alerts, attempting to downplay the threat. Turkey’s then-interior minister Süleyman Soylu characterized the closures as a form of “psychological warfare,” while Ömer Çelik, spokesperson for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), condemned these actions as efforts to tarnish Turkey’s reputation, asserting that the country remains safe.
Then-Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu went so far as to assert that the West was attempting to undermine Erdoğan’s government ahead of upcoming elections by using the terrorist threat as a pretext.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry even summoned nine ambassadors from the United States, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, France and Italy to admonish them about Turkey’s safety, claiming that such actions only further the sinister agenda of terrorist organizations.
Then-Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu went so far as to assert that the West was attempting to undermine Erdogan’s government ahead of upcoming elections by using the terrorist threat as a pretext. He said, “If they are trying to create an image of ‘Turkey is unstable, there is a terrorist threat in Turkey,’ that is not in the spirit of either friendship or alliance. Especially if they are trying to place Turkey, the AKP government and us in a difficult position before the elections, our people know very well what’s behind this.”
While publicly reprimanding the foreign ambassadors and attempting to downplay the terrorist threat, Turkish authorities were aware that the intelligence shared with them by the French and other countries was corroborated by intelligence gathered months prior by Turkish police and intelligence agencies leading up to the attack. In fact, some documents regarding the impending ISIS attack in Turkey predated the warnings issued by foreign embassies in Ankara.
However, the Erdogan government was primarily focused on the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in May 2023, directing its attention and state resources toward securing victory. President Erdogan, who has long harbored a paranoia that the West is intent on ousting him from power, perceived any threats to his re-election bid as attempts to undermine his election strategy.
The Erdogan government has a lackluster track record when it comes to effectively cracking down on ISIS networks in Turkey. ISIS has long exploited Turkey for the transfer of fighters, logistics, financing and target identification as evidenced by information from the United Nations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Turkish judicial documents.
For years President Erdogan’s Islamist government has permitted ISIS and other jihadist groups to use Turkey as a hub due to its proxy wars in Syria. Many ISIS suspects have been released after brief detentions and arrests, reflecting what has been described as a revolving door policy within the Turkish criminal justice system. Furthermore, many members of the judiciary and law enforcement agencies remain sympathetic to jihadist groups, including ISIS.
Many ISIS detainees were released prior to formal arrest by the police or prosecutors, or at their arraignment. Those who were incarcerated often secured their release during trial proceedings.
At times Turkish intelligence agency MIT (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı) collaborated with certain ISIS groups both within Turkey and abroad to orchestrate terrorist attacks aimed at advancing the political objectives of the Erdogan government. A series of ISIS attacks in Turkey in 2015 and 2016 are believed to have been orchestrated by Turkish intelligence to help Erdogan regain a lost majority in the Turkish Parliament during the November 2015 snap elections and to set the stage for a false flag coup attempt in July 2016.
An intelligence report previously published by Nordic Monitor revealed that İlhami Balı, the mastermind behind a series of deadly terrorist attacks in 2015 attributed to ISIS, was actually working for MIT. Balı, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Bakr or Ebu Bekir, held secret meetings with MIT agents in the Turkish capital of Ankara in 2016.
The clandestine operation was overseen by Kemal Eskintan, who led the special operations department in the agency. Known among jihadist groups as Abu Furqan, Eskintan played a significant role in Turkey’s covert efforts to support armed jihadist groups in the Middle East and Africa, aligning with the political objectives of the Erdogan government.
In recent years the Erdogan government has consistently avoided disclosing the number of convicted ISIS members, which is believed to represent only a small fraction of those detained. Many ISIS detainees were released prior to formal arrest by the police or prosecutors, or at their arraignment. Those who were incarcerated often secured their release during trial proceedings. Very few were actually convicted, and even fewer had their convictions upheld on appeal.
Published originally under the title “France Passed Intelligence to Turkey Prior to an ISIS Attack on a Church, but Turks Downplayed the Warning.”
Documents referenced in this article are available in the original Nordic Monitor version.
