A fighter proclaiming allegiance to Islamic State has appeared in a video urging fellow Turks to rebel against "infidel" President Tayyip Erdogan and help conquer Istanbul, highlighting the threat the NATO member faces as it battles the radical insurgents.
Turkey has been in a heightened state of alert since launching a "synchronised war on terror" last month, which included air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria and the opening of its air bases to U.S.-led coalition forces.
The moves marked a major policy shift by Ankara after years of reluctance in taking a frontline role against the Islamist fighters pressing on its borders. The steps followed a suicide bombing, blamed on Islamic State, in the Turkish border town of Suruc on July 20 which killed 34 people.
Speaking in accent-free Turkish, the Islamic State fighter, a rifle propped against his body, accused Erdogan in the video of "selling the country to crusaders" and of allowing U.S. access to Turkish bases "just to keep his post".
"Turkish people: without losing any time you have to rebel against these atheists, crusaders and infidels who have made you slaves," he said, as two other armed and bearded men, their heads covered with turbans, sat silently beside him.
It also described Kurdish PKK militants in Turkey, some of whom have joined the fight against Islamic State in Syria, as "atheists" and warned that eastern Turkey would fall into Kurdish hands unless Islamist fighters rose up.
Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the video, which made no specific threats of attacks. But the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist activity, described the recording as a call by a Turkish Islamic State fighter for support from Muslims in Turkey.
The video, which was widely cited on social media and reported on by mainstream Turkish media outlets, was entitled "A Message to Turkey" and said to have been produced by the "Raqqa state media office", a reference to the Sunni hardline group's de facto capital in northern Syria.
"Altogether and under the orders of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi ... let's conquer Istanbul, which the traitor Erdogan works day and night to hand over to crusaders," the man said, referring to Islamic State's leader.
The video, which emerged late on Monday, comes two months after Islamic State launched a Turkish-language magazine with a story entitled "The Conquest of Constantinople" on its cover, urging a new Islamic conquest of Turkey's biggest city Istanbul.
REUTERS