Turkey urges EU to give more intel against ISIL

FM Çavu?o?lu exhorts the EU to share more intelligence with Ankara on potential jihadists while lamenting the unfair press Turkey is receiving abroad Turkey is facing unfair accusations over the flow of foreign fighters into Syria even though it has been doing its best to close its borders, Turkey's foreign minister has said, urging the European Union to share more intelligence over potential recruits to extremist jihadists.

"We are taking our measures and we have also established detection centers. And we are yielding results. But we can only end or reduce this problem through cooperation. Our cooperation has been strengthened recently. But there are still serious shortcomings with regard to intelligence sharing. We need to overcome this," Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavu?o?lu told reporters at a joint press conference with visiting Macedonian Foreign Minister Nicola Poposki on March 13. 

Çavu?o?lu singled out the failure of European Union countries in stopping the travel of foreign fighters without leaving their origin countries and called on them to intensify intelligence sharing with Turkey on foreign fighters. "To be frank, their justifications on this are not valid for us," Çavu?o?lu said. 

Providing updated information about Ankara's actions to halt the infiltration of foreign fighters, he said: "Turkey is doing more than it has to do. We have issued travel bans on 12,519 persons. The number of persons we have detained and deported is 1,154."

Çavu?o?lu's remarks came a day after he revealed that three missing British girls who are believed to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) received assistance from a Syrian national serving for one of the anti-ISIL coalition countries. The country is...