The European Union forced Turkey to allow Islamists to operate the patrolling of its borders — letting terrorists freely enter the country, former assistant secretary of defense Richard Perle tells
Newsmax TV.
"Just a month ago, the border security for the republic of Turkey was in the hands of the interior minister who's an Islamist," Perle, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"It was in the hands of the interior minister because the European Union insisted that that border responsibility be taken away from the military as part of the Turkish qualification for membership in the European Union.
"The moment that happened, control of the borders was in the hands of a particularly undesirable bunch of people."
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Luckily, that dangerous scenario has changed, said Perle, who served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan Administration and worked on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004.
"It's now been given back to the Army, which is where it was before this happened. That is why you now see efforts to close the border and stop the movement," he said.
"Most of the terrorists have been going through Turkey and they were able to do that when you had an Islamist running the border police, 40,000 of them.
"Now it's back in the hands of the Army and there is a chance because the Army sees this quite differently that they will actually impede the flow of terrorists across the Turkish border."
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