IHH: The Nonprofit Face of Jihadism

Published via ICT, the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism

By Ahmet S Yayla

IHH: The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief

Full report: https://www.ict.org.il/Article/2397/IHH#gsc.tab=0

pdf: https://www.academia.edu/39164342/IHH_The_Nonprofit_Face_of_Jihadism

pdf: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333164206_IHH_The_Nonprofit_Face_of_Jihadism

Born of war and its exigencies, the Anatolia-based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) has been shaped by the pressures of war to take sides in the fratricidal conflicts to which it has been drawn since its formation in the Balkans wars of the early 1990s, the Iraq war, the conflict in Israel, and the continuing war against the Islamic State. Yet war may have had a compromising effect too upon self-understanding of the Turkish founders and administrators as well, since as Philip Snowden aptly observed, “Truth is the first casualty of war.” In that sense, (IHH) is as complex and conflicted as any organization produced by Turkish civilization in the late Twentieth Century. No observer can doubt its noble intents, its humane services to the hapless victims of war and the wounded survivors of conflict. Its reach is vast over five continents, and its respect at the United Nations is evinced by its high status. By the same measure, its dual role in the cause of jihadism whether by the instrumentality of its Sunni variation in al-Qaeda, or Islamic State, or its collaboration with the Shia variation in Tehran, cannot be ignored.

The evidence cited in the foregoing study should give the student of counter-terrorism or the foreign policy practitioner pause before taking the noble self-understanding of IHH at face value.

The IHH has found itself fulfilling the needs of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the government of President Tayyip Erdogan, who himself has played a dual role in the fight against terrorism in Syria and Iraq. The scope of the IHH’s activities cannot be explained simply by its declared budget and resources. The IHH has served as a key humanitarian player in the Middle East region, collaborating with internationally recognized NGOs or the United Nations, yet without doubt – and despite public denials -- also serving as an ideological enabler of terrorist organizations. It is time to halt the illicit activities and connections of the IHH by listing it as a terrorist entity until at least the organization clearly and openly disconnects itself from terrorist groups and stops acting as an intermediary for jihadists.