Turkey complains of French reluctance in anti-terror cooperation

Paris has been reluctant in anti-terrorism cooperation following last week's deadly attacks in France by militants with international links, according to the Turkish authorities.

The French authorities, which ordered 10,000 troops into the streets Jan. 12 to protect sensitive sites, are hunting for the accomplices of Islamist militants who left 17 people dead in attacks that began on Jan. 7 with a massacre at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and ended when three attackers were killed on Jan. 9 in simultaneous clashes with security forces around Paris.

It was not clear exactly how many accomplices the French forces are hunting for in addition to Hayat Boumeddiene, the widow of Amedy Coulibaly, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attacker who killed four hostages Jan. 9 at a kosher grocery in Paris before being killed by security forces.

A source told daily Hürriyet that Turkish intelligence searched for Boumeddiene in its own database and immediately notified Paris that the woman had arrived in Turkey on Jan. 2, but French authorities insisted for another eight hours that she was in the kosher grocery as the attack unfolded. France provided Turkey with the cellphone numbers of Boumeddiene only after the eight-hour lag.

With the additional information, Turkish intelligence was able to determine that Boumeddiene checked into an Istanbul hotel with the help of a French citizen before going to Akçakale, a town in the Turkish province of ?anl?urfa on the border with Syria, on Jan. 8.

After identifying the four Turks that she met in Istanbul and ?anl?urfa, Turkish officials think that Boumeddiene ultimately crossed into Syria's Raqqa province, possibly to the town of Tel Abyad, by illegal means. The...