Turkey's flirtation with terrorists is falling apart
And given Ankara's history for working with US-designated terrorists - and some of the disastrous implications by those connections - the most recent designation shows how Turkey's quiet dance with terrorism finance is falling apart.
Saleh Al-Arouri, commander of a powerful arm of Hamas known as the West Bank Qassem Brigades, found refuge in Turkey after Hamas abandoned its Damascus branch due to the Syrian civil war.
Al-Arouri built an infrastructure for his operations in Turkey, finding sympathy from Turkish President Recep Erdogan who has long advocated that the international community recognize Hamas as a legitimate political entity.
Ankara has provided at least $300 million to Hamas, effectively sponsoring a US-designated terrorist organization.
The US only got around to sanctioning Arouri last week, but his presence in Turkey from 2012-2105 and his relationship with Erdogan was an open secret.
As Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has pointed out, Arouri's diplomatic ties to high-level Turkish officials beginning in 2012 was well documented, and the US expressed "concerns about Turkey's relationship with Hamas" as far back as 2013.
'Erdogan's Hamas policy ... has collapsed'
If Turkish officials were warned of the designation, it speaks to the Obama administration's hesitance to rock the boat with Ankara off the heels of an anti-ISIS deal struck in July, in which the US was finally given permission to use Turkey's Incirlik airbase to strike ISIS in northern Syria.
Al Qaeda, ISIS, and bin Laden
"When [al-Qadi] was first designated, his front companies were all based in Turkey ... and he had quite a bit of operations on Turkish soil," Schanzer told Business Insider in January 2014.
"We don't know exactly what the relationship is with al-Qadi, but we know that his problems started in Turkey," Schanzer added at the time. "It's very hard to look at this right now without remembering that and asking the question: Has he remained active in Turkey through this time?"
A Senior Hamas official in a NATO country
Erdogan's flirtation with the terrorist organization prompted two dozen members of Congress to write a letter to the Treasury Department in December asking that Turkey be designated a state sponsor of terror and sanctioned accordingly.
As a member of NATO and potentially important ally in the fight against the Islamic State, however, the sanctions were never imposed.
"Nobody really wanted to acknowledge that a senior Hamas military figure was based in a NATO country," Schanzer said.
"But a few weeks ago, we started to see reports that Arouri had fled Turkey, so Erodgan must have been given warning to get him off Turkish soil."