12/24/2016 Portrait of Turkey’s ISIS Leader Halis Bayancuk: Alias Abu Hanzala | The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/57fec114e4b06f314afeacd2?timestamp=1476314831707 1/10 CONTRIBUTOR Portrait of Turkey’s ISIS Leader Halis Bayancuk: Alias Abu Hanzala 10/12/2016 07:14 pm ET | Updated Oct 17, 2016 HTTPS://ZETE.COM/ISIDDAVASIBASLADINIYEPARANINUSTUNDEATATURKUNFOTOGRAFIVAR/ Ahmet S Yayla Professor & Deputy Director International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) This post is hosted on the Huffington Post’s Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and post freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as Halis Bayancuk is the leader of ISIS in Turkey. His kunya is Abu Hanzala, although Turkish ISIS members call him Hanzala Hoca (Sheikh Hanzala). Halis Bayancuk and his father Haci Bayancuk have a long history of involvement with radical terrorist organizations. Haci Bayancuk was among the leadership cadres of Turkish Hezbollah (TH). In fact, Haci Bayancuk, code name (given by the Turkish Hezbollah) “Hafiz” , was the emir of the political wing of the Turkish Hezbollah. Hafiz was behind the assassination of Chief of Diyarbakir Police Department Gaffar Okan and was also among the Turkish Hezbollah members in the Gaziantep cell that killed a police SWAT team member. He is currently serving a life sentence in Turkish prison. His son Halis has a different story. After his father’s arrest in 2005, Halis was sent to Egypt with other Turkish Hezbollah members for ideological education with support from Turkish Hezbollah members residing in Germany. When Halis returned to Turkey in 2008, he was already an alQaeda