that's "hardball" for now. our coverage of the terror attack in turkey continues now in "all in with chris hayes." tonight on "all in" -- terror at the istanbul airport. tonight, why turkey is so crucial to the future of europe, the middle east, and counterterrorism. how the candidates are reacting here at home, and what the white house is saying today about progress against isis. plus, congressman keith ellison on the latest explanation of donald trump's muslim ban, and eight congressional committees later, republicans finally face the facts on benghazi. >> there are bumper stickers and t-shirts all over this country that say, hillary clinton lied, people died, is that true? >> you don't see that t-shirt on me, and you've never seen that

bumper sticker on any of my vehicles. >> when "all in" starts right now. >> good evening from new york, i'm chris hayes. today, just three months after a deadly attack in brussels, belgium, the largest airport in turkey, ataturk, in istanbul was attacked, killing up to 36 people, wounding more than a hundred according to the latest estimates. with a caution, the casualty numbers have been changing by the hour. the cctv video is jarring because it appears to capture one of the blasts. nbc news has not yet independently confirmed its authenticity. the attacks took place late evening, involving multiple suicide bombers, concentrated at the arrivals area of the terminal. it's the third busiest airport in europe. this cctv video reports to show someone being shot and not shown

in the video, an explosion taken place as he or she appears to trigger a blast. the attacks fit isis, however isis, nor any other group has not taken responsibility as yet. white house condemned the terrorist attack in the strongest possible terms and we're getting reaction from both presidential candidates, this from donald trump. >> we had another suicide bombing, istanbul, turkey, many, many people killed. many, many people injured. folks, there's something going on that's really, really bad. all right? it's bad. and we better get smart, and we better get tough, or we're not going to have much of a country left. it's bad. >> hillary clinton is expected to make remarks on a previously scheduled event, but has responded in a statement.

terrorists have struck again in the heart of one of our nato allies and all -- joining me now, nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel. you've been reporting amidst the aftermath of this all night. what have you seen? >> reporter: we've been speaking to witnesses and two witnesses tell us that there were three different suicide bombings. that the first attack took place in the parking lot not far from the arrivals hall, but not right at the arrivals all. that the attacker first fired an automatic weapon, drawing security forces to him. it may have been a kind of come-on attack. the second one, by a taxi stand right at the entrance to the arrivals hall itself than is an area that's quite crowded and

congested. because before you get into the arrivals hall, there's a security checkpoint. people would have been waiting there to go through metal detectors. that second attacker, the force of his explosion, blew out some of the walls, some of the glass partition walls separating the outside from the inside of the terminal. so a third attacker didn't have to go through the security checkpoints that were there, could walk through the space where the wall had been and blue up the third device inside the arrivals hall where people wait for their loved ones and friends who arrived from outside the country. >> this was a fairly secure airport with extra security measures, actually a fairly large security perimeter, from what i'm hearing from you, sounds like a quite coordinated assault. >> it sounds like a very

sophisticated attack. not the work of amateurs. istanbul has very tight security. to get into the airport, you have to go through the security check. once you get to customs, you have to go through a security check, and if you go to sensitive countries, like the united states, canada, israel, there's another check and a questioning on top of the other two measures. so the security forces reacted quite well according to different witnesses we've been speaking to, with one police officer shooting one of the militants in a video that has been getting a lot of attention, and another police officer tackling and wrestling one of the bombers to the ground. that bomber, according to a reporter we spoke to, blew up his device and the reporter believes, killed that police officer. so a selfless act by police officers who were apparently braced and sensitized to this kind of violence. there had been warnings,

however, that an attack like this could happen. not an attack specific at the airport, but that isis and isis is the main suspect here, would try and carry out a high profile attack during ramadan. and it staged people in this country to do that. >> president erdogan has issued a statement now, and i want to ask about the domestic reaction. you mentioned it's ramadan, a very heavy travel time right now, this period of ramadan. and also there's an official news black-out, as it extended for months inside turkey, from state media of any coverage of this kind of thing, how are folks learning about this in turkey, how are they reacting? >> first of all, yes, there has been a statement by president erdogan saying that an attack in istanbul is no different from an attack in london or brussels or paris or any other city in the world that is an attack against turks and an attack against humanity. and since it happened during

ramadan, it shows that the terrorists have no sense of religion, decency, humanity. the reason i say this country has been bracing for it, several weeks ago, we reported that there was an intelligence report, that isis had predeployed more than 35 militants in this country to carry out attacks during ramadan and a counterterrorism source told me tonight that in his estimation, it was very likely that today's attacks were linked to that deployment, that advanced staging of militants here in turkey. how have people in this country been reacting, there was a lot of chaos at the airport, as you can imagine, but driving in the streets around the airport, there's no one out. people are staying home. there's a lot of concern. there have been numerous attacks in this country over the last several months by kurdish militant groups, by attacks that

are attributed to isis and this very high profile attack. so even if turks had been bracing for it, they decided afterwards, a lot of them anyway, just to stay at home tonight. >> richard engel, always such an incredible opportunity to get to speak to you in the midst of something like this, appreciate it. >> joining me now, nbc news correspondent who covers aviation, tom costello, you have one of the busiest airports in europe and one of the fastest growing airlines in turkish airlines. what's happening in the aftermath? >> that airport is closed until some time tomorrow. all flights departing the united states for turkey, those flights are unlikely to leave at all. i wouldn't be surprised if they don't leave and they may give them a day on the ground here. ten flights were in-bound into the united states from turkey when this happened.

they all landed and are landing at u.s. airports as we speak. we should make a couple of notes, first of all, the state department just yesterday issued a warning for u.s. citizens, essentially saying that increased threats from terrorists and groups throughout turkey are advised to avoid southeastern turkey because of the perception and the real threat that the state department perceived on the ground already. the tsa and homeland security say they're not changing the security posture at u.s. airports. that's really the same position they took after brussels. you saw some airports increase their security posture, maybe adding police tactical units to deployment to doing the high profile rounds throughout the airport, but no nationwide surge and that's again the case tonight. for example, the new york police department covering jfk, laguardia, and new ark, they

will be putting their tactical unit out a bit more in the next few hours and days. but we don't have anything beyond that. for example, massachusetts, which covers boston logan airport has no plans to increase their profile there. one very important point, though, this is always the concern for homeland security and the tsa, the threat posed at overseas airports with direct flights into the united states. and before any airline can fly directly from a foreign airport into the u.s., that home airport must meet the security requirements of the united states. so quite literally, the tsa sends inspectors there to do audits and ensure they meet the standards. if they don't, they can't fly to the u.s. what does that mean? obviously you have good security, for example, overseas in london, frankfurt, amsterdam, but brussels had good airport security, yet we saw what

happened there. and istanbul should have had very good security. >> tom, thanks so much for that. joining me now, malcolm nance, former u.s. intelligence officer, who follows all this very closely. in the case of turkey, two possibilities spring to time. kurdish militants, particularly tak, which has claimed credit for a number of attacks that have killed civilians and a series of attacks that have never been claimed by isis, but everyone attributes to isis. what is your thinking about this attack right now? >> well, in particular, the turkish indigenous groups like tak and the pkk, one of the things we know, their attacks tend to be extremely small, very low casualties counts. i think the most recent one was one with some dozen injured. the isis attacks which haven't

been attributed over the last year, have been mass casualty attacks. the attack on the u.s. consulate last year, which killed 32. last october, we had an attack on a peace rally which killed over a hundred turkish citizens. the reason that we believe that they don't attribute these attacks to the islamic state is because they are trying to infiltrate a deep-seeded series of cell members into that country and they do not want to violate their operational security. they believe they can operate with more impunity by not claiming these attacks. no one is fooled. they know where the mass casualty attacks are coming from. they're almost all universally similar in terms of tactics and techniques. >> you talked about a few of the previous attacks. you have a situation also in which turkey borders syria and the fact that isis was on turkey's doorstep when it was

controlling the town of kobani which was on the border and fleshed out by the pkk, and there have been long standing complaints about the security on that border and the ease with which jihadi fighters pass through turkey into syria and the ease that isis fighters have been able to get into turkey. what do we know about the border situation there right now? >> we know border security has been tightened up by the turks with regard to isis over the last year. however, you have to look at this in reverse. isis has managed to bring in between 30 and 50,000 people to join their caliphate over the last few years. most notably the last two years, the overwhelming majority of those people came in through turkey. they still have networks which are covert, which are

underground, and even if the turks place strict security controls, they have the ability to get back and forth with manpower, money, and equipment. you have to remember, there's a turkish isis organization. they have turkish language, issues of dabiq magazine, which is published there, to get muslims in turkey to join the isis organization. so even if you have extremely strict border controls, the ideology itself bleeds across the border and isis has been operating in turkey with some impunity for some years, so it's very easy to create a three-man or 20-man terrorist cell. >> we should note once again, as we watch these photo, if it's isis and we don't know that, although so far there's good reason to think so, were it to prove to be isis, it's once against isis slaughtering fellow muslims and at this point during the holiest part of the year for

muslims. malcolm nance, thank you very much. much more ahead. including trump's renewed calls for torture, to cheers from a crowd of ohio. congressman keith ellison will respond to his remarks. and the big headlines from the benghazi report, no new evidence of wrongdoing. we'll bring you her response later in the show.

ahead what donald trump said tonight about the attack on istanbul's airport. the first muslim leaked elected to congress will be here to respond to trump's call for the u.s. to, quote, get tough. stay with us.

hillary clinton is speaking at a campaign event in los angeles right now, which we are monitoring to see if she addresses the events that just transpired in istanbul. her campaign released a statement, saying in part -- tonight donald trump's campaign released a statement also. moments ago, at a rally in st. clairesville, ohio, trump spoke about america's reluctance to use torture. >> so we can't do water

boarding, which is -- it's not the nicest things, but it's peanuts compared to many alternatives, right? so we can't do water boarding, but they can do chopping off heads, drowning people in steel cages. they can do whatever they want to do, and they eat dinner like us. can you imagine them sitting around the table or wherever they're eating their dinner, talking about the americans don't do water boarding and yet we chop off heads? they probably think we're weak, we're stupid, we don't know what we're doing, we have no leadership. you know, you have to fight fire with fire. we have people out there -- [ applause ] >> joining me now, democratic congressman from minnesota, keith ellison.

he never says there, but aside from the fact that he's repeatedly called to reinstitute torture and war crimes, it sounds like he was saying, unless we do what isis does, cut people's heads off, burn people in cages, then we will be seen as weak? >> yeah, he's saying that we have to basically mirror isis. how can we be better than isis if we do what isis does? it doesn't make any sense. if you talk to people like john mccain and other people who have experienced torture, they're dead set against it. the u.s. military says it's the wrong policy. it's just -- nobody who understands anything about war fighting will say that torture should be the policy of the united states. because, first of all, it doesn't work, and second of all, it's barbaric. so we cannot do what our enemies do and call ourselves better than them, and it's not effective. so he's demonstrating all that he doesn't know and how unqualified he is.

>> trump also today spoke about trade. he spoke about trade policy, he gave a speech today in pennsylvania that was really remarkable in so far as it was a complete departure from republican orthodoxy on trade, attacking nafta, talking about global elites being the winner and the tpp, which has been negotiated by this president, set to be voted on by congress. this is what he had to say about tpp tonight. take a listen. >> the transpacific partnership is not disaster, done and pushed by special interests, who want to rape our country, just a continuing rape of our country, that's what it is too. it's a harsh word. it's a rape of our country. >> your response to that? >> well, you know, it's disgusting that he would use the term rape that way, given the horror that so many people,

mostly women, face every day. i don't favor the tpp policy either. i'm dead set against it, but i don't trust him, and you should know that hillary clinton is opposed to tpp, as is bernie sanders. the fact is, was he wearing a trump tie made in china when he made this denouncement of trade? was he wearing one of those bangladesh trump t-shirts that he imports into our country and has made in bangladesh where there's been very serious labor policies? do you know he was quoted saying he loves to take advantage of cheap labor. he wrote a blog saying how much he's in favor of globalization and how much he wants to take advantage of it. so he's just a complete fraud. nothing he says is true. everything is designed to get a certain kind of response. you know, he's even backtracking

on his muslim ban, which he seemed to be so dead set on. nothing the man says is honest and truthful. he's not even sincere about the bigotry he espouses. >> you just mentioned the muslim ban and there's been -- this is one of his signature campaign policy issues, if you could call it a policy. it's not clear that it really is. it's sort of an instinct. >> now it's a suggestion. >> a suggestion, right, until we can figure out what's going on. there's been reporting that that's going to be walked back, or localized to specific countries. but it strikes me that what it would amount to would be saying, turks, for instance, couldn't come to the u.s. and essentially punishing the victims of isis, right? if isis is targeting turkey, that's a great way to make it so that turks can't come to the u.s. >> daesh, that's what i call them, they basically want people

like donald trump to say hateful, ugly things about muslims because they're trying to argue to the muslim world that, hey, america's at war with islam, so join us. he's helping them recruit. more than that, though, the truth is that the number one group of people being killed by daesh is muslims. we are in the month of ramadan. i'm fasting right this second, chris. i've yet to breakfast today, since 3:30 this morning. and yet in this holy month, these people murder muslims and yet we have political leaders in our country who don't even understand how anti-muslim daesh really is. they definitely got a lot of blood on their hands. >> as someone who practices the faith, how profane is it? what an absolute profanity is it to watch this being carried out at the holiest time of year?

>> it is beyond description. it's the purest evidence that anyone would ever need that nothing daesh stands for is recognizable by muslims as islam. they are power mad, homicidal maniacs who kill at will, it doesn't matter, women, children, in ramadan, they don't care. and the fact is, we've got to oppose them, but we've got to be smart about it, and we've got to understand that as wicked as they are, they are pursuing a strategy and they are sophisticated in the way they present themselves in the media and we can't fall victims and fall into their hands like donald trump seems to be doing. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. we're still monitoring the breaking situation in turkey and keeping you updated on the situation throughout the show. up next, republicans release their benghazi findings and clear hillary clinton of any new

wrongdoing. i'll talk to one of the republicans on the committee about why it is that gop voters seem so susceptible to benghazi misinformation. (lock clicks) (dramatic music) (group) surprise! oh my goodness! happy birthday! oh, you. (laughing) oh! oh! well, they say 70 is the new 60. (laughing) were you really surprised? oh, this was a wonderful surprise. you know, at our age, not all surprises can be this good. you're not kidding. (female #1) remember peggy's surprise last month when frank died? so sudden; all the funeral expenses. they were not prepared. well, i'm not going to burden my family with my final expenses. -huh? -i called about the colonial penn program this morning. i'm alex trebek. if you're age 50 to 85, call about the colonial penn program now.

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>> after three and a half years, eight congressional committees, hundreds of in-person interviews, thousands of pages of subpoenaed comments is at least $7 million in taxpayer money, republicans are still at the end of all that, totally unable to justify their warped fixation with the 2012 attack on

the u.s. consulate in libya, or substantiate any of the conspiracy theories tying secretary clinton to what happened there. today more than two years after starting its work, the house select committee is benghazi released an 800-page report on the attack that took the lives of four americans. and like the investigations before it, they found numerous government agencies failed to recognize numerous security risks in benghazi. it presents no additional evidence of wrongdoing by hillary clinton. there's no smoking gun because, and this is key, there was never one to be found. on a campaign stop in colorado today, clinton weighed in on the committee's work. >> its report today found nothing to contradict the

conclusions of the independent accountability board or the conclusions of the prior multiple earlier investigations carried out on a bipartisan basis in the congress. so i'll leave it to others to characterize this report, but i think it's pretty clear it's time to move on. >> committee chairman trey gowdy took pains to explain the added value of his findings and insisted the investigation was never about clinton. but there were indications that the committee's work was political in nature, including kevin mccarthy's boast last fall about its impact on clinton's poll numbers. >> everybody thought hillary clinton was inbeatable, right? but we put together a benghazi select committee, a select committee, what are her numbers today? her numbers are dropping? why? because he's untrustable. >> a former staffer went public

with his plan, alleged he was fired because his superiors opposed his efforts to conduct a comprehensive investigate in the attack and were focused primarily on the role of the state department and hillary clinton. there was a decision to grill clinton, in an 11-hour marathon, a move that was widely considered to backfire. despite the lacking evidence, it lives on as a talking point. today two republicans on the committee released an adendum to the report. just last week in a speech attacking clinton, trump floated a false claim about her handling of the attack. >> among the victims of our late ambassador chris stevens, she, what she did with him was absolutely horrible.

he was left helpless to die as hillary clinton soundly slept in her bed. that's right, when the phone rang, as per the commercial, at 3:00 in the morning, hillary clinton was sleeping. >> not true. i spoke earlier with congressman lynn westmoreland, republican from georgia, i asked him about polling on republican misconceptions about benghazi. 44% of republicans, 50% of donald trump voters believe that it's definitely true that hillary clinton knew the consulate in benghazi was going to be attacked and did nothing to protect it. that's a belief of half the voters that are supporting donald trump. they are wrong about that, right? >> well, i don't -- did she know of a specific attack? no, sir. but i think if you look at all the major events that had happened in the last 90 days before the attack in benghazi, you could have well expected an

attack. one of the agents that came back told his co-workers in d.c. that it was a suicide mission. so i think just from the requests that she had from ambassador stevens, all the additional requests for security upgrades, she could have assumed there would be an attack. and to make it even more definite to me, after the demonstration in cairo, there was still no adjustment to the security situation in benghazi or libya, tripoli. >> on the very day that you've released this report, two years, $7 million, a tremendous amount of labor and effort put in by you and your colleagues, an associate of donald trump's, has organization's lawyer tweets a picture, saying that hillary

clinton murdered an ambassador. what's your reaction to that kind of accusation? >> well, we never included donald trump in our report. the democrats did. donald trump is gonna say what donald trump wants to say, but who can clarify what donald trump means. >> after all is said and done, we have this horrible tragedy, four americans lost their lives, you have a series of pretty clear policy failures, whether they're the actual full structure of the libyan intervention and the aftermath, or whether the diplomatic security, i think all of that has been established. why, to you, does it continue to be the case that such a large portion of the electorate continues to believe things about benghazi that are not true, that hillary clinton intentionally left it to its own, that she knew it was going to be attacked, that people intentionally lied about it? what has driven that air that

has led so many people to come to that conclusion? >> well, chris, i think you make a really good point in the fact that there's been a movie out that i've not seen. there's been two books out. and unfortunately, sometimes people would rather believe hollywood than the truth. so that's the reason this report was so important to me, and even though it took two and a half years, and they say $7 million, which the democrats spent some of that too, but it was important for us to try to answer all the questions that was out there, not just from the american citizens, but from these four families that wanted answers. because they had been given an answer that didn't shake out to be true from the secretary. at least some of the family members had, at the day they brought the bodies home. >> congressman, thanks so much. >> thank you. coming up, it wasn't just the movie that launched the hash tag benghazi phenomenon. up next, eric bowler on the right-wing media culture that

launched the never-ending probe of conspiracy theories.

so after more than two years, $7 million in taxpayer funds, the select committee on benghazi has failed in its apparent quest for a smoking gun implicating hillary clinton. joining me now to talk about it, senior fellow for media matters who has been covering relentlessly this for two years. i today interpreted it as a waving of the white flag. we didn't really get anything, it was defensive, we found this new information, but fundamentally, it was you read the report and come to your own conclusions. >> if trey gowdy's talking point is, you decide what's in the report, then it's just not there. almost three years ago, media matters published a book called the benghazi hoax. it was that obvious three years

ago and we're still doing this. it's just amazing. >> we knew a bunch of stuff about the policy failures, the lack of security. so you have to always divide in benghazi, like the real stuff from, the president gave a stand-down order, hillary clinton lied, all of this, that stuff is believed by so many people, they've cultivated it for five years. >> the important stuff we knew by the summer of 2015. the failures, who should be held accountable, and things like that. everything after that has been this mindless pile-on. 33 hearings. that hearing was at least tens of millions of dollars because the pentagon and state department have been very vocal saying, you are wasting our time. you look what happens in turkey, orlando, this country is facing very serious issues and branches of the government are begging republicans to stop this nonsense, but they've been

foxified. they're getting their talking orders from rush limbaugh. this is what happens when the republican party hands over the reins of power to right-wing media in america. >> they've also created this perception of her among a certain percentage of the population, the idea that she knew about the attack. >> right. >> this is like bush knew and let them do it anyway. this is in the territory of genuine conspiracy theory. that's half of trump's voters. >> and we forget this is not just hillary. this started out as an anti-obama wrecking ball, to demolish his second term and her run for the white house. it was going to take them both out because of the conspiracies, they both knew it was coming, obama watched the video in realtime and heard the screams and did nothing. trump saying hillary slept through this. but media matters has done

hundreds and hundreds of fact checks for the last four years, because it is relentless. it is relentless in the right-wing media and that's why there's this perception. it is the holy grail and completely divorced from any scrap of reality. >> it seemed to me, so here's the day the committee comes out. donald trump doesn't really run with it. no one -- i mean, it was such a tell to me, that here it is finally the thing, two years, longer than the 9/11 commission, longer than watergate, longer than the committee that investigated really complicated, historic facts, and what happens today, they dropped it on the doorstep and left. >> and as you say, where was the republican party? where was this mega phone? why aren't they talking about this? john boehner held this off for as long as possible. >> he did want this. >> right. then he finally relented.

he finally gave in. if you ask him candidly, this is exactly what he knew would happen. there was a meltdown on fox news today, there was all these shocking revelations. they seem to be more sputtering and angry because they realize the dream is over. this isn't going to be watergate on steroids and it never was. >> but in some ways, it does its job. because this idea of hillary clinton as just an unbelievably nefarious villain, which has been pounded in the minds of a lot of consumers of conservative media, that sticks, that's there, right? >> but that was going to stick no matter what. so these people hated barack obama, they're always going to hate him. he's going to leave office with some of his highest approval ratings. they were going to hate hillary clinton no matter what. and this is the propaganda and the rhetoric.

>> we edited that interview down with the congressman for time. but the first question i asked him, why stop now? if you got stonewall, do you think you should do another one? he said basically, this is enough, no more. do you think that's true? >> it's over. there's no one in the right-wing media demanding another one. trey gowdy has done extraordinary damage to his reputation. still to come, we'll have the latest on the bombings in istanbul, so do not go anywhere.

>> over the last several years, turkey has been the focal point in many respects for the fight against isis. what today's attack there means for that effort ahead.

at this hour, we are still monitoring what is unfolding in turkey where the death toll continues allegedly from inside the airport shows police taking down a man with a gun.

while he's on the ground, the gunman then detonates some kind of suicide device. we're continuing to monitor this developing story and we'll monitor and bring you updates throughout the night on msnbc.

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don't wait, call this number now. ♪ tonight's apparent terrorist attack possibly by isis is by no means the first. june 6, car bomb killing 11 in istanbul. march 19, suicide bomber kills four. march 13, car bomb kills 30 in ankara, though the credit was claimed by a kurdish group.

back in october, suicide bomber killing more than a hundred in a peace and solidarity march. turkey has been at the absolute nexus of so much of the story of the last four years between the syrian war, the refugee crisis and the battle on isis. so much comes down to what turkey does. >> yeah it's not just the center, in and of itself it's a country dealing with so many security challenges because of this kurdish problem for decades. the kurdish situation has become more militant in the last year. so even though there was talks of possible reconciliation with the turkish government. but without a doubt, over the past five years, since the rise of the civil war in syria, turkey has been sitting at the epicenter of not only the crisis in syria and iraq, but a lot of the foreign fighters that came to go to syria in the first place, came via turkey.

there were some initially accusing turkey of turning a blind eye to foreign fighters making their way into syria because they were focused on toppling the assad regime. more recently it has been allowing the u.s. in its campaign to bomb isis, as it beefed up its own security and operations against the kurds and isis supporters. >> so you have a situation in which there's tremendous frustration being expressed by americans and others that erdogan, the head of state of turkey for years now, is basically allowing a sort of lawless area on the border with syria, partly because he wants fighters to go to fight because he is a declared enemy, essentially, of assad. eventually that situation has been altered a bit. right? how much has this blowback of isis is now, okay, fine, you're now on our enemies list?

>> essentially as you outlined over the course of turkey's foreign policy position of turkey, in the initial stages it was allowing foreign fighters to come to topple the assad regime. but as the rise of isis became more of a threat not only to turkey but countries in the region, they started lashing out against europe. the refugee crisis became a serious issue, a drain on turkey. all of these problems shifted the turkish position to say they will now combat isis and support the rebel groups or moderates who still want to fight the assad regime. so in some ways, weapons have been flee flowing in through turkey and arab gulf countries, money and foreign fighters, it's a confluence of interest and at the same time, a dangerous security mix. >> and then to just add complexity, you have the situation in which the u.s.'s best partner on the ground in rolling back isis so far, have been kurdish forces.

they have been the kurdish forces with ypg fighting badges on their arms, those are the declared enemies of erdogan and the turks. when they see u.s. fighters fighting there, they got to think, are we on the wrong side of this war essentially? >> and in addition to that, the pkk, which is considered a terrorist organization by turkey, the european union, and the united states, shows how much more complex that situation is, because all three of those entities, they consider the kurdish fighters in turkey to be a terrorist organization. but at the same time, they're off-shoots, affiliates inside syria and iraq, they're considered u.s. allies -- >> and not just allies, by far, the most reliable -- >> the peshmerga has been the most lethal fighting force on the ground. the concern for turkish officials, that support is fueling kurdish separatist

movements inside turkey creating more instability on the doorsteps of europe. >> and erdogan has used this instability to crack down and tighten his reins on the press, he's purged leftist group and jailed dissidents it's been a rough times in many ways for turkish democracy. thank you very much. one quick programming note. we had promised to bring you tonight the second part of our series on climate change in america, the awful events in turkey superceded that story. but we hope to bring you our report from alaska tomorrow night instead. that will do it for us, for "all in" this evening. the rachel maddow shows starts right now. >> we've thrown our planned segments out the window tonight as well. thanks to you at home for joining us as well. we'll have nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel, joining us live from istanbul, where we continue to cover this terrorist attack that

hit istanbul's main airport. we also continue to cover the response to this attack internationally and locally on the scene in turkey. if you're a regular viewer of this show, if you're a fan of richard engel's and i know a lot of you are, richard often joins us very late in the middle of the night from istanbul. you may also remember that richard has done some of his most intense, stunning, on-the-ground reporting, from the nation of turkey. right on the outskirts of the syrian civil war. some of the most amazing and award-winning footage that richard has ever shot was right on the border of turkey and syria from a town called kobani. in late 2014, isis masked its fighters and took over kobani. kobani was not the biggest population center. it was not seen as hugely strategically important but it was right on the border between syria and tu a