Israelis again advised to leave Turkey without delay, DEBKAfile, April 8, 2016
The counterterrorism bureau in Jerusalem has again warned Israelis visiting Turkey of an “imminent, concrete threat” of a terror attack in Turkey and urged them to leave the country without delay. Meanwhile, they are advised to avoid crowd centers and tourist sites. People with relatives traveling in Turkey should call them to convey this warning.
State Sponsor of Islamic Terrorism: “Terrorism will Never have a Religion” Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, April 6, 2016
(But he’s a cool guy. Please see Germany Moves To Remove Anti-Erdogan Poem And Merkel Calls Turkey To Apologize.
— DM)
Islamic Terrorism has no religion. We all know that. And it’s good to hear a state sponsor of Islamic terrorism reaffirm that right here.
Hailing the beauty of its location near the capital Washington, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially inaugurated the Diyanet Center of America.
“Unfortunately, we are going through a rough time all around the world. Intolerance towards Muslims is on the rise not only here in the United States but also around the globe,” said Erdogan, who is accused of increasingly autocratic rule.
Also Erdogan threatened to ethnically cleanse Armenians, massacred Kurds and has prisons filled with political prisoners. But all his victims are probably guilty of Islamophobia.
The complex, the only one in the United States to feature two minarets, echoes the golden age of 16th century Ottoman architecture, with its central dome, half domes and cupolas in the style of Istanbul’s Suleymaniye Mosque.
Also it echoes the Islamist poem that sent Erdogan to jail originally, before he took over the country. “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”
Good thing we let him set up his barracks and bayonets here. When even Cuba denied him permission.
“Terrorism will never have a religion, will never have a nation, will never have a nationality, nor will it ever have a root or ethnicity,” Erdogan said.
Obviously. Just ask Hamas, which Erdogan backs. Not to mention the various Syrian Jihadists whom he also backs. These Islamic terrorists have no religion.
P.S. This all makes sense if you define terrorism as non-Muslims defending themselves against Jihadists.
Turkish Mayor: Our ‘Glorious Ancestors Extirpated Armenians’ Clarion Project, Uzay Bulut, April 5, 2016
Young actors in the hate play (Photo: Video screenshot)
The public stage play that depicted “the liberation of Askale from invasion” was turned into a hate show, the Turkish Dogan News Agency (DHA) reported.
Askale is a town in the city of Erzurum in Turkey. Indigenous Armenians of the city were either slaughtered or deported in a genocidal campaign in 1915, but a play staged on March 3 in the city not only turned the historical facts regarding the genocide upside down, but converted them into hate-filled propaganda against the Armenians.
Turkey still denies the reality of 1915 genocide and commemorates the date March 3, 1918 as “the day when Askale was liberated from the Russian and Armenian invaders.”
Many state and government authorities – including the mayor, district governor, chief prosecutor and garrison commander of the town – as well as many students and local people attended the play.
The play (see video below) started with the “immigration of Turks fleeing from Armenians.” The Armenians then started drinking wine and eating chicken on a table set in the middle of the ceremony area. Upon the call of their commander, they start slaughtering Turks.
The Armenians then burn down a mosque (a model made of cardboard), catch the imam as he is reciting the Azan (the Islamic call to prayer) and attack him in the city center. They force him to enter the mosque and then burnt him alive. Afterwards, the Armenians attack a Turkish family, murdering the housewife and her father-in-law in cold-blood.
The play ends with Turkish high school students, playing the role of the Turkish militia, entering the town and killing the Armenian “gangs.”
Following the play, the Turkish national anthem was played as the Turkish flag was raised on a pole.
Enver Basaran, the mayor of Askale, delivered the following speech:
The Armenians, who had been our ancestors’ neighbors for long years, formed gangs and carried out massacres in our lands with the encouragement and armed support of the Soviet Union following the Russian invasion.
In your presence, I remember once again with mercy and gratitude our glorious ancestors who extirpated the Armenians whose history is filled with blood and treason from these lands.
The hostility and hatred of those Armenian gangs that are a network of treason has never ended for these lands and for the noble Turkish nation. Those Armenian gangs that do not know any history, rules or law now carry out separatist activities in our lands through the terrorist organization PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party].
As we have clearly seen in our recent crisis with Russia as well, the bad intentions of these treacherous gangs and conniving states on our country will never come to an end.
Fikri Pecen, a retired employee of the Akcale municipality, who has for years voluntarily played the role of a member of the “Armenian gang,”said, “I have been playing the role of Ohannes, the Armenian battalion commander for about 30 years. We would like to portray what Armenians did in this land and make it known to the new generations. Today I will once again betray Mahmut and Sevket Efendi whose bread I have eaten for years and will take their lives.”
Prior to the 1915 genocide, the city Erzurum, or Karin in Armenian, had a vibrant Armenian community with numerous Armenian schools, churches and businesses. The city was also the provincial residence of the Archbishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
By 1919, according to the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, Erzurum was left completely devoid of its Armenian population as a result of the Ottoman forces’ genocidal campaign against the Armenians and other Christians in the region. (For a detailed account of the massacres and deportations in the city and the region, see “The History of Armenia”, by Simon Payaslian, Palgrave Macmillan; 2007.)
“The scale of the Armenian genocide is massive,” wrote the scholar Andrew Bernstein. “Estimates of the murder count vary widely, but even by the most conservative accounting, a minimum of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians—men, women, children, infants—were butchered by the most savagely primitive methods imaginable.
“Rudolph Rummel, an American political scientist who coined the term democide—the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder—devoted his career to studying such horrors. He writes: ‘The size and speed of the [ruling] Young Turks’ ethnic cleansing are unparalleled. . . . They alone most likely murdered no fewer than 300,000 and most probably around 1,400,000—nearly 70 percent—of their Armenians . . . in one year.’”
Objective scholars tell the facts as they are. But Turkish schoolchildren are taught an imaginative and untrue version of history that is marked with hate-filled propaganda.
Professor Taner Akcam wrote a comprehensive article for the Armenian Weekly about how the 1915 genocide is depicted in Turkish history textbooks for the 2014-15 school year. And those books are either prepared by the Ministry of National Education or approved by the Ministry’s Instruction and Education Board.
“The textbooks characterize Armenians as people ‘who are incited by foreigners, who aim to break apart the state and the country, and who murdered Turks and Muslims,’” Akcam wrote.
“The Armenian Genocide—referred to as the ‘Armenian matter’ in textbooks—is described as a lie perpetrated in order to meet these goals, and is defined as the biggest threat to Turkish national security. Another threat to national security is missionaries and their activities.
“The situation is truly desperate,” Akcam noted. “Based upon what’s been written, two questions come to mind: How do Armenians who continue to live in Turkey, and who are its citizens, manage to live in this country? What is it like to live as an Armenian in a country where innocent young minds are taught to be enemies of Armenians, and where Armenians are presented as a threat against national security?”
Sadly, the distortion of facts relating the Armenian genocide and brainwashing schoolchildren with hostility towards Armenians, who are the actual victims of the genocide, has for decades become the norm in Turkey.
Germany Moves To Remove Anti-Erdogan Poem And Merkel Calls Turkey To Apologize, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, April 5, 2016
The enabling of an authoritarian like Erdogan is a new low for the Western nations. Not only is Erdogan destroying free speech and the free media in Turkey, but he has now found a way to enlist Western governments like Germany to embrace the same anti-free speech principles.
********************
We recently discussed how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned his suppression of critics to other countries and was demanding action from governments against his critics. At the time, I was relieved to report that Germany had held the line on free speech. My relief of premature. German ZDF public television said Monday it had deleted a poem recited by presenter Jan Böhmermann from last Thursday’s edition of “Neo Magazin Royal” after pressure from the German government. Böhmermann’s poem, containing numerous sexual innuendos, accuses Erdogan of repressing minorities, including Kurds and Christians. German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Chancellor Angela Merkel in a telephone call on Sunday evening with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had agreed that Böhmermann had recited a “deliberately abusive text.” Merkel has done precisely what civil libertarians feared: feeding Erdogan’s desire to suppress speech and affirming that he can indeed silence critics abroad.
What is truly maddening is that the spokesman insisted that none of this takes away from the “high value” the German government placed on freedoms of the press and public opinion. Unbelievable. Merkel silences Germans to appease a rising dictator while insisting that she remains committed otherwise to free speech.
Böhmermann mocked Merkel and said “Limits, at last. I think we have spectacularly shown, jointly with ZDF, where the limits of satire lie by us in Germany. At last!”
Merkel is not the only one who should be condemned in this matter. ZDF Program director Norbert Himmler insisted that there were limits to irony and satire.
“In this case, they were clearly exceeded . . . As a result, in consultation with Jan Böhmermann, we have decided to take the passage out of the broadcast. That relates to the video in the Mediathek, clips on YouTube, and re-runs.”
As we discussed, Erdogan flew into a rage over a satirical song entitled “Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan,” that ridiculed Erdogan’s alleged extravagance and a crackdown on civil liberties. Here is the video:
The video is a parody of a 1980s song by the German pop star Nena, “Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann,” (“Anyway, Anywhere, Anytime”) which is changed to “Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan.” The facts that it reports however are not satirical but actual. The video details Erdogan crackdown on democracy and basic freedoms as well as his infamous intolerance for any criticism. Merkel has now added fuel to the meglomania of Erdogan in saying that certain criticism will not be tolerated in Germany. That is likely far more than the Turks ever dreamed of . . . to have a major Western nation embrace censorship.
We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in France (here and here and here and here and here and here) and England (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). Much of this trend is tied to the expansion of hate speech and non-discrimination laws. We have seen comedians targeted with such court orders under this expanding and worrisome trend. (here and here). In Germany, Merkel government has crackdown on anti-immigration speech as the government expands its list of permitted and prohibited speech.
The enabling of an authoritarian like Erdogan is a new low for the Western nations. Not only is Erdogan destroying free speech and the free media in Turkey, but he has now found a way to enlist Western governments like Germany to embrace the same anti-free speech principles.
Turkey is key supplier of weapons, military hardware to ISIS – Russian envoy to UN Published time: 1 Apr, 2016 14:25 Edited time: 1 Apr, 2016 14:45
Source: Turkey is key supplier of weapons, military hardware to ISIS – Russian envoy to UN — RT News
© Denis Sinyakov / Reuters
The main supplier of arms and military equipment to Islamic State (IS, Daesh, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants is Turkey, which uses non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for this purpose. The National Intelligence Organization of Turkey is in charge of the operations. Transportation is carried out mainly via automobiles, including humanitarian aid convoys, Churkin wrote in a letter to the UN Security Council (UNSC).
Terrorist groups operating in Syria received explosive materials worth $ 1.9 million via Turkey last year, according to the letter.
In total, the terrorists were delivered 2.5 thousand tons of ammonium nitrate (worth around $788,700), 456 tons of potassium nitrate ($468,700), 75 tons of aluminum powder ($496,500), sodium nitrate ($19,400), glycerin ($102,500) and nitric acid ($34,000 thousand) via Turkey in 2015, Churkin wrote.
Why should Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen operate charter schools on U.S. Military bases? The Hill, Robert R. Amsterdam, March 31, 2016
(Mr. Gulen professes an interesting Islamic doctrine. According to Wikipedia,
Muhammed Fethullah Gülen (born 27 April 1941) is a Turkish preacher,[5]former imam,[5][6]writer,[7] and political figure.[8] He is the founder of the Gülen movement (known as Hizmet meaning service in Turkish). . . .
Gülen teaches an Anatolian (sort of Hanafi) version of Islam, deriving from Sunni Muslim scholar Said Nursî‘s teachings.
. . . .
Gülen does not advocate a new theology but refers to classical authorities of theology, taking up their line of argument.[50]His understanding of Islam tends to be moderate and mainstream.[51][52] Though he has never been a member of a Sufitarekat and does not see tarekat membership as a necessity for Muslims, he teaches that “Sufism is the inner dimension of Islam” and “the inner and outer dimensions must never be separated.”[53]
Sufis strive for ihsan (perfection of worship) as detailed in a hadith: “Ihsan is to worship Allah as if you see Him; if you can’t see Him, surely He sees you.”[4] Jalaluddin Rumi stated: “The Sufi is hanging on to Muhammad, like Abu Bakr.”[5] Sufis regard Prophet Muhammad as Al-Insān al-Kāmil, which is a concept that describes Muhammad as the primary perfect man who exemplifies the morality of God.[6] Sufis regard Prophet Muhammad as their leader and prime spiritual guide.
— DM)
A secretive Islamic movement is trying to infiltrate the U.S. military by establishing and operating publicly-funded charter schools targeted toward children of American service personnel.
That charge may sound like a conspiracy theory from the lunatic fringe, but it is real and it is happening right now. The most immediate threat is in Nevada, where Coral Academy of Science Las Vegas (CASLV) is currently negotiating with the United States Air Force to locate a charter school at Nellis Air Force Base, with classes starting this fall. What is not widely known is that CASLV is part of a nationwide organization of charter schools and other businesses headed by Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, a reclusive but influential Imam living under self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania to avoid criminal prosecution in his native Turkey.
Our law firm has been engaged by the Republic of Turkey – a key NATO ally in a hotbed region – to conduct a wide-ranging investigation into the operations and geopolitical influence of the Gülen organization, which is behind the Coral Academy of Science and over 140 other public charter schools scattered across 26 American states. Our investigation, still in its early stages, reveals that the Gülen organization uses charter schools and affiliated businesses in the U.S. to misappropriate and launder state and federal education dollars, which the organization then uses for its own benefit to develop political power in this country and globally.
Aside from defrauding American taxpayers, the Gülen organization has an even more ominous objective in the United States. The organization is one of the country’s largest recipients of H1-B “specialty occupation” visas, which it uses to import Turkish teachers into its charter schools, supposedly because local U.S. talent is not available to fill math and science teaching positions in its charter schools. The Gülen organization illegally threatens to revoke these visas unless the Turkish teachers agree to kick back part of their salary to the organization.
More importantly, the Turkish teachers in Gülen organization charter schools are evaluated not on the basis of their teaching skills, but rather on whether they achieve monthly goals in a secret point system designed to instill Turkish culture and Gülenist ideology in our American students. The goal, we are told, is to develop a Gülenist following of high achievers, incubated in our local community schools across the country.
The Gülen organization has been able to grow in the U.S. largely because it conceals both its identity and its motives. The first line of defense for Gülenist charter schools and companies has been to deny any affiliation with Fethullah Gülen (their officers and directors claim that they are merely “inspired by” Gülen’s religious teachings), as if the simple creation of business entities in which Fethullah Gülen himself holds no ownership interest could alter his ultimate control over the organization. In reality, the governing boards of the Gülen charter schools are populated disproportionately by loyal Turkish men answering to a handful of Imams who rule over defined regions across the U.S., reporting ultimately to Gülen in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.
In Nevada, CASLV is a three-campus school operating under a charter held by tax-exempt Coral Education Corp., headquartered in Reno. Three of Coral’s board members are Turkish, one of whom was formerly the Principal at two other Gülen organization charter schools, the Sonoran Science Academy at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and the Bay Area Technology School in California.
Unfortunately, Nellis Air Force Base is not the Gülen organization’s first stab at a U.S. military base. The organization successfully opened a school on Davis-Monthan AFB in 2009, and it tried but failed to gain access to Marine Corps Base Hawaii and Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois. In California, Magnolia Public Schools applied for a charter in Oceanside, where Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton is located, although it temporarily withdrew its application after our law firm pointed out Magnolia’s connection to the Gülen organization earlier this year.
Lest there be any doubt about the objectives in the United States, the strategy of subtly indoctrinating school children into the Gülen movement is a familiar one overseas, and there is great peril in allowing it to flourish in this country. In his native Turkey, Gülen created a network of hundreds of schools that have produced – over the past three decades – a vast cadre of followers now prepared to perform his bidding from official positions in government, law enforcement, the judiciary and the media. Although precise numbers are impossible to verify, some have estimated that he currently controls more than half of the entire Turkish police force. The Economist newspaper compared Gülen’s influence in Turkey to the Freemason infiltration of law enforcement and judicial elites in Europe during the last century. Numerous documented cases in Turkey involving planted evidence, tainted prosecutions and illegal incarceration of Gülen critics underscore that he is quite willing to abuse his power and influence.
The same game plan is playing out, at last count, in 101 countries on every habitable continent. With an estimated six million followers globally and assets in the range of $20-$50 billion, the Gülen organization has managed to conceal a great deal about its doctrine, mission or objectives. Whether Gülen’s followers are classified as a religious sect, a commercial enterprise, a political movement or – as Dutch legislators concluded – a cult, it should be a matter of significant concern for our security and regulatory authorities.
In light of Gülen’s modus operandi elsewhere, the Department of Homeland Security should be asking itself why such a non-transparent, religion-based organization would seek to establish itself on our military bases, teaching the children of our service men and women.
Journalism in Turkey: Newsroom vs. Courtroom, Gatestone Institute, Burak Bekdil, March 31, 2016
(Please see also, Turkey to Host UN’S First Global Humanitarian Summit. — DM)
♦ According to a report by the Turkish Journalists Association, 500 journalists were fired in Turkey in 2015; 70 others were subjected to physical violence. Thirty journalists remain in prison, mostly on charges of “terrorism.” There are also many journalists among the 1,845 Turks who have been investigated or prosecuted for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he was elected in August 2014.
♦ After the secular daily newspaper Cumhuriyet published evidence of arms deliveries by the Turkish intelligence services to Islamist groups in Syria, President Erdogan himself filed a criminal complaint against Cumhuriyet’seditor-in-chief, Can Dundar, and the Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gul.
♦ At a March 25 hearing, the Istanbul court ruled for the whole trial to be held in secret.
♦ “We came here today to defend journalism…We said we would defend the people’s right to access information. We defended that and we were arrested.” — Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet.
♦ The trial clearly exhibits how Erdogan’s authoritarian rule diverges from Western democratic culture.
“Turkey is where many journalists may have to spend more time at their attorneys’ offices or in courtrooms than in the newsrooms, where they should be,” a Western diplomat joked bitterly. “Don’t quote me on that. I don’t want to be declared persona non grata,” he added with a smile.
He was right. According to a report by the Turkish Journalists Association, 500 journalists were fired in Turkey in 2015; 70 others were subjected to physical violence. Thirty journalists remain in prison, mostly on charges of “terrorism.”
Needless to say, the unfortunate journalists are invariably known to be critical of Erdogan. There are also many journalists among the 1,845 Turks who have been investigated or prosecuted for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he was elected in August 2014.
One of them is Sedat Ergin, editor-in-chief of Turkey’s most influential newspaper, Hurriyet. On March 25 Ergin had to appear before a penal court on charges of insulting Erdogan, with the prosecution demanding up to four years in jail for him. The veteran journalist says he is devastated to have been taken to court for the first time in his 41 years as a journalist on such an accusation. After his trial Ergin told reporters: “… in the year 2016 courthouse corridors and the hearing rooms have become the habitats of journalists in Turkey. Freedom of the press in Turkey in 2016 is now confined to court corridors.”
On that same day, two more journalists were in a courtroom, but they are not as lucky as Ergin in terms of the prison sentences demanded by the prosecution.
In May 2015, the secular daily newspaper Cumhuriyet published on its front page video and photographic evidence of arms deliveries by the Turkish intelligence services to Islamist groups in Syria. A month later, President Erdogan himself filed a criminal complaint against Cumhuriyet’seditor-in-chief, the prominent journalist, Can Dundar, and the newspaper’s Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gul. In a public speech, Erdogan said: “He who ran this story will pay heavily for it.”
Dundar and Gul were arrested and remained behind bars for over 90 days, until Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that their detention violated their rights. They were released, but must now stand trial on charges of espionage, as well as aiding a terrorist organization that aims to topple Erdogan’s government. The case is a serious threat to the two journalists’ liberty, especially when Erdogan’s “weight” in the courtroom remains easily felt, if not seen.
Can Dundar (right), editor-in-chief of Turkey’s Cumhuriyet newspaper, and Erdem Gul (left), Cumhuriyet’s Ankara bureau chief, were arrested after the paper published evidence of arms deliveries by the Turkish intelligence services to Islamist groups in Syria. They remained behind bars for over 90 days, until Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that their detention violated their rights.
At the March 25 hearing, the Istanbul court ruled for the whole trial to be held in secret. A group of opposition MPs protested the decision and refused to leave the courtroom. The court decided to file a criminal complaint against them for “obstructing justice.”
“We came here today to defend journalism. We gathered here before and said the same thing. We said we would defend the people’s right to access information. We defended that and we were arrested,” Dundar said.
It seems that Erdogan has no intention of leaving the journalists alone. The trial also clearly exhibits how his authoritarian rule diverges from Western democratic culture. On March 25, a group of Western consuls-general in Istanbul attended the journalists’ trial in a show of solidarity. The diplomats included Leigh Turner, the British Consul-General, who shared images from outside the court and messages of support for the journalists on Twitter. Now Erdogan thinks he has new enemies.
The day after the court hearing, Erdogan spoke:
“The situation of those who attended this hearing is very important. The consuls-general in Istanbul come to the courthouse. Who are you, what are you doing there? This is not your country, this is Turkey … Diplomats can operate within the boundaries of missions. Elsewhere is subject to permission.”
Now is that a new jurisprudence in diplomacy — that foreign diplomats in Turkey should be confined to their mission buildings and not observe most important political trials without permission from the Turkish government? In addition to the court’s blackout on the Dundar-Gul case, Erdogan now wants political confinement for the journalists.
By pursuing life sentences so aggressively for the journalists, Erdogan is in fact trying to achieve another political goal: He is giving messages at many wavelengths to any other investigative journalist who may in the future publish another embarrassing report on his administration.
Not really peaceful and free times for Turkish journalism.
Turkey to Host UN’S First Global Humanitarian Summit, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, March 30, 2016
(Please see also, Turkish Gov’t Children’s Magazine Promotes Martyrdom. — DM)
The first-ever United Nations-sponsored World Humanitarian Summit is scheduled to take place May 23-24, 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised Turkey’s “compassionate leadership” in hosting the summit and its “admirable commitment to humanitarian action.”
Turkey’s hosting of the UN humanitarian summit is a travesty. Ban Ki-moon’s praise of Turkey’s “compassionate leadership” and “admirable commitment to humanitarian action” is a disgrace. Did perhaps the Secretary General have in mind the so-called Turkish “charity” known as the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH)? Despite its name and some programs that have delivered aid to areas in genuine need, IHH has an overtly political Islamist agenda. It has had a particular interest in directing assistance to terrorist organizations such as Hamas, and has had ties with al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is looking forward, in its words, to when “Muslims may show up in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem one day unannounced and we will erect the flag of Islam everywhere.”
The IHH is best known for sponsoring the 2010 Gaza flotilla, which had been sent to break Israel’s legal naval blockade of Gaza against the shipment of weaponry to Hamas. Nine armed Turkish Hamas supporters on one of the ships were killed by Israel Defense Force personnel, whom had acted in self-defense after they had boarded the ship to prevent it from reaching Gaza. Never mind that a UN investigatory committee subsequently concluded that Israel had legally boarded the IHH ship in the first place. Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan sided with the IHH and Hamas, and accused Israel of engaging in “state terrorism.” Erdogan’s government has coordinated with the IHH and has given it cover as a so-called “humanitarian” charity so that it could carry on its support of Hamas against Israel. Erdogan’s loyalists even went so far as to fire a senior police official who thought he was simply doing his job by conducting a police raid of IHH offices. The raid which so displeased Erdogan had led to the detention of at least 23 people with alleged ties to Al Qaeda.
Apart from its ties to the misnamed Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, Erdogan’s government has made a mockery of the “core responsibilities” outlined in the Agenda for Humanity, which will be the focus of discussion at the Istanbul UN World Humanitarian Summit in May.
For example, one of these core responsibilities is “a commitment to address forced displacement.” Turkey has a huge internal displacement problem, primarily involving the forced displacement of members of its minority Kurdish population. Between 954,000 and 1.2 million people were forced to flee their homes between 1986 and 2005. Turkey’s attempts to address this situation, with such measures as compensation for the victims, have been fitful at best. Most internally displaced persons (IDPs) have been left to fend for themselves, living in poverty. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “Poverty has forced IDPs’ children to work rather than going to school, and some women have resorted to negative coping mechanisms including prostitution to get by.”
In Cyprus, Greek Cypriots were forcibly expelled from their homes after Turkey invaded the northern area of the Republic of Cyprus and placed it under military occupation in 1974. Turkey’s illegal occupation of the northern third of the island continues to this day. The European Court of Human Rights concluded in a judgment against Turkey for damages that “Greek-Cypriot owners of property in northern Cyprus are being denied access to and control, use and enjoyment of their property as well as any compensation for the interference with their property rights.” The Court noted “the protracted feelings of helplessness, distress and anxiety” suffered by the victims of Turkey’s actions. Turkey’s Foreign Minister angrily rejected the Court’s verdict.
Another “core responsibility” outlined in the Humanitarian Summit’s Agenda for Humanity is “catalyzing action to achieve gender equality.” Turkey’s President Erdogan declared in November 2014 that “men and women are not equal; it is against nature.” In the 2015 Global Gender Gap country rankings, Turkey is near the bottom of the list – 130th out of 145 countries surveyed. It placed only four countries above Saudi Arabia.
According to an article written in 2015 by Meltem Müftüler-Baç, a Professor of International Relations and Jean Monnet chair at Sabanci University, Istanbul, “when it comes to protecting Turkish women against violence, ensuring their rights of education and employment, and even their right to choose their own spouse, women face layers of discrimination. Child marriages and domestic violence are the most visible forms, with around 30-35% of all marriages in Turkey involving under-age girls, rising in rural southeastern Turkey to up to 75%.”
Two other “core responsibilities” outlined in the Humanitarian Summit’s Agenda for Humanity are “leadership to prevent and end conflicts” and “upholding the norms that safeguard humanity.” Turkey has engaged in policies that have heightened conflicts and caused human suffering.
In September 2015, for example, the Turkish Armed Forces besieged the Kurdish town of Cizre in southeastern Turkey. Civilian residents have been cut off from receiving food, medical supplies, water and electricity for days on end. In one incident, people were trapped inside a burning, multi-story building, surrounded by Turkish troops who reportedly would not let them out. Unconfirmed reports have estimated the number of people killed in the fire as at least 150, and perhaps several hundred more.
“This was a residential building where women and children lived. Erdogan killed them all with heavy artillery. He destroyed this building. They say they’re fighting terrorists. But where are the terrorists? All victims were local civilians,” a local resident told journalists. “They were old men, women, and children. They even killed pregnant women.”
Turkey’s claim to humanitarian action is its hosting of 2.5 million refugees from Syria, more than any other country worldwide. However, while Turkey can spin the sheer number of refugees it has admitted and the billions of dollars it has spent to host them on its soil, Turkey has also contributed to creating the problem in the first place. It has served for years as a passage way for foreign jihadists to reach Syria and exacerbate the conflict. Moreover, many of the refugees living in Turkey are treated poorly. They “still live in terrible conditions, some have been deported back to Syria and security forces have even shot at Syrians trying to cross the border,” said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia.
Until very recently, Turkish authorities have looked the other way as smugglers transported self-proclaimed “asylum-seekers” and economic migrants – mostly young adult males – from Turkey’s shores to Greece. From Greece, they began their trek through European Union member states to reach Germany or other desirable destinations. These include ISIS fighters embedded in the masses of refugees reaching Europe from Turkey, as well as garden variety criminals whom have responded to the welcome they received in Germany, Sweden and other EU member states with gang rapes, armed robberies and murder.
Erdogan used the prospect of a continued flow of refugees from Turkey to Europe as a bargaining chip to win key concessions from his European counterparts. Most importantly, he extracted a pledge of €6 billion from Europe (approximately US$6.7 billion based on the current currency conversion rate) to be paid by 2018. For its part, Turkey agreed to take back new refugees seeking to enter Europe and to implement other measures to stem any future refugee flow. The amount Europe will be paying Erdogan’s regime is the equivalent of over 3 years of Turkey’s expenditures on Syrian refugees, based on its own report of US$1.8 billion for all of its humanitarian related expenditures in 2014. No doubt, Turkey will have its hand out for more money from the European Union well before the end of 2018.
Erdogan is an autocrat. His government tramples on basic human rights such as freedom of expression. It has committed what could be considered crimes against humanity in its treatment of its Kurdish population. It scoffed at a judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, which sought to hold Turkey accountable for its illegal occupation in Cyprus and the human suffering it caused. Erdogan’s government has an abysmal record on women’s rights. It is extracting a large sum of money and other concessions from the European Union in order to stem the flow of Syrian refugees from Turkey to Europe that it helped to worsen in the first place. And it supports terrorist organizations such as Hamas.
In short, Turkey is one of the last places on earth that should be hosting a global summit devoted to addressing genuine humanitarian concerns.
Turkish Gov’t Children’s Magazine Promot, Clarion Project, March 30, 2016
Illustrative Photo: An Islamic State school for children in Afghanistan. (Video screenshot)
A cartoon published by the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs shows a father extolling the virtues of Islamic martyrdom to his son.
The issue of the children’s magazine is meant to promote dialogue between parents and children. In the cartoon, a father asks his son, “Do you want to be a martyr?” The son replies, “Of course I want to be a martyr. Who doesn’t want to go to heaven?”
The son then explains that “heaven is happy with martyrs” and that much praise is heaped upon the martyr making him wish that he could have been martyred 10 times. The cartoon ends with the son saying, “I wish I could be killed as martyr.”
According to the Turkish news outlet Cumhuriyet, the magazine has met harsh criticism. Psychologist and Professor Dr. Serdar Degirmencioglu, a critic of Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan commented, “Religiosity has, in recent years, turned into a literal political tool. They do not even hide it. The Ministry of Religion was provided more money than several other ministries combined and continues intensive work for religious children.”
He added, “They want to use the drawings to transfer the message of martyrdom to children because they think it will be more attractive. ‘Martyrs suffer,’ ‘sins forgiven’ it says. So it’s a painless death and a promise of heaven.”
Degirmencioglu noted the similarity between this worldview and the Islamic State remarking, “Turkey is overwhelmed with the pain of these massacres and with those pursuing the mentality of religiosity. All this has led to the death of people, an exact same mentality, that blinds people to the horrors of what the Religious Affairs Ministry is trying to spread to children in Turkey.”
“The children will grow up and they will run toward death when those in power tell them to,” he said.
Secrets and Lies: Turkey’s Covert Relationship With ISIS, Clarion Project, Meira Svirsky, March 29, 2016
With the aid of Turkish officials, Islamic State fighters’ have been able to travel through Turkey to reach Syria (Photo: Video screenshot)
A hot warning received by intelligence officials revealed that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is planning an “imminent attack” on Jewish children in Turkey. Officials believe the most likely target is in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul, where a Jewish school is attached to a synagogue and community center.
The information was obtained after Turkey arrested six ISIS operatives in the southern city of Gaziantep last week.
“This is a more than credible threat. This is an active plot,” a Turkey source said.
Less than 10 days ago, a suicide bomber stalked Israeli tourists in Istanbul before blowing himself up near them, killing five people (four of them Israelis) and wounding many more.
“The so-called Islamic State is believed to be behind both sets of attacks and the organization continues in determined efforts to perpetrate further attacks in Turkey and elsewhere,” reported Sky News, quoting from an intelligence report seen by the news outlet.
In addition to the six arrested, another three ISIS operatives were arrested last week. Turkey, it seems is scrambling to protect itself from attacks the terror group has threatened to execute all across Europe.
After the Brussels attacks, Turkish President RecepTayyip Erdogan shocked the world by saying that Turkey had captured one of the perpetrators of the massacre last June and send him back to his country. Erdogan specifically said that Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the suicide bombers in the Brussels airport, was detained in Turkey and sent back to Belgium with a warning (that was ignored) that he was a militant.
Yet, new documents obtained by Kurdish YPG fighters (People’s Protection Units) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who are fighting together, refute the claim made by Erdogan that Turkey is preventing ISIS and Al-Nusra (Al Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria) from travelling through Turkey to reach Syria.
The documents seized from Islamic State headquarters in seven locations, including Kobane, show that ISIS fighters from all over the world – and particularly from Kazakhstan, Indonesia, and Tajikistan — were given passage through Turkey to Syria.
The Firat News Agency (ANF), a Kurdish outlet whose websites have been repeatedly blocked in Turkey by Turkish courts, reports that the hundreds of documents show that since 2013, ISIS fighters have used the Istanbul and Adana airports and have received permits from the Turkish government to reside in Turkey until they cross over to Syria.
The documents also include bus tickets, electronic Turkish visas, residency permits, and documents with stamps from Turkish immigration officials.
Chillingly, the documents show that chemical and explosive materials was transferred from Turkey to Syria. One such document was signed by the manager of Istanbul’s Police Foreigners’ Department Erkan Aydoga. Manuals in Turkish as to how to use these materials were also given to the jihadis.
A sample of the documents can be viewed here.
Turkey, as has been previously reported, is playing a dangerous and duplicitous game with the West. As Clarion Project has wrote, Turkey’s arms transfers to al-Qaeda-linked Islamist jihadis in Syria have been long-documented, yet largely ignored by the Western media. A major raid by the U.S. on an Islamic State safe house in Syria in the summer of 2015 gleaned large amounts of intelligence undeniably linking Turkey to the Islamic State.
Similarly, the fact the Turkey has been the top financial sponsor of Hamas since 2012, with Erdogan arranging for the transfer of $250-300 million to this U.S.-designated terrorist group annually, is another oft-ignored inconvenience. Similarly, the West has brilliantly avoided confronting Turkey on its abysmal human rights record.
Using air-tight documentation, Nafeez Ahmed, editor of InsurgeIntelligence, writes about the many reasons the West has chosen to look the other way while Turkey facilitates oil sales for the Islamic State, which guarantees its strength and viability.
“There are many explanations,” writes Ahmed, “but one perhaps stands out: the West’s abject dependence on terror-toting Muslim regimes, largely to maintain access to Middle East, Mediterranean and Central Asian oil and gas resources.”
Since 2013, the Turkish government has been building a $100 million mega-mosque in Lanham, Maryland, taking Turkey’s“outreach” in America out of the realm of the subtle. This week in America, U.S. President Barack Obama will join Erdogan at the opening of the mosque, the largest in the U.S.
The show, it seems, must go on.
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