Salih Avci is one of the chief trainers of the SEK (Spezialeinsatzkommandos, the special response units of the German state police forces), MEK, ZUZ (the SWAT unit of the German Customs Service, and GSG 9 (the elite counter-terrorism and special operations unit of the German Federal Police) in Germany as well as various other special forces ranging from the American Rapid Response Teams to the special police of one of China’s biggest provinces.
He started training in Wing Tsun in 1980 in the European Wing Tsun Organization (EWTO). In 1986, he attained the 1st technician degree. In 1997, he left EWTO to found WTEO (Wing Tsun-Escrima Organization).
Avci is still the world chief trainer of the organization. Today, WTEO has more than 15000 students, excluding law enforcement forces. There are more than 70 schools of WTEO alone in Germany and several others in Holland, Turkey, France, Austria, Spain, Jordan, Italy, Sudan, Greece and La Reunion.
Salih Avci will be training FBI agents with his own techniques which is a mixed between Chinese origin ‘Wing Tsun’ and Philippians origin ‘Escrima’
Salih Avci’s unique approach to the combat art lies in the practical application of his techniques to disarm and arrest without the use of excessive force or weapons, even in life-threatening situations. Salih Avci does not focus solely on unarmed techniques. He has developed traditional short and long stick techniques to be used efficiently and practically without causing unnecessary harm to the person being arrested. A general-purpose tool for protection, disarming and arresting was the result of Salih Avci’s practical modification of the “tonfa”, which is used by the police.
Apart from the realistic application and professional use of self-defence and arresting techniques for civilians and officials, Salih Avci trains actors and fight choreographers for film and television.
Salih Avci married in 1993 and he and Mrs. Bilgi now have four sons and two daughters.
Sources: Amerikali Turk, Wikipedia and Contributed by Tolga Cakir
Statement from the European Union on the agreement reached by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders on a joint declaration and on the resumption of the negotiations
European Commission – MEMO/14/103 11/02/2014
Statement from the European Union on the agreement reached by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders on a joint declaration and on the resumption of the negotiations
The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, issued today the following statement:
The European Union welcomes the agreement announced today by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders on a Joint Declaration, which lays a solid foundation for resumption of negotiations for a fair and viable comprehensive settlement of the long-standing Cyprus problem. This Joint Declaration should help them to swiftly address matters of substance and to achieve rapid results in the negotiations. President Barroso and President Van Rompuy congratulate and salute the courage the two leaders have shown in agreeing it.
At the time of accession of Cyprus, the European Union declared its readiness to accommodate the terms of a settlement in line with the principles on which the Union is founded. As previously announced, the European Commission is keen to play its part in supporting the negotiations, conducted under UN auspices and to offer all the support the parties and the UN find most useful. As the negotiations resume, President Barroso’s personal representative will contribute actively to the search for constructive solutions in compliance with the EU acquis to overcome outstanding problems. In parallel, the European Commission will also step up its efforts to help the Turkish Cypriot Community prepare for implementation of the acquis.
The European Union also supports the efforts to reach an agreement between the two parties on a package of Confidence-Building Measures which can help to create momentum towards a settlement to the benefit of Cypriot people. The European Union stands ready to look creatively at how to contribute to this objective in the prospects of a final settlement.
According Mary Dejevsky at the Chatham House, entry rules to the UK are a mess.
Mary Dejevsky is a columnist for The Independent, February 2014
The World Today, Volume 70, Number 1
Simple for the wealthy, a source of anger and resentment for the rest
At least all those non-EU citizens wanting to live and work in the European Union now know where Malta stands. If they have a spare €650,000, plus more for dependents, they will be able to treat the whole family to Maltese passports. In so doing, they will effectively buy full access to all 28 EU countries – and the right to visit many others visa-free.
However Malta’s move is viewed – and Brussels is not happy, but currently has no mechanism to prevent it – there is virtue in clarity.
According to Chatham House for a brief period, a limited number of rich people will be able to obtain citizenship of an EU country by contributing to a Maltese development fund. Such paid-for provisions are not unheard of: Britain and others already offer a path to citizenship for £1 million-plus investors.
But Malta’s scheme, as originally concieved, differs in having no residence requirement. It really is offering a passport of convenience.
Some might reasonably object that the fuss about Maltese passports ignores the ease with which members of the global elite – aside from those expressly blacklisted – are already able to cross borders. It is the rest, including the new middle classes of the emerging economies, for whom visa restrictions are burdensome. And frustrated applicants reserve some of their most bitter complaints for Britain.
The point was made pithily a few years ago by the Russian liberal politician, Grigory Yavlinsky, when he spoke at Chatham House. After making a plea for Britain to relax visa restrictions on Russians, he remarked with heavy sarcasm that there were some Russians, including those with dubious pasts, for whom entry to the UK was no problem.
To judge by my inbox, the ill-feeling generated by the British visa system has only increased. Many complaints are about delays, costs and carelessness with crucial documents. But recurrent themes are the supercilious attitude of officials and a perception that the rules are applied both inflexibly – formulaic box-ticking – and arbitrarily.
In recent months, I have learnt of several individuals from former Soviet states whose applications to visit relatives for a short stay have been turned down, even though they have visited regularly over several years. I have also attended conferences where featured speakers have received their visas late or not at all.
Unfavourable comparisons are made with other EU countries in the Schengen zone – the 22 EU members which have abolished passport controls at their common borders – or even with the United States.
Part of the explanation may be the ambivalence and sheer muddled thinking that often seems to prevail at the very top. On the one hand, the British Government has an electoral mandate for a sharp reduction in immigration. Yet its toughest talk concerns prospective new arrivals from Romania and Bulgaria – about whom it can actually do nothing.
On the other hand, it is keen to attract ever more overseas (non-EU) students, while refusing them the right to stay after graduation.
Looking enviously across at France, it also wants many more tourists, especially those, such as high-spending Chinese, of whom France attracted six times more than Britain last year.
To this end, the Chancellor, George Osborne, recently proposed simplifying the visa rules for Chinese business people and tour groups if they were also applying for a visa from one of the Schengen countries. France has since gone one better by providing a 48-hour service. The race for the Chinese yuan is on.
However, Britain’s efforts to be competitive have only introduced more inconsistencies. Membership of Schengen has been rejected by successive UK governments on the grounds that it would mean contracting out border security to other EU countries. Yet, as is now tacitly acknowledged, nonmembership puts Britain at a disadvantage in the tourism stakes. So it has come close to accepting the Schengen visa process in practice, but only for well-heeled Chinese.
One consequence could be resentment on the part of others, including those from the Commonwealth and the former Soviet Union. Individual visitors – relatives, artists, performers or academics – already feel they receive short shrift. Positive discrimination for Chinese business people and shoppers could only make matters worse.
UK visas are a particularly sore point among Russians, with the British authorities stressing security concerns, and Moscow insisting that any liberalization be reciprocal. It would be facetious to suggest that the new arrangements for Chinese could be extended to others – by requiring, say, sponsoring organizations, to include generous shopping vouchers with their invitations.
But should the way to a British visa really lie through Harrods? There must be a more equitable, less mercenary, way.
Officials: ‘Air pirate’ claims bomb on board, tries to have plane go to Sochi
According to CNN, a passenger announced Friday “that there was a bomb on board” his plane and wanted it diverted to Sochi — the Russian city hosting the Winter Olympics amid terrorism fears — Turkish officials said.
Rather than abide by the request, the Pegasus Airlines’ crew sent a hijacking alert that Turkey’s Air Force Control Center received at 5:20 p.m. (10:20 a.m. ET), Turkey’s semiofficial Anadolu news agency reported.
About 20 minutes later, the same report claimed two F-16 fighter jets scrambled to intercept the Boeing 737-800 and escort it over the Black Sea.
Eventually, the airliner landed safely at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport, where video shot soon thereafter showed police and security officials converging on it.
Istanbul’s governor tweeted around 10 p.m. that “the air pirate has been neutralized” and all other passengers “disembarked from the plane without any problems.” Special forces who boarded the plane took him into custody “in a swift operation” without finding a “bomb on him,” Gov. Huseyin Avni Mutlu later told reporters.
“The operation is complete,” the governor said.
Mutlu said that the suspect — who never made it into the cockpit and at one point apparently thought the aircraft was destined for Sochi — “didn’t seem to have consumed alcohol, (but) he may have used some other substances.” He’d brought a carry-on bag with personal electronics and other items onto the Pegasus plane, according to the governor.
The incident came at a tense time given the various threats surrounding the Winter Games, which kicked off in earnest Friday night with its opening ceremony.
Russian security forces have cracked down in recent weeks on suspected militants in the restive North Caucasus republic of Dagestan — which is located on the other side of the Caucasus Mountains from Sochi — and elsewhere in recent weeks after twin suicide bombings in the city of Volgograd in December.
There have also been concerns specifically about explosives-laden airlines. U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul said Wednesday night that the his nation’s Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin to airlines flying into Russia warning that explosive materials could be concealed in toothpaste or cosmetic tubes.
Airlines warned of possible toothpaste tube bombs
Official: Suspect is Ukrainian
The flight started in Kharkov in Ukraine, and was headed to Istanbul, according to the Transportation Ministry.
While it was in air, “one of the passengers said that there was a bomb on board and asked the plane to not land in Sabiha Gokcen but rather to land in Sochi,” Transportation Ministry official Habip Soluk said on CNNTurk.
The man said the bomb was in the baggage hold, a Transportation Ministry official said.
The aircraft ended up touching down at the Turkish airport at at 6:04 p.m., according to Anadolu, at which point it was moved to a safe zone on the tarmac.
Cihan News Agency of Turkey published a photograph it claimed came from inside the plane showing a man standing in a number 11 sports jersey with empty seats around him and two people in uniform.
Turkish officials have not confirmed that this photograph is from inside the Pegasus airliner or that the man at the center of it is the alleged hijacker.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry issued a statement identifying the suspect as one of its citizens, something that Soluk also said was the case. The Ukrainian ministry said no explosives or guns were found aboard the plane and that the suspect “voluntarily turned himself into police.”
Mutlu, Istanbul’s governor, offered a different take on how the alleged hijacker was detained.
“We had to use force because we were trying to persuade him and he wasn’t persuaded,” said Mutlu, adding Turkish authorities did not use guns and that the suspect suffered “a light injury.”
The suspect never said anything about Circassians — the residents in the volatile region around the North Caucasus mountains — or having lived in the region, according to the governor.
CNN’s Gul Tuysuz reported from Turkey, and Greg Botelho reported and wrote from Atlanta. Journalist Victoria Butenko contributed from Kiev, Ukraine, while CNN’s Michael Martinez contributed from Los Angeles.
Iain Lobban the director of GCHQ (Reuters/UK Parliament via REUTERS TV)
The head of GCHQ, Britain’s electronic intelligence agency, will step down by year’s end, the Foreign Office said. Officials denied his departure was linked to public outrage over mass surveillance revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Iain Lobban, 53, has served as GCHQ’s director since June 2008. His departure was officially described as a long-considered move, but comes just a few weeks after he was summoned to answer MPs’ questions about surveillance operations in an unprecedented televised open session of the UK parliament’s intelligence and security committee, along with the heads of MI5 and MI6.
“Iain Lobban is doing an outstanding job as director of GCHQ,” a spokesperson said. “Today is simply about starting the process of ensuring we have a suitable successor in place before he moves on, planned at the end of the year.”
Officials dismissed suggestions his decision was influenced by revelations made by Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, whose leaks revealed details of a massive global surveillance network run by the NSA and other members of the so-called Five Eyes alliance – the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Despite accounting for the bulk of Britain’s three intelligence agencies’ combined budget of £2 billion, GCHQ had previously attracted far less public attention than MI5 or MI6.
It was damaging media revelations regarding wide-scale collaboration between GCHQ and the NSA that resulted in Lobban being called to appear before the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee alongside the heads of MI5 and MI6 in November.
At the hearing, Lobban accused Snowden’s disclosures of seriously damaging Britain’s counter-terrorism efforts, saying extremists had discussed changing their communication methods following the revelations.
Critics, however, have accused GCHQ of working hand-in-hand with the NSA in massively intruding on the private communications of millions of citizens.
In June, the Guardian reported the NSA had secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic, and, by 2010, was able to boast the “biggest internet access” of any member of the Five Eyes alliance.
According to media reports, the NSA and GCHQ had a particularly close relationship, sharing troves of data in what Snowden called “the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.”
Around 850,000 NSA employees and contractors with top secret clearance had access to the GCHQ databases, allowing them to view and analyze information garnered from such subtly titled programs as ‘Mastering the Internet (MTI)’ and ‘Global Telecoms Exploitation (GTE).’
Lobban, who first joined GCHQ in 1983, insisted in November that GCHQ did not spend its time “listening to the telephone calls or reading the e-mails of the majority” of British citizens.
Sir Iain’s counterpart at the NSA, General Keith Alexander, alongside his deputy, John Inglis, are also stepping down later this year.
There is also an ongoing campaign pushing for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to resign for lying under oath by telling Congress the NSA did “not wittingly” collect data on hundreds of millions of Americans.
The “24”-style thriller from Turkish producer Ay Yapim is one of the hottest of a new wave of Istanbul-set TV series.
Swedish broadcaster SVT has picked up the rights to new Turkish drama series 20 Minutes, marking the second Turkish series the Swedish network will air in primetime.
SVT nabbed 20 Minutes, a 24-style beat-the-clock thriller about a man racing to save his wife, from Eccho Rights. The series, produced by Istanbul-based Ay Yapim, will go out in Sweden starting in January.
The deal follows a similar deal with Eccho earlier this year for The End, another red-hot Turkish TV serial.
Commented Fredrik af Malmborg, managing director at Eccho Rights: “earlier on this year SVT took the brave step to be the first Western broadcaster to air a Turkish drama when it screened The End. The launch worked very well, with good ratings and a strong reception in the press, so the acquisition of 20 Minutes is the natural next step.”
Turkey has become the new hot spot for international broadcasters looking for top-end drama. The territory’s booming TV industry has also attracted attention from Hollywood. 20th Century Fox Television and Sander Moses Productions have signed up for a U.S. adaptation of The End and Ay Yapim is in negotiations for an American take on 20 Minutes.
via Sweden’s SVT Takes Turkish Drama ’20 Minutes’ – The Hollywood Reporter.
Salih Avci is one of the chief trainers of the SEK (Spezialeinsatzkommandos, the special response units of the German state police forces), MEK, ZUZ (the SWAT unit of the German Customs Service, and GSG 9 (the elite counter-terrorism and special operations unit of the German Federal Police) in Germany as well as various other special forces ranging from the American Rapid Response Teams to the special police of one of China’s biggest provinces.
