Turkish Forum

Category: Regions

  • I reveal Tayyip Erdoğan’s numbered Swiss account!

    I reveal Tayyip Erdoğan’s numbered Swiss account!

    Opinion

    Burak Bekdil

    I have a feeling that our editor in chief, David Judson, will be mad at me for not sharing this scoop with the newspaper and instead revealing it in this column.

    Well… I have gained access to a document that shows two international companies, both with multibillion-dollar Turkish contracts in their portfolios, deposited unexplained funds into a numbered Swiss account that Swiss financial authorities have verified belongs to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

    The first document, endorsed by the bank’s executive board, verifies wire transfers into the account, one coming from a multinational energy giant, and another from a weapons manufacturer – both names withheld.

    The second one verifies that the numbered account, totaling $655.76 million as of April 9, 2009, belongs to Erdoğan.

    As a matter of journalistic ethics, I shall certainly avoid revealing my sources or how I have gained access to these documents, should any prosecutor dare to take legal action against the prime minister. I must admit, though, that there is one problem: The documents in my possession are photocopies forwarded from one PC to another. So, I advise Mr. Judson not to become angry with me, or I might produce documents proving his links to the armed wing of the Ergenekon gang.

    Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ was telling the truth when he said that an asymmetrical psychological war was being waged against the military. The fact that none of us could realistically vouch for the democratic credentials of each and every single member of the Turkish Armed Forces does not change the fact that political Islamists – not too well disguised as “liberal democrats” – have long been trying to systematically fight the military establishment, through means reminiscent of spy novels. In fact, this is a war of intelligence and public relations, and the asymmetrical warriors naturally have the upper hand over their symmetrical enemies.

    As a matter of fact, one principal casualty each time there is an asymmetrical war is the judiciary, which gets dangerously politicized. The grand coalition of Islamists – i.e., the neo-Islamists, post-modern Islamists, liberals, neo-liberals and opportunists disguised as democrats – looks so precisely “guided on target” that it may even prefer to sink the entire ship that sails under the name Turkey in order to destroy the whole chamber of the helmsman.

    How undemocratic can you behave in order to bolster democracy? Can you torture and shoot the enemies of democracy? Hang them en masse in public squares, all in the name of democracy? Only recently, Erdoğan angrily addressed the main opposition leader Deniz Baykal, saying, “If you cannot prove your allegations [against my party], you are despicable!” He was right.

    But who will be the despicable one if civilian prosecutors fail to verify the authenticity of the famous “coup document” that appears to be a photocopy, with its original not existing anywhere? Are “the despicable” only those who allege some foul play by the government but cannot verify it?

    The prime minister has the habit of viewing the judiciary through an entirely ideological pair of spectacles. For example, he has claimed that Baykal’s Republican People’s Party, or CHP, has defrauded its accounts, saying, “This was verified by a ruling from the Constitutional Court.” If – and naturally so – an irreversible verdict from the supreme court should suffice for a “public verdict,” then we would end up in the weird situation where Turkey’s ruling party has behaved unconstitutionally, as its various activities to undermine secularism in favor of political Islam also carry a seal of approval from the same court.

    Last week, the prime minister was typical Erdoğan again. He pledged immediate (legal) action should anyone get hold of the original “coup document.” Why did he take legal action against “coup-plotters” when the original document did not exist anywhere? As always, the motto is “all is halal [permissible] as long as it suits our political agenda…”

    Unfortunately, Erdoğan’s self-declared “liberal” supporters are no exception. Take, for example, prominent columnist, Hadi Uluengin, the liberal voice of daily Hürriyet and someone of whom I am quite fond. This is how he justified the storms around the photocopied document in his June 24, 2009, column, “Who’s wearing out whom?”:

    “Éwhether the plan to ’finish off the AKP and Fethullah Gülen’ is authentic or forgery… it would be purely legitimate if Turkey’s democrats, who have had to endure four coups, four coup attempts and several other [undemocratic actions by the military] in less than half a century got agitated by this document. They are endlessly right [about their retort]…”

    Uluengin is right about the history of undemocratic military practices in our country. But his reasoning – that even if the document were false, democrats would have every right to attack the military – is a little bit excessive.

    By the same logic, someone can always forge documents verifying corruption by the ruling Islamist elite, get them photocopied and distribute them to Erdoğan’s opponents – and since Turkey’s recent history is full of corrupt practices, it would be purely legitimate for our democrats to get agitated even though we could not authenticate these bogus papers.

    Is this how Turkey is going to become a more democratic place?

    hurriyet.com.tr, August 26, 2014

  • LAUGHING MY HEAD OFF

    LAUGHING MY HEAD OFF

     Satan’s Army, Gustav Doré

    So numberless were those bad angels

    Hovering on wing under the cope of hell

    John Milton, Paradise Lost

    LAUGHING MY HEAD OFF

    22 August 2014

    “I suppose the pain of parting will be red and loud.”

    Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading

     

    Yesterday President Obama announced that “the entire world is appalled” by the beheading of an American photojournalist. Marie Harf, a spokesperson for the US State Department stressed that nothing whatsoever will change and that the bombings will continue. “We don’t make concessions to terrorists,” she said.

    Exceptional America! Please excuse me, dear reader. I’ll be back in a few minutes——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————Okay, I’m back. Thank you for your patience. I feel much worse.

    “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” said the president of the United States a few months ago at West Point. And for the past five minutes I have been laughing my head off at the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s “exceptional America.”

    And Ms. Harf’s words really cracked me up. Let me describe my out-of-head experience:

    I was sitting on a chair in the kitchen. Early morning, still dark. Now, all the mornings and days are dark. I think about how Obama and Clinton and Kerry and Erdoğan and Davutoğlu cooked up this outrageous crime against humanity to destroy Libya and Syria. They would use Turkey as a staging area for their proxy army, their Satanic army of well-paid mercenaries. What geniuses! Exceptional America did the same thing decades ago in Afghanistan funding Bin Laden’s mujahideen that later became al-Qaeda. Wow! How smart these dopes are! Very humorous. And they all wear expensive suits and ride in black, shiny, sad limousines. And again they drive over the terror cliff, this time with the arrogant assistance of the treacherous Turkish government. They say you can’t tell the same joke twice. But not America, not “exceptional” America. Do you remember the song lyric? But where are the clowns?/Quick, send in the clowns/ Don’t bother, they’re here. If you remember, you get the idea.

    And these clowns had their military and intelligence and diplomatic agents assemble in Adana, Turkey about three years ago. Everything was secret, except everyone with half a brain knew what was going on, except the American press and the lame, obedient Turkish media. Oh, Petraeus, the boy wonder, was involved, too. So was Fidan, the chief Turk spook. It’s funny how time flies when you are having fun, isn’t it? Ha! Ha! Ha! They had donors come too. Rich, treacherous folks like the obese Saudis and the tennis-tournament-sponsoring-but-non-tennis playing Qataris. They have money, oil money, and lots of it, and not much else, except duplicity.

    They also met in Istanbul. At fancy hotels. What better conditions to assemble Satan’s army? But you knew this, didn’t you? No? You mean the New York Times didn’t cover the story? Aydınlık newspaper broke the story in Turkey. Too bad the American correspondents missed it. Not that it really mattered. But how sad. How hilariously tragic. I am now laughing out loud at the empty remarks of Ms. Harf. Marie Harf, spokesperson! Exceptional America certainly does not make concessions to terrorists. How silly of me to think so. Instead of mere concessions, it sponsors, feeds, arms, outfits and pays outrageous salaries to them. Ha, ha, ha, I keep laughing, catching the ironic humor in Harf’s weasel words.

    Now I am positively giddy thinking about Turkey. What a funny country! How can two Turkish war criminals become America’s favorite foreign friends. So well did they destroy their own country that America suggested that they both be promoted. And they were! Wow, how funny is that? One, the destroyer of Gezi Park youth, is president, the other, the “zero-problems-with-neighbors” genius, will be prime minister. This genius who wears a perpetual smirk beneath his scruffy moustache wrote a book on foreign policy called Strategic Depth. The destruction that is Turkish foreign policy resides in a deep, deep strategic cesspool. For that, and other miscues, mishaps and misdeeds, he will lead the nation. The ever consistent Erdoğan’s first act as president-elect was to knowingly violate the Turkish constitution. Since the position of the Turkish president is supposed to be above politics—HA! HA! HA!—Erdoğan must immediately resign as prime minister and as head of his political party. He refuses to do this. Why? Because he would lose his immunity from prosecution for a few days. And in case you haven’t heard, Erdoğan has a problem in this regard. But surely the political opposition, the “bread boys,” are pressuring him. Well, ha! ha! ha! not exactly.

    Even funnier is how just about everyone in Turkey who can help America is paid off to make it happen. How else to explain this amazing comedy of errors and stupidities. I mean, bribes, big bribes. Big, CIA level unaccountable bribes. How else can one explain a media that only prints pro-government propaganda? Why else would a media fire any and all columnists who dissent? How else can one explain a political opposition that helps their opposition, the opposition that they are supposed to oppose? What a weird sentence that was…but not as weird as the political opposition leaders Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and Devlet Bahçeli. These two should have a comedy act on one of the brainless Turkish TV channels. Slapstick would be appropriate—they can beat each other with loaves of bread reminding the electorate of their pathetically inept choice of a presidential candidate.

    Just thinking of these two walking laugh-riots makes what’s left of my brain spin. In fact my head is now spinning faster and faster and faster and—whoops!— there it goes, bouncing along the floor—tak! tak! tak!— into the corner by the refrigerator. My left eye sees the wall, the other, the dark space between the floor and the front of the refrigerator. The rest of myself remains on the chair. How humorous this is. I laugh and blow dust. I sneeze and blink my eyes so rapidly that my head rolls back an inch and I can see myself out of the corner of my right eye. There I sit, headless, my arms crossed, stupidly waiting. My head by the refrigerator thinks how it must be for the hundreds that have been beheaded by the evil breed of the American scheme, the devilish Free Libya Army, changing to the diabolical Free Syrian Army, changing now to the fiends of ISID.

    I am now hysterical. Like me, even babies, mostly Christian babies, have also been beheaded. But I did it willingly through laughter. They had it done by America and Turkey, by the so-called “leaders” and by their ignoramus makers of foreign policy. How humorous was Ignoramus Clinton to revel in the barbarous disembowelment and anal rape of  MuammarKhadafy? “We came, we saw, he died…Ha! Ha! Ha!” chuckled the ignoramus American Secretary of State. Is Kerry, and his litany of lies about Syria, any less amusing? Any less of an ignoramus clown? Ha! Ha! Ha! No. He is just another monstrously “exceptional” American. And speaking of monsters…

    How does the president of the United States explain to the American taxpayers that their dollars are financing the beheading of Christian babies…and so much more? The president announced that “the entire world” is appalled by the beheading of an American journalist. But is he, Obama, appalled? If he is, how does he explain that he has assembled Satan’s Army? And why does it take a bestial slaughtering of an innocent journalist to get Obama’s attention to the horror that his policies have created? The world knows this. There are no more cover stories. He has made a devil’s bargain with the “strategic depth” incompetent ignoramuses in Turkey. This is the horrible truth. It is a horrible mistake. Now what?

    As for my own beheading through hysterical laughter? My head continues to gather dust by the refrigerator. I can still see my other part on the sitting on the chair like two sacks of onions. Can I stop laughing long enough at this darkest of all tragicomedies to pull myself together? Is it really worth the effort?

    James (Cem) Ryan

    Istanbul

    22 August 2014

     

     

  • Syrian rebel commander says he collaborated with Israel

    Syrian rebel commander says he collaborated with Israel

    Syrian rebel commander says he collaborated with Israel

    Syrian opposition commander Sharif As-Safouri confesses to collaborating with Israel (photo credit: YouTube screen capture)
    Syrian opposition commander Sharif As-Safouri confesses to collaborating with Israel (photo credit: YouTube screen capture)

    Sharif as-Safouri, abducted by Al-Nusra Front in July, confesses to receiving antitank weapons in return for protecting the border

    By Elhanan Miller

    A Free Syrian Army commander, arrested last month by the Islamist militia Al-Nusra Front, told his captors he collaborated with Israel in return for medical and military support, in a video released this week.

    In a video uploaded to YouTube Monday by the Executive Sharia Council in the eastern Daraa Region, an Islamic court established by Al-Nusra in southern Syria, Sharif As-Safouri, the commander of the Free Syrian Army’s Al-Haramein Battalion, admitted to having entered Israel five times to meet with Israeli officers who later provided him with Soviet anti-tank weapons and light arms. Safouri was abducted by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front in the Quneitra area, near the Israeli border, on July 22.

    “The [opposition] factions would receive support and send the injured in [to Israel] on condition that the Israeli fence area is secured. No person was allowed to come near the fence without prior coordination with Israel authorities,” Safouri said in the video.

    Israel has never admitted to arming moderate Syrian rebels, who have been engaged in battle against the Assad regime and its allies since March 2011. In June, Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, head of Military Intelligence research, told the Herzliya Conference that 80 percent of Syria’s oppositionists are Islamists of various shades, indicating that Israel was reluctant to collaborate with them.

    Al-Nusra Front activist wave their brigade flag atop a Syrian air force helicopter, at Taftanaz air base, captured by the rebels in Idlib province, northern Syria, January 2013 (photo credit: AP/Edlib News Network ENN, File)
    Al-Nusra Front activist wave their brigade flag atop a Syrian air force helicopter, at Taftanaz air base, captured by the rebels in Idlib province, northern Syria, January 2013 (photo credit: AP/Edlib News Network ENN, File)

    Thousands of al-Qaeda-linked rebels reached southern Syria over the past month, fleeing the Islamic State which had captured large swaths of land in northern and northeastern Syria. While Al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army have collaborated in the battlefield against the Assad regime, friction has intensified as the Islamists began to implement their stringent version of Islam in the area, establishing local Sharia courts.

    In the edited confession video, in which Safouri seems physically unharmed, he says that at first he met with an Israeli officer named Ashraf at the border and was given an Israeli cellular phone. He later met with another officer named Younis and with the two men’s commander, Abu Daoud. In total, Safouri said he entered Israel five times for meetings that took place in Tiberias.

    Following the meetings, Israel began providing Safouri and his men with “basic medical support and clothes” as well as weapons, which included 30 Russian [rifles], 10 RPG launchers with 47 rockets, and 48,000 5.56 millimeter bullets.

    While opposition websites denied that Safouri was a collaborator, claiming his entries into Israel were for medical purposes alone, regime media celebrated Safouri’s confession as proof of the Free Syrian Army’s treachery. On August 1, dozens of demonstrators took to the streets of the village of Hayt, Safouri’s hometown near Syria’s borders with Jordan and Israel, to protest his abduction, condemning Al-Nusra Front for the act.

    No Israeli comment was available at time of publication.

     Elhanan Miller is the Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel

    timesofisrael.com, August 13, 2014
  • Indonesia president says ISIS ’embarrassing’ for Muslims

    Indonesia president says ISIS ’embarrassing’ for Muslims

    Indonesia’s President Yudhoyono

    Leader of world’s most populous Muslim-majority country urges Islamic leaders to unite in tackling extremism

    According to The Telegraph, the president of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, Indonesia, has called the actions of Islamic State militants “embarrassing” to the religion and urged Islamic leaders to unite in tackling extremism.

    Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the scale of the slaughter wrought by the extremists in overrunning large swathes of Iraq and Syria and the level of violence being used was appalling.

    “It is shocking. It is becoming out of control,” he said in an interview with The Australian, a day after IS released a video showing a masked militant beheading US reporter James Foley, provoking worldwide revulsion.

    “We do not tolerate it, we forbid ISIS in Indonesia,” he added, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as IS was formerly known.

    “Indonesia is not an Islamic state. We respect all religions.”

    He urged international leaders to work together to combat radicalisation.

    “This is a new wake-up call to international leaders all over the world, including Islamic leaders,” he said, adding that the actions of IS were not only “embarrassing” to Islam but “humiliating”, the newspaper reported.

    “All leaders must review how to combat extremism. Changing paradigms on both sides are needed – how the West perceives Islam and how Islam perceives the West.”

    Indonesia is home to the world’s biggest Muslim population of about 225 million and has long struggled with terrorism. But a successful clampdown in recent years has seen the end of major deadly attacks.

    Jakarta has estimated that dozens of Indonesians have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight and Yudhoyono said he was concerned about their return, adding that he had tasked agencies to oppose the spread of extremist ideology in the sprawling nation.

    “Our citizens here in Indonesia are picking up recruitment messages from ISIS containing extremist ideas,” said the president, whose decade in office comes to an end in October.

    “The philosophy of ISIS stands against the fundamental values we embrace in Indonesia. Last Friday, in my state of the union address to the nation, I called on all Indonesians to reject ISIS and to stop the spread of its radical ideology.

    “My government and security agencies have taken decisive steps to curtail the spread of ISIS in Indonesia, including by prohibiting Indonesians to join ISIS or to fight for ISIS, and also by blocking Internet sites that promote this idea.”

  • Dutch Justice Ministry employee: ISIS a Zionist conspiracy

    Dutch Justice Ministry employee: ISIS a Zionist conspiracy

    THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — A senior employee of the Dutch Justice Ministry said the jihadist group ISIS was created by Zionists seeking to give Islam a bad reputation.

    Yasmina Haifi, a project leader at the ministry’s National Cyber Security Center, made the assertion Wednesday on Twitter, the De Telegraaf daily reported.

    “ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It’s part of a plan by Zionists who are deliberately trying to blacken Islam’s name,” wrote Haifi, who described herself on the social network LinkedIn as an activist for the Dutch Labor Party, or PvdA.

    Haifi later removed her original message, explaining, “I realize the political sensitivity in connection with my work. That was not my intention.”

    jtaTwo right-wing lawmakers, Joram van Klaveren and Louis Bontes of the VNL faction, asked the ministry how one with such views reached a prominent position in the ministry and if Haifi’s employment constituted a security risk.

    A series of rallies supporting ISIS, which is considered a terrorist organization in many Western countries, were held in the Hague in July and earlier this month. Some demonstrators called for violence. The demonstrations on July 2 and 24 featured calls to kill Jews.

    When anti-ISIS demonstrators tried to march through the heavily Muslim neighborhood of Schilderswijk on Aug. 10 to express their disapproval, a crowd of approximately 200 men barricaded the main street and staged an illegal counter demonstration in support of ISIS.

    Some of the protesters hurled stones at police who tried to remove the obstacles. Six people were arrested

    www.jta.org, August 13, 2014

  • That’s a Black Flag Associated With Islamic Terror Groups — and Just Guess Where Police Confirmed the Picture Was Taken

    That’s a Black Flag Associated With Islamic Terror Groups — and Just Guess Where Police Confirmed the Picture Was Taken

     Jason Howerton

    People across the U.S. expressed outrage on social media after a flag associated with radical Islamic terror groups was found flying outside a Garwood, New Jersey, home. The militant flag, a symbol routinely used by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has since been taken down “voluntarily,” according to a police spokesperson.

    Garwood Police Chief Bruce D. Underhill confirmed in an email to the Washington Free Beacon that his officers are “aware of the situation” and “have taken the appropriate steps.” However, he denied that police “ordered” the resident to take down the flag.

    (Twitter/Marc Leibowitz)
    (Twitter/Marc Leibowitz)

    “At this time, the flag in question has been voluntarily taken down. No further comments,” Underhill added.

    The flag garnered national attention after a Twitter user posted a photo of the ISIS-associated flag outside the home as well as the resident’s address.

    A Turkish flag remains displayed outside the home, but the black militant flag has been replaced with a new flag “that appears to resemble the blue-and-white-stripped flag of Greece,” according to the Free Beacon.

    The Islamic militants of ISIS, or ISIL, have been advancing across northern Iraq, leaving a bloody trail in its wake. The radicals ultimately hope to overthrow the Iraqi government, bringing them one step closer to establishing an Islamic caliphate.

    ISIS supporters in Jordan waved black flags and chanted: “The caliphate is coming to Jordan.” (Image source: YouTube)
    ISIS supporters in Jordan waved black flags and chanted: “The caliphate is coming to Jordan.” (Image source: YouTube)

    Since June, Iraq has been facing an onslaught by the Islamic State group and allied Sunni militants across much of the country’s north and west. In recent weeks, the crisis has worsened as the militant fighters swept over new towns in the north, displacing members of the minority Christian and Yazidi religious communities, and threatening the neighboring Iraqi Kurdish autonomy zone.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    www.theblaze.com, Aug. 13, 2014