Turkish Forum

Tag: Muslim community leader

  • Ed Koch: Turkey Is Seeking Leadership of the Islamic World

    Ed Koch: Turkey Is Seeking Leadership of the Islamic World

    After President Amadinejad of Iran and Iran’s theocratic Islamist state, the greatest threat to Israel is Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Turkey’s Islamist government. This is surprising because Turkey and Israel used to be close allies. The rift between the countries is directly linked to the ascendancy of Islamist rule in Turkey.

    After World War I, Turkey lost all of its protectorates in North Africa and the Mideast and became a secular state under the leadership of Kemal Ataturk, who banned the fez hat for men and the headscarf for women. Ataturk realized that the religious fanatics — today’s Islamists — would seek to regain power, and he placed the responsibility of keeping Turkey secular in the hands of the Turkish army. On several occasions, the army exercised that responsibility and ended the rule of or prevented a Islamist party from governing Turkey.

    Turkey, which lies primarily in Asia Minor, with its major city, Istanbul, straddling both Asia and Europe, wants to be a member of the European Union. The E.U. has made a number of demands on Turkey to be fulfilled before Turkey’s application for membership would be considered. One of those demands was that the army cease protecting the secularity of Turkey and allow governance by any popularly-elected government, even if it is Islamic or theocratically oriented.

    The party of Prime Minister Erdogan, the Justice and Development Party, while known to be Islamic, sought to convey that it would be secular so as to avoid the army’s preventing it from taking power. Ultimately, the Justice and Development Party under Erdogan grew sufficiently powerful that the army leaders were put on trial by Erdogan and 300 army officers ultimately went to prison, with Erdogan appointing new army officers who were supportive of his government.

    The result of Erdogan’s efforts and support by the E.U. of those efforts culminated in today’s Turkish Islamic government. Erdogan ended the heretofore close diplomatic, economic and military alliance between Turkey and Israel. Over the last several years, Erdogan has made clear his intention to have Turkey once again become the leader of the Islamic Mideast where states like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq and Iran already have adopted Islamic law or have Islamist governments. Many of those countries were once part of the Turkish (Ottoman) caliphate, which formally ended on March 3, 1924, and which some observers believe Turkey would like to reestablish. Those countries with a Shiite majority, e.g. Iraq and Iran, would never willingly join the caliphate, which would be Sunni dominated.

    One of the ways Turkey has sought to reestablish its leadership in the Islamic world is to become the leading Muslim nation threatening Israel militarily. It was Erdogan who authorized the flotilla that sought to break the Gaza blockade that Israel imposed against the Gaza strip governed by Hamas, which publicly calls for the removal of all Jews who entered the Palestine Mandate after 1917. The Turkish government has indicted four Israeli military personnel seeking to hold them responsible for the deaths of nine Turks aboard the flotilla that Israel prevented from entering Gaza. Fortunately, the four men are not in Turkey.

    Erdogan has announced that he intends to visit Gaza. The New York Times of November 3, 2012 reported:

    A visit by the leader of Turkey, a huge power that is a member of NATO and a critical bridge between the West and the Islamic world, would make a much bigger diplomatic splash, paving the way for Egypt and other countries to expand direct, independent relationships with Hamas and further dividing the Palestinian leadership. Officials in the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, the Hamas rival that governs in the West Bank, had warned that the Qatari mission would set a dangerous precedent. ‘We are against all these visits,’ President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said in an interview that was recorded before Mr. Erdogan’s comments and was broadcast on Friday night by Channel 2 News in Israel. ‘If they want to help Gaza, they should come through the authorities, through the legal authority.’

    All of this is a complicated matter for the United States because Turkey is a member of NATO. Turkey undoubtedly seeks to influence NATO countries such as England, Germany, France, Italy and others with which Israel has good, or relatively good, relations to recognize Hamas. The E.U. has declared Hamas to be a terrorist organization, which they will not recognize unless it gives up violence, recognizes the legitimacy of the state of Israel and accepts all agreements entered into by the Palestinian Authority with Israel to date, all of which Hamas has refused to do.

    If the European Union and the United States had not urged Turkey to end the Turkish army’s role as defender of the secularity of the Turkish state, the world, and certainly Israel, would be a safer place today. This a tragic example of unintended consequences.

    via Ed Koch: Turkey Is Seeking Leadership of the Islamic World.

  • The campaign of terror organised by the BNP

    The campaign of terror organised by the BNP

    a4 •Incident linked to BNP, says community leader

    • Far-right Essex councillor denies members to blame

    Racist attackers abducted a Muslim community leader at knifepoint, bundled him into a car and threatened his life unless he stopped running prayer sessions in a community hall that has been the target of a British National party campaign.

    Police have confirmed they are treating the incident as a hate crime and are investigating links with an earlier firebomb attack on the same man’s home.

    Noor Ramjanally, 35, told the Guardian he had been the victim of a terror campaign which has also involved threats against his family after he began the Islamic prayer sessions in March. He said he fears for his life after the abduction at knifepoint, which happened at his home in Loughton, Essex, on Monday.

    A BNP campaign has been blamed for rising tensions in the area. The party has been leafleting the area warning of “Islamification” which it says flows from the weekly two-hour prayer session, which it claims is a prelude to a mosque being built.

    Ramjanally said he was abducted from his home in daylight by two white men who threatened him with a knife, bundled him into a car then drove him into woodland. They demanded he stop organising the Friday prayer sessions at Murray hall community centre. He said the words from his abductors matched the BNP propaganda opposing the Muslim prayers. The same demand was contained in hate mail he received last month threatening his wife and child, he said.

    Vikram Dodd describes the case Councillor Pat Richardson, leader of the BNP group on the local council, said her party was not behind the attacks on Ramjanally. “Firebombing is not a British method. A brick through the window is a British method, but firebombing is not a way of showing displeasure,” she said.

    Ramjanally said: “I believe the BNP campaign has inspired the violence.”

    He said he was snatched at around 12.15pm and feared he would be murdered during his ordeal. “I was at home and the door bell rang. I opened the door and they grabbed my wrists, pulling me out by force,” he said.

    “It was two white men. They put a knife upon my stomach, and said do what you’re told or you’ll get hurt.” He said he was then bundled into the boot of a 4 x 4 vehicle, with one of the men holding a knife to his chest.

    Ramjanally said he was driven for 10 minutes to nearby Epping Forest, walked around, and then threatened: “They said ‘We don’t want your Islamic group in Loughton.’ I was scared, I feared for my life. I was in a forest, a knife was held against me, how would you feel? They said, ‘If you don’t stop, we’ll come back.’”

    The attackers then left Ramjanally alone in the woods. Essex police said an investigation was under way into the incident and two earlier ones at Ramjanally’s home.

    “Police are treating the incidents as ‘hate crime’ and a possible motivation would appear to be a link to the use of the Murray hall, Loughton by the Muslim community for Friday prayers,” the force said.

    Superintendent Simon Williams of Essex police said: “We are treating these offences with the utmost seriousness and are putting considerable resources into the investigation.

    “While that investigation continues we will be working with the whole population of Loughton to ensure that all members of the community are free to practice their religion and beliefs safely and freely.”The prayer sessions at Murray hall began on 27 March, with nine people worshipping. Now up to 80 people attend.

    On 2 July, Ramjanally received an anonymous threatening letter telling him to stop using the hall for prayers and stating the author knew which school his child went to and which car he drove. The next day his flat was firebombed. The BNP has four councillors in the area and its leafleting campaign in late July has been attacked as inflammatory and divisive.

    Richardson said she had seen the leaflet before it was released last month. She was sceptical of Ramjanally’s claims of a terror campaign. “I told the police we want to object that fingers were being pointed in our direction,” she said.

    She also denied that BNP members were behind any violence. She believes that the weekly Muslim prayer meeting is a prelude to an attempt to encourage more Muslims to move into the area, and thus to vote out the BNP. “I was wondering whether it was a ploy to attract more Muslims to the area to try and vote out the BNP councillors,” she said.

    Richardson said the Muslim prayer meeting did not fit in with the area’s mainly white population: “It’s not really natural for the area because there are so few Muslims,” she said.

    At Murray hall yesterday there was little sign of the building being turned into a mosque. The hall’s caretaker said a children’s group was using the premises.

    Passing by was lifelong Loughton resident Paul Luton, 57, who said: “Who says [the hall] can’t be used for different things. A community is a community. If there’s a local community of Muslims, they’re local people.”

    Mohammad Fahim runs the nearest mosque to Loughton which was firebombed in 2000. He said racists have used the fears of new mosques in the area to stoke racial and anti-Muslim tensions.

    The BNP describes Fahim’s mosque, in south Woodford, four miles from Loughton, as “notorious” and claims it has incited violence. In fact, Fahim works as a chaplain for the Metropolitan police.Loughton, which borders the eastern fringe of London, is affluent in parts, with a number of houses on its millionaire’s row, called Alderton Hill, owned by British Hindu families. It is also a road, said Fahim, where women wearing headscarves are racially abused by passing white motorists. He advised one Muslim woman to remove her headscarf to avoid being a victim of hate crime. According to the 2001 census, just over 1%of the area’s residents describe themselves as Muslim.

    One owner of a takeaway, who said he would fear for his safety if either he or his shop were named, said he often faced racist abuse: “This area is rubbish. So many times there is trouble.”

    Last year a 20-strong white gang attacked his shop, leaving one Asian employee with head wounds.

    He said often the abuse and violence happened when people were drunk. “Tonight they call you Paki and tomorrow they come in for food.”

    Abdurahman Jafar, chair of the Muslim Safety Forum, which advises the police, said: “The campaign of terror has followed a campaign organised by the BNP whereby they delivered hate literature to locals citing the small Friday prayer sessions as evidence of how ‘the Islamification process is almost complete’.” Recent months have seen a sharp rise in religiously motivated attacks against the Muslim community including attacks on outwardly Muslim appearing individuals, mosques and pogroms directed against the Muslim Community.”

    Guardian