Confirmed: IHH connected to Erdogan and other Turkish elites
There have been rumors since the very beginning of this story that the IHH - the Muslim terror organization that carried out an attack on IDF soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara last month - was connected to the highest echelons of the Turkish government. Now, the New York Times is confirming those reports. According to a senior Turkish official close to the government, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the issue, as many as 10 Parliament members from Mr. Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development Party were considering boarding the Mavi Marmara, the ship where the deadly raid occurred, but were warned off at the last minute by senior Foreign Ministry officials concerned that their presence might escalate tensions too much.Read the whole thing.
When leaders of the charity returned home after nine Turks died in the Israeli raid, they were warmly embraced by top Turkish officials, said Huseyin Oruc, deputy director of the charity, who was aboard the flotilla.
“When we flew back to Turkey, I was afraid we would be in trouble for what happened, but the first thing we saw when the plane’s door opened in Istanbul was Bulent Arinc, the deputy prime minister, in tears,” he said in an interview. “We have good coordination with Mr. Erdogan,” he added. “But I am not sure he is happy with us now.”
The raid has caused a rupture between Turkey and Israel, and heightened alarm in the United States and Europe that Turkey, a large Muslim country and a major NATO member, is shifting allegiance toward the Arab world. Turkey has warned that its cooperative ties to Israel could be irreparably damaged unless the Israelis apologize and accept an international investigation, steps Israel has so far refused to take.
The charity’s mission, political analysts said, has advanced Mr. Erdogan’s aim of shifting Turkey’s focus to the Muslim east when its prospects for joining the European Union are dim.
The government “could have stopped the ship if it wanted to, but the mission to Gaza served both the I.H.H. and the government by making both heroes at home and in the Arab world,” said Ercan Citlioglu, a terrorism expert at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul.
Turkish officials said that the charity operated independently and that its leadership had refused to drop plans to break Israel’s naval blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza, despite requests from the government. The officials said they had no legal authority to stop the work of a private charity.
...
Many of the 21 people listed on the charity’s board have or had close links to the AK Party. In January, Murat Mercan, chairman of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a senior party official, joined an overland aid convoy to Gaza organized by the charity that tried to force its way through the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza.
A trustee of the charity, Ali Yandir, is a senior manager at the Istanbul City Municipality Transportation Corporation. The corporation controls Istanbul Fast Ferries, which sold the Mavi Marmara, with a capacity for 1,090 passengers, to the charity for about $1.8 million. In 2004, Mr. Yandir was an AK Party candidate for the mayor’s office in Istanbul’s Esenler District.
The charity’s board includes Zeyid Aslan, an AK Party member of Parliament and the acting head of the Turkey-Palestine Interparliamentary Friendship Group; Ahmet Faruk Unsal, an AK Party member of Parliament from 2002 to 2007; and Mehmet Emin Sen, a former AK Party mayor in the central Anatolian township of Mihalgazi.
Those ties partly reflect the common agenda of the party and the charity. Both are involved in relief work among the poor and are bound by a common Islamic ideology. Many of the 60,000 people the charity claims as members come from the religious merchant class that helped Mr. Erdogan sweep to power.
None of this is very surprising, but what it does show is that the Turkish government was behind the attack on Israel's sovereignty and not just a group of 'militants.' If anything, Turkey ought to be apologizing to Israel, and not vice versa.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:14 PM
4 Comments:
Turkey has committed an act of war...
Be clear...
Turkey is playing with fire...
Maybe now it's time to start calling for Kurdish independence...
Turkey to stop the occupation of Cyrus.
The world to condemn Turkey for the genocide of Armenians...
Turkey, get out of Kurdistan....
an interesting read:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LF29Ak01.html
from the above:
"In a recent essay [1], I portrayed the Mavi Marmara incident in which nine Turks were killed by Israeli commandos onboard one of the six boats attempting to breach the blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, as a Turkish farce. It should be obvious to anyone with access to YouTube that Erdogan conducted an exercise in guerilla theater, which qualifies as a comedy of sorts unless you were one of the dead Turks on the boat. What has transpired over the past eight years, though, is a tragedy."
The presence of Turkish AKP members of parliament on board would "escalate tensions too much"...
That's a fascinating statement. It almost implies that one intent of the flotilla was in fact to escalate tensions with Israel. Maybe to provide a pretext for breaking relations?
But it is even more obvious that their presence would have removed Erdogan's thin veneer of deniability, making the flotilla an undeniable act of war on Turkey's part with or without the confrontation that occurred. And that would probably have forced a rupture with the west, something that Erdogan doesn't (yet?) want. He is indeed playing with fire, and trying to have it both ways.
Carl says, "...what it does show is that the Turkish government was behind the attack on Israel's sovereignty..."
But, to be clear, the Turkish govt is only one party behind the attack. One would have to follow the money and incitement through the Free Gaza people, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Doehrn, Code Pink jody, closely connected to the U.S. President Obama (and, like the IHH people with Erdogen, funded Obama into office). And in another direction, one would have to follow Tony Blair's contacts (his wife and her sister?) in coddling, if not encouraging, Gaza attacks against Israel and years of trying to force Israel to sit still under the attacks. We have a lot of snakes in the grass.
Post a Comment
<< Home