Category: Opinion

Queensland will triple its emergency department capacity and double its intensive care wards in hospitals as the state readies itself for the spread of coronavirus, chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young says.

Health authorities will conduct a test of its emergency departments on Friday as Queensland readies itself for a spread of the virus.

It comes as the Queensland Government buys up about $25 million worth of gloves and masks in preparation, as well as 110 extra ventilators for its hospitals.

Dr Young said she expected a spread in Queensland in the coming weeks or months.

“We may well see some outbreaks in one part of the state and the rest of the state be fine — we’ll manage that.

“It’s when you get sustained transmission between person to person.”

So far, Queensland has seen nine separate isolated cases of the virus from patients who contracted the disease overseas — all have recovered with the exception of one patient who remains in hospital.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the new measures would be rolled out if the spread of coronavirus put a strain on the state’s current capacity.

Ms Palaszczuk urged Queenslanders to listen to authorities as the situation develops.

“We are planning and doing the preparation just as we would with any natural disaster.

“We are doing everything we can to contain the virus here in Queensland and so far those measures are working very effectively,” she said.

She has urged residents to wash their hands and maintain a distance of about 1.5 metres from anyone with cold and flu symptoms.

“We are making sure that our state is as prepared as we possibly can be.”

 A lecture and photography exhibition by Prof Alex Morel called ‘Beyond The Water’ – a visual documentary tracing the silent and terrifying exodus of Turkish dissidents to Greece seeking safety from persecution was showcased in Sydney on Friday 13 March 2020.

 

Source: Alex Morel, Beyond the Water photography exhibition

by Meryem Aydogan,Sydney

The Erdogan Regime and its harsh, unlawful crackdown on members of the Hizmet movement and all others it considers political dissidents, has caught the attention of academics, journalists and artists globally.

One such artist is photographer and visual arts professor at St John’s University, New York, A/Professor Alex Morel.

Advocates for Dignity (AFD) along with Affinity Intercultural Foundation co-hosted the event attended by a large number of diverse people at the city offices of Affinity. The program was MC’d by former ABC radio national host, Mr John Cleary, who set the scene for the event.

The welcoming speech was conducted by the Advocates for Dignity President, Mr Mehmet Saral, who said that the plight of the Turkish refugees who have been forced to flee to Greece, from the claws of the Erdogan government in Turkey, is a story that must be told.

He further said that there are refugees associated with Hizmet from Turkey here in Australia as well and AFD are here to help these people settle in to Australia, to integrate and to help them achieve permanent residency, as they have no other country to go to. Mr Saral said that AFD will be the voice for them in Australia.

Turkey is a country wherein freedom of speech is extremely restricted and where 319 journalists have been jailed, with close to 200 media outlets terminated by a series of arbitrary decisions taken by the Turkish authorities.

Mr Saral also spoke of his week spent in Greece mid last year, where he visited the refugees and saw first hand the financial difficulties the refugees experienced and how some even contemplated committing suicide as they could not bear to raise their children on the streets.

Thankfully, financial aid is now being given by the Red Cross and Turkish businessmen in Germany, enabling the survival of these families that have migrated to Greece.

Prof Morel began his lecture with a brief of the situation, describing the fleeing families that he met as leaving behind everything but hope while crossing the Martiza, the river separating Greece from Turkey.

He stated that across these waters, the families were met with the welcoming arms of their Greek neighbours, and the warm smiles of soldiers and others that were once thought of as their nation’s rivals.

Though he considered the entirety of his experience with these Turkish families was eye-opening and extremely memorable, Prof Morel enlightened listeners with the stories that resonated with him the most; moments he expressed as ‘being made eternal through photography, for others to contemplate’.

For security reasons, many of the individuals featured in the exhibition cannot be named. Instead, Prof Morel named all of the men in his photographs ‘Ümit’ (meaning hope), and all of the women ‘Sevinç’ (meaning happiness), explaining that these names were most fitting as each of them carried qualities of resilience, hope, happiness and determination despite their years of trauma.

Prof Morel explained that his craft was drawn to studying families of the Hizmet movement because of the importance they gave to education, and their hope and their willingness to open their hearts and homes to all.

“One thing I have noticed is the incredible patience and action of self reflection among the people within Hizmet, which is what has given the movement the ability to survive such difficulties”, he said.

“It was amazing meeting all these families in Greece, and to see how, despite all the trauma and difficulties and hardships, they were full of hope. I always remember someone smiling.”

Examples from Exhibits

The birth of Irini:

Source: Alex Morel – “Sevinc” and “Umit” holding their newborn daughter.

A touching photograph that forms part of Prof Morel’s photo-exhibition is that of a man, ‘Ümit’, and a woman, ‘Sevinç’, in a hospital; the man holding in his arms a new born baby. Morel stated that this was the first family he had met in Greece.

This couple were forced to leave Turkey as they had lost their jobs, were constantly receiving threats, and were facing the possibility of imprisonment for having associations with the Gulen Movement.

When ‘Sevinç’, the wife, was 7 months pregnant to the couple’s third child, they decided they no choice but to flee Turkey with their two other young children. For two and a half days, the family walked through the woods close to the country’s borders, and were smuggled across the Martiza for a hefty price.

As soon as they safetly made it to land, ‘Sevinç’ had to be rushed to the hospital as she had gone into labour. Having no command of the Greek language made the experience with the medical staff extremely difficult.

To their surprise, a kind-hearted Greek native who happened to speak Turkish, rushed to their assistance, aiding them with their communications with the medical staff.

Source: Alex Morel – Irini holding the newborn

This woman’s name was Irini. She stayed with the couple during the birth of their daughter, and visited them frequently after birth, having become like a godmother of the newborn. To honour Irini’s incredible efforts in assisting them, the couple named their daughter after Irini. Ironically, Irini means peace.

Prof Morel explained that stories of Greek natives opening their arms and hearts to such families were not unique, despite historic tensions between the nations of Turkey and Greece.

The story of Spiderman:

Source: Alex Morel – Ekrem holding up his Spiderman illustration

Among Prof Morel’s exhibition was also a photograph of a young boy, holding to the camera a notebook in which he drew Spiderman.

This young boy is Ekrem. He is seven years old, and had crossed the Maritza river on a cold winter night with his mother, father and two younger sisters.

On the families journey towards the river, Ekrem walked silently for seven hours without uttering a single word, so that his family would not risk being caught by Turkish authorities. He didn’t let anybody carry him, as his father was carrying a heavy load of their belongings, and his mother was carrying his younger sister.

When remembering him, Morel said ‘To me, that is the face of a superhero. If Spiderman took off his mask, he would reveal Ekrem’s face… I always think of him when I am preoccupied by my troubles and need to put things into perspective… What he did is the stuff of mythology to me.’

 

 

Ahmet Altan-K24

The novelist reflects on a judiciary that ignores the rights of those it imprisons

Nothing is scarier than an encounter with the horrifying power of someone who holds your fate in his hands. That person can kill you, lock you up, send you into exile or let you go free. Regardless of the difference in outcome, to be locked up or released by such an authority is equally devastating. You don’t have a say in what happens. People with such authority usually wear a robe and sit on a dais. They are called judges. You can forgive the wielding of such superhuman powers if they are used righteously. What happens, then, if the authority in question doesn’t care about righteousness?

In A Farewell to Arms there is a scene where Hemingway describes a trial of soldiers by military judges that takes place in a cave at the time of defeat for the Italian army. Confident that their decisions will never affect their own destiny, the judges nonchalantly condemn people to death, then put on their caps and salute. They turn people over to the execution squad. During my long incarceration, I faced judges on many occasions. They didn’t even listen to what I said. I laid out the proofs of my innocence and they kept repeating the same accusations. First, they sentenced me to life without parole, then they changed my sentence to 10 and a half years and I was released. I write this as I await the decision a judge will make on the appeal of the prosecutor who objected to my release – they may send me back to prison.

I am out of the Turkish prison but thousands of innocent people are still there. For over three years, I lived in a small cell with two other inmates who had committed no crime. Nobody listened to what they said. Despite pleading innocence again and again they were condemned to prison by judges not unlike those in A Farewell to Arms.

One of my cellmates is the same age as my son; he was newly married when they arrested him. He is religious but also interested in philosophy and science. He is amazing with his hands, making the most unlikely things with the most unlikely materials. He can turn bags of salt into dumbbells, forks into clothes pins, teaspoons into tweezers. He mixes ingredients into prison meals to invent new dishes. His name is Selman. He believes complaining is akin to arguing against God’s will and he never complains. He never has visitors. He doesn’t complain about that either.

One day, as I was writing my novel Lady Life on the plastic table, I heard music in the courtyard. The sound of a flute. I stepped out. Selman had leaned his back against the wall, closed his eyes and was playing a flute. Noises in the surrounding cells died down. Everyone listened to this unexpected music. Once the song Selman played was over, there was a loud clatter. Pieces of candy bought at the prison commissary were being thrown into our courtyard and a request for an encore. Selman played for hours.

No other instrument on Earth could match the sound of that flute. It had a strange tone, a low pitch. Selman never missed a note. He didn’t only play ballads, he played happy tunes too, but now and again his flute would shift towards sorrow.

I was released from the prison one midnight and asked how I was. People wanted to hear the joy a person felt in his first moment of freedom after years. I said I was a bit sad. I had left behind thousands of innocent people, including Selman. I lacked the power to save them and nobody listened to what they said. Not only the judges but a very large part of society has turned into those men in the cave, perfunctorily sentencing others to death. They put on their caps, salute, send the person off to face the execution squad and turn to their next victim.

Once you have seen that cave, witnessed the suffering of innocent people and once you have listened to the cardboard flute, you can’t possibly be ecstatic about leaving prison. You feel like an accessory to a terrible crime. As a prisoner, you are the victim of injustice; once you leave, you become an accomplice.

I know that the most frightening thing on Earth is an encounter with someone who holds the power to determine your fate. I know what torment and humiliation it is that the person with that authority doesn’t care about what you say. I know the sound of a flute can express unquenched longing.

I also know it is possible that they will rearrest me. But Selman is already under arrest. He is my son’s age, he makes dumbbells from salt. He has no visitors. He never complains. He just leans against the wall and plays his flute.

Abdullah Bozkurt-nordicmonitor

The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has secretly investigated US troops deployed in Turkey and monitored their movements as part of a probe into a coup attempt in July 2016, secret documents have revealed.

According to a trove of intelligence documents obtained by Nordic Monitor, military plans, troop movements and even anti-Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) operations involving US military personnel in Turkey were reviewed on the suspicion that they might have been involved in the failed coup. The secret probe helps feed into the Erdoğan government’s false narrative which claims that the US was the mastermind behind the abortive putsch although there has been no evidence presented to support that claim.

The Turkish military intelligence reports, incorporated into a prosecutor’s file as part of the coup investigation, discloses an array of US military operations in Turkey and its neighborhood. None of the activity appears to be unusual and in fact seems to be routine operations ranging from construction and spare parts supply to maintaining drone surveillance flights.

In one document classified as secret sent to the Office of the Chief of General Staff and other relevant departments in the Turkish military by the 5th Armored Brigade stationed in southeastern Gaziantep province, the operations of the US military’s 39th Mission Support Group (MSP), which operates out of Incirlik Air Base in Adana, were covered. The same report also included the activities of the US Air Force’s 727th Expeditionary Air Control Squadron (EACS) Det-7 teams. The document details construction work and personnel needs as well as logistical operations involving both MSP and EACS-7. XUH-60S helicopter flights that carried troops and equipment between Incirlik and Gaziantep were also logged.

 

US military operations involving the Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System, which is based at the General Hüseyin Ataman Kışlası Garrison in Gaziantep province were also reported to the the Office of the Chief of General Staff. On July 10, 2016 the US military dispatched 19 troops from Incirlik Air Base, accompanied by 10 trucks and five vehicles carrying UAVs, Humvees and spare parts, to the Ataman garrison in Gaziantep. On July 21, 2016 two US troops and one translator left the garrison according to the report. The US drone operations on July 14 were said to be continuing uninterrupted.

Another group that Turkish prosecutors have looked into is US personnel overseeing the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) in Turkey. Routine personnel exchanges between Incirlik Air Base and the Ataman garrison, purchase orders for oil to power generators for radar units and maintenance operations which were all reported by the Turkish military in classified documents were investigated by the prosecutors. The number of US military personnel assigned to various missions was also identified in the document.

The activities that were scrutinized do not suggest anything unusual, and they all appear to be in line with agreements between Turkey and the United States. Yet, the Turkish prosecutors concluded that documents which featured classified US troop movement and logistical operations were relevant to the coup investigation and ordered all intelligence and military documents to be incorporated in the case file, making them part of the public record. It helps the Erdoğan government to spin conspiracy theories around the coup attempt, with partisan prosecutors doing the bidding of the government instead of searching for the facts.

 

With the purge of over 4,000 judges and prosecutors and their replacement by partisan, Islamist and neo-nationalist candidates, it is hardly surprising to see that government prosecutors would engage in a fishing expedition that only serves to stoke anti-US and anti-Western sentiment in Turkey. No wonder the Erdoğan government and the media it controls have been relentlessly floating unsubstantiated stories about alleged US complicity in the limited military mobilization that looks more like a false flag operation orchestrated by Erdoğan himself.

The secret investigation also explains why Erdoğan’s judiciary has taken seriously a criminal complaint against several high-ranking US generals filed in 2018 by members of an organized crime syndicate called Tay-Der, a thuggish group that serves at the pleasure of Erdoğan. Operatives of Tay-Der, backed by Erdoğan’s close confidante Metin Külünk, who once ran the armed wing of the radical Islamist Akıncılar group, filed a motion with the prosecutor’s office asking authorities to arrest Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of the US Central Command; retired US Army Gen. John F. Campbell; and Air Force Brig. Gen. Rick Boutwell, director of regional affairs, Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force. US officers Col. John C. Walker, Col. Michael H. Manion, Col. David Eaglen, Col. David Trucksa, Lt. Col. Timothy J. Cook, Lt. Col. Mack R. Coker, Sgt. Thomas S. Cooper, Sgt. Vegas M. Clark and others deployed to İncirlik Airbase were also named in the brief.

The complaint also asks authorities to issue a search and seizure warrant for İncirlik to gather evidence and to halt all outbound US military flights from the base. Not surprisingly, the 60-page criminal complaint appears to have been written by Erdoğan’s neo-nationalist ally Doğu Perinçek, whose Aydınlık newspaper was extensively quoted in the complaint, having leveled false coup accusations against US troops deployed at the base. In other words, what was published as fake news in the propaganda media was later considered to be evidence in a court of law, which is how criminal cases in many instances have been pursued in Turkey under the Erdoğan regime.

Escalating the issue further on top of media and legal attacks against İncirlik, Erdoğan and his political associates have also started publicly entertaining the idea of closing the base to US access. In July 2018, speaking to reporters on board the presidential plane, Erdoğan for the first time raised the issue of closing İncirlik Air Base to the Americans, followed by similar comments from his ally in the security branch, Perinçek. Erdoğan’s associates had been bringing the issue to debate long before he made this comment on İncirlik. For example, in February 2016 Erdoğan’s then-aide and now chief ombudsman Şeref Malkoç claimed İncirlik might be closed to the Americans. Incidentally, Malkoç’s son-in-law is Abdurrahman Gül, the current justice minister who was designated under sanctions by the US Treasury for hıs role in the wrongful detention and prosecution of American pastor Andrew Brunson.

In August 2017 professor of constitutional law Burhan Kuzu, a senior member of Erdoğan’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and his advisor, asked prosecutors to investigate NATO and the İncirlik base over the failed coup. In January 2018 Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on government TV network TRT that he had delivered to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson the Turkish people’s demands regarding İncirlik during a meeting in Vancouver. In February 2018 Çavuşoğlu repeated the same threats and said the Turkish people demanded the termination of US access to both the İncirlik base and the Kürecik radar station. In May 2018 he took it further and threatened the US with similar action if normalization efforts between the US and Turkey failed.

 

 

Abdullah Bozkurt-Nordicmonitor

The Turkish Embassy in Ljubljana spied on critics of the government of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in Slovenia, secret documents obtained by Nordic Monitor have revealed.

According to official correspondence sent by the embassy in Ljubljana to headquarters in Ankara, Turkish diplomats collected information on the activities of Erdoğan critics, profiled their organizations and listed their names as if they were part of a criminal enterprise. The intelligence report was used in a criminal case in Turkey, where over half a million people have been put in detention facilities in the last two-and-a-half years alone on fabricated terrorism charges.

The campaign of intelligence gathering and profiling of critics and their organizations by the Turkish Embassy in Ljubljana follows a similar pattern seen in other diplomatic missions Turkey maintains in foreign countries. The move, which is unprecedented in scale and intensity, created an uproar in many parts of the world, including in Europe, where Turkish diplomats came under increased scrutiny. In one extreme case, Swiss prosecutors launched a criminal probe and issued arrest warrants for two Turkish Embassy officials for attempting to kidnap a Swiss-Turkish businessman who was critical of Erdoğan’s repressive Islamist regime in Turkey.

 

 

Among the organizations that were spied on by Turkish diplomats was the Ambra, Izobraževanje, Kultura in Turizem d.o.o., an educational and culture organization that was set up in 2005. A intercultural center called Društvo Medkulturni Dialog was also among the organizations profiled by the Turkish Embassy according to the document. The Ambra Jezikovni Center, which offers language courses in English and Turkish, was also listed in the espionage document dispatched by Turkish diplomats in Slovenia. The social media profile of the organization shows it runs a mathematics competition in the country to encourage math skills among Slovenian students.

 

The document, pulled from a restricted case file, reveals the extent of spying activity by the Turkish Embassy that targeted critics and organizations in Slovenia. The people and organizations that were spied on by the embassy are believed to be affiliated with a civic group led by Fethullah Gülen, a US-based Muslim cleric who has become a vocal critic of Erdoğan for pervasive corruption in the government and the Turkish regime’s clandestine support for armed jihadist groups including the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and al-Qaeda.

The Turkish president turned against the Gülen movement after major corruption investigations in December 2013 that incriminated Erdoğan, his family members and his business and political associates. A month later, in January 2014, an exposé of illegal arms shipments by Turkish intelligence to jihadists in Syria in 2014 created further troubles for the Erdoğan government for covertly fueling a civil war in the neighboring country.

The order to spy on Gülen-affiliated people and organizations came in early 2014, and volunteers of the movement were targeted with criminal prosecutions on fabricated charges of terrorism. In July 2016 Erdoğan staged a false flag coup to set up the opposition, including the movement, for mass persecution, pushed the army to invade northern Syria and declared himself the imperial president of the new Turkey.

Turkish Embassy notes transmitted from Ljubljana were among Foreign Ministry documents that were later sent to Turkish police to build a case against critics of the Erdoğan regime. Those who were listed in these embassy documents were often targeted by a campaign of intimidation and harassment and denied consular services abroad, while their relatives and friends back in Turkey risked the possibility of jail time, asset seizure and persecution on fabricated criminal charges.

The collection of data, amounting to refugee spying or unlawful intelligence gathering by embassy and consulate officials, was carried out upon receipt of requests from the Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime Department of the Turkish National Police (Kaçakçılık ve Organize Suçlarla Mücadele Daire Başkanlığı, or KOM). According to Turkish law KOM has no jurisdiction abroad and is not authorized to conduct espionage overseas. The information notes sent by the embassy were later incorporated into a report by KOM on January 30, 2017 and were used in the criminal prosecution of government critics on terrorism charges.

The report that included Foreign Ministry intelligence documents was used in several indictments in what was seen as a blatant abuse of the criminal justice system by the Turkish government as part of the crackdown on critics, opponents and dissidents who had nothing to do with terrorism. Some of the accused were jailed for months and even years in some cases without a formal charge, indictment or trial. It also shows how unlawful information gathering by the Turkish Embassy was incorporated in the mass persecution of critics back in Turkey.

For example, the profiling data collected on Slovenian organizations by the Turkish Embassy was used as evidence in a case involving Kaynak Holding, a major conglomerate and the largest publisher in Turkey, which was unlawfully seized by the Erdoğan government on fabricated charges of terrorism in November 2015. Kaynak, a group that operated 22 major companies under its umbrella, was owned and operated by businesspeople who are seen as affiliated with the Gülen movement.

A corporate credit line for the purchase of merchandise offered by Kaynak Holding to the organizations in Slovenia and some funds transfers in 2015 as part of business transactions were considered by the Erdoğan government to be criminal evidence. A report prepared by Turkey’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK), an agency that was often used by the Erdoğan government to investigate critics and their companies on criminal pretexts, listed the legitimate transactions as criminal activity. The report was compiled by MASAK on May 13, 2015 under file No. 2015/MAR (62) after the Ankara Public Prosecutor’s Office tasked the agency with investigating Kaynak on February 2, 2015 as part of case No. 2014/75025.

Hundreds of people and dozens of firms were dragged into the investigation in what was seen as a crackdown on Turkey’s largest publisher and supplier of educational materials. Some 800 authors were victimized when the government cancelled book contracts after the seizure of Kaynak, and millions of textbooks including some on foreign language skills were destroyed by authorities after the takeover.

Among those investigated in this case file was Ekrem Dumanlı, the former editor-in-chief of Zaman, Turkey’s largest national newspaper that was unlawfully seized by the government in March 2016 as part of a crackdown on the critical media. Dumanlı has been forced to live in exile along with over 150 other journalists who had to flee to avoid wrongful imprisonment.

The Erdoğan government brands all of its critics as terrorists, and 191 journalists are currently locked up in Turkish jails on terrorism charges, making Turkey the world’s leading jailer of journalists. Over 30 percent of all Turkish diplomats, 60 percent of all senior police chiefs, half of all military generals and some 30 percent of all judges and prosecutors in Turkey were also declared terrorists overnight by the executive decisions of the Erdoğan government without any effective administrative investigations and certainly without any judicial proceedings.

In July 2017 German newspaper Die Zeit reported that Turkey had handed Germany a list of 68 companies and individuals suspected of links to terrorism due to alleged ties to the Gülen movement. It was also revealed that nearly 700 German firms including industry giants Daimler and BASF were being investigated for the “financing of terrorism,” lodged with Interpol by Turkey. After Germany reacted strongly to the witch-hunt and threatened economic sanctions, Turkey backed down and claimed that it was simply a miscommunication.

Nordic Monitor previously published a report disclosing how Turkish embassies and consular officials engaged in spying on government critics in 92 foreign countries as part of profiling and espionage activities that at times amounted to a systematic and deliberate campaign of refugee spying. A document found in papers released by the Ankara 4th High Criminal Court on January 16, 2019 in case No. 2016/238 indicated that the Turkish Foreign Ministry had compiled a long list of foreign entities that were owned and/or operated by people who were seen as close to the movement.

The government of President Erdoğan has come under intense scrutiny in recent years over rights violations and the jailing of political opposition members, human rights defenders, journalists and representatives of civil society organizations.

Ekrem Dumanlı-.turkishminute

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his party, unable to accept losing the İstanbul mayoral election on March 31, finally persuaded the Supreme Election Board (YSK) to cancel the results, one-and-a-half months after the polls closed, even though the opposition candidate, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was given the mandate to govern Turkey’s largest city.

Never has there been such a disgrace in previous elections. Everyone knows that the people who rig the polls in any country are those in power because it usually requires the might of the state apparatus.

The local elections were not fair or free. The ruling party controls 95 percent of the Turkish media. The remaining 5 percent is there for the sake of appearances, in order to be able to say, “Turkey has a critical media.” Unfortunately, those media outlets, while critical, sometimes feel the need to compromise.

In this unfair, unequal election atmosphere, Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost both the capital city of Ankara and İstanbul. In the president’s own words, losing İstanbul in the election means losing the country. Actually, his party lost Ankara to opposition candidate Mansur Yavaş in the 2014 local elections, but then they interfered in the counting process and prevented Yavaş from becoming mayor. This time, playing the same game in Ankara was not possible due to a clear win in the numbers.

In İstanbul, İmamoğlu’s win is as clear as the victory in Ankara. Their weak, incalculable arguments explicitly show that the AKP doesn’t care about the truth. All their objections turned out to be empty. Despite that, the YSK nullified the results, a move that means another nail in the coffin of Turkish democracy.

Now people are asking: What will change with the re-run of the İstanbul election? Namely, how will Erdoğan, who lost despite using all the power of the head of state and enjoying virtually total media support, win the election in İstanbul this time?

It’s not too difficult to guess Erdoğan’s game plan. After the June 2015 general election, when he lost his single-party majority for the first time in 13 years, he forced parliament to hold a new election and in the meantime somehow managed to make security threats and instability priorities for the voters.

One of the main actors in the new İstanbul vote is Kurdish citizens. It is no coincidence that the lawyers of jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan finally were able to meet with their client after a hiatus of eight years.

It seems the ruling AKP, which accused the opposition of making an alliance with the PKK, started talks with the PKK leader in order to take İstanbul back.

Why?

Because the AKP believes that one of the main reasons for their loss in İstanbul was the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Despite jailing their leader, Selahattin Demirtaş, for more than two years, the HDP’s support for the opposition gave Erdoğan a noteworthy defeat.

Now Turkey’s “deep state” and “deep PKK” are seeking ways to eliminate the Kurds’ influence in the new polls.

The “deep PKK” previously helped Erdoğan in a number of instances. Öcalan, who has never embraced Demirtaş’s rhetoric, plays games with the “deep state.” The resumption of his lawyers’ visits has sparked a suspicion that suggests the two entities are trying to draw up a roadmap for the election.

Can Öcalan call on Kurdish voters to support the AKP’s candidate, Binali Yıldırım? Yes, he can, since he is in prison. Are there some people out there who will listen? Sure, there are. Öcalan’s influence on the Kurds must not be underestimated.

However, this time the situation is quite different.

A majority of AKP voters may express unease about such support from the PKK, which was previously used as an allegation to undermine the opposition’s efforts.

It seems that this time Kurdish voters, who played a key role in the March 31 elections, proud to help shake Erdoğan’s throne, will not listen Öcalan’s message coming from İmralı Prison, where he has been held since 1999, because they have received their fair share of the escalating suppression by the government in the last five years, developing a natural resistance to Erdoğan.

At this point, Erdoğan may try to use peace negotiations with the PKK as a carrot, in order to attract the Kurd’s attention.

However, this is also a dead end since his election partner, Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), would not let that happen.

On top of everything, the AKP has been experiencing an intra-party crisis since the election losses. Former President Abdullah Gül and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu clearly opposed the cancellation of the İstanbul election results. Even members of the AKP criticize the one-man rule and nepotism involving some high-profile party figures.

Erdoğan long ago lost his ability to create a success story. His only game is to rig the new election. Neither Kurdish voters nor the nationalist grass roots will be convinced to accept easy bargains.

The period of Erdoğan falling from grace has started, and it is impossible to stop. And the only one to blame for this is himself. His reshuffling inside the party under the pretext of “fatigue” and his overindulgence of family members and his close circle have pushed the intra-party grievances to a point of no return. What kind of a fatigue was it that spared only Erdoğan?

Now even the AKP grass roots clearly see that the fatigue has bound Erdoğan hand and foot. His flashy schemes are far from convincing the masses. In social terms, the end is inevitable. It appears there is a limit to corruption, shamelessness and inferiority.

Abdullah Bozkurt-nordicmonitor

The government’s star witness in coup trials in Turkey has turned out to be a staunchly anti-Semitic, anti-Christian figure who claimed that Turkey had been ruled by evil powers, namely the United States, Israel and the West.

Çetin Acar, a man who was spouting hatred toward non-Muslims and minorities, has been put forward by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as an expert in coup trials. According to a 200-page, conspiracy-laden report that was written by this man, a copy of which was obtained by Nordic Monitor, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government apparently aimed to fan xenophobia in Turkey, stigmatize minorities and stoke anti-Western sentiment by entertaining his far-fetched claims in a court of law.

Acar’s report, which is full of unsubstantiated claims, conspiracies, lies and fabrications, was treated by prosecutors as an expert opinion and incorporated into investigation case files concerning a failed coup attempt in July 2016. Moreover, he has been called as a witness for the prosecution in high-profile trials. The allegations found in the report lack evidence, are based on rumors and hearsay and often have an anti-Semitic slant.

 

 

Borrowing the narrative of Turkish President Erdoğan, Acar introduced his report by saying that the Turkish president’s “Higher Mind” (Üst Akıl in Turkish) is synonymous with his own term “Higher Structure” (Üst Yapi in Turkish), which he claimed holds the real power in the Turkish capital of Ankara. This higher entity established and promoted the Gülen movement, a civic group that is active in education and interfaith dialogue activities, Acar argued. He described this higher structure as both a Zionist and a Crusader organization that is directly controlled by a world Zionist center based in Washington. By extension, the Gülen movement is also a Zionist and Crusader entity, Acar wrote in his report, which was submitted to Turkish prosecutor Kemal Aksakal on February 14, 2017 and subsequently became part of investigation case file No. 2016/ 103566.

 

 

The Americans had maintained a presence in Ottoman lands since the 1800s and took over control of Turkey from the British in the aftermath of World War II, Acar claimed in his report, adding that Jews and their blood brothers the Sabataycılar (crypto Jews, or a secret Jewish community that follows Sabbatai Sevi and pretends to be Muslim), other minorities and some Muslim collaborators have been waiting to take on an assignment from the United States. Most of these Jews and crypto Jews are businesspeople who are enemies of Muslims and Turks, according to this conspiracy spinning, so-called expert.

 

“Jews and Zionists, who are the number one enemy of the Islamic world and Turks, were made to be forgotten and camouflaged under the pretext of the Iranian, or Persian, threat,” Acar wrote in the report. Israel and the West lost its major ally when Mohammad Reza Shah, the last shah of Iran, was toppled, and now they want to use US-based Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen in order to pit Sunni Turkey against Shiite Iran, he noted, stressing that the Gülen movement has been staunchly anti-Iran judging from the editorial line of its affiliated media.

 

 

According to this conspiracy theorist, Jews took over the Ottoman palace, while crypto Jews controlled the state’s finance, executive, judiciary and military branches. After destroying the Ottoman Empire, Jews founded Turkey to ensure the security of Israel, which was to be established later, he noted. Just like Jews, the Gülen movement also tried to infiltrate the army and state bureaucracy, Acar concluded, accusing the Jews and Americans of being behind the failed coup attempt in 2016 as well as all terrorist organizations including the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Scapegoating Jews for all the major problems in Turkey, Acar tried to whitewash the Erdoğan government’s failures in governance and absolve it from any responsibility or accountability.

 

 

He continues to appear in the pro-government media spewing the same hatred and conspiracy theories in his books and court statements. The fact that Turkish prosecutors took this conspiracy theorist as serious, accepted his report full of hate speech and baseless allegations as part of the evidentiary file and allowed him to testify against government critics who were persecuted by the Erdoğan regime tells the tale of today’s Turkey.

 

A Nordic Monitor investigation has revealed how a smear campaign targeting prominent Turkish journalist Nazli Ilıcak, who is critical of the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was orchestrated by partisan prosecutor Murat Çağlak.

While the prosecutor ordered her arrest as part of a counterterrorism investigation that led to Ilıcak’s unjust conviction and sentencing to life in prison, the Sabah daily, owned by Erdoğan’s family, ran a series of defamatory articles about her to portray her as a criminal in the eyes of the public.Abdullah Bozkurt

 

 

 

According to confidential documents obtained by Nordic Monitor, Ilıcak was vacationing at her summer home in Turkey’s western resort town of Bodrum when the Istanbul prosecutor issued a detention warrant for her along with 41 other journalists on July 25, 2016. The police went to her residence in Istanbul at dawn to detain her, but she was not there. Instead they executed search and seizure warrants and confiscated 724 of the journalist’s personal items, mostly books and hundreds of recordings of her appearances on TV programs as she has been a popular commentator for decades.

 

 

She was not fleeing at all, yet the pro-Erdoğan media, tipped off by the prosecutor, ran a spin story about her being a fugitive and made up a report about the journalist’s escape plans. When the police went to her home in Istanbul to detain her and execute the search warrant, the police did not find her as expected and called prosecutor Ismail Uçar, who said the warrant must also be executed on her summer home in Bodrum. In the meantime, the fake story of her being on the run like a killer was continuously run by Erdoğan’s media propaganda machine.

 

The official documents that detail the circumstances of her detention tell a completely different story, however. The police intelligence report revealed that the authorities knew she had two houses before the raid, one in Istanbul and the other in Bodrum. They also knew she spent July at the summer home, yet the plan was to create the perception that she was guilty and could not be located.

 

In the meantime, when the news about the warrant for her was covered by the networks and reached her in Bodrum, Ilıcak decided to report to the local police station and inquire about the news early the next day. On her way downtown on July 26, her car was stopped by the police at a checkpoint, and she was detained before she made to the police station. The police report, filed at the checkpoint where she was detained at 08:00, states that the detention was normal and that there was nothing out of the ordinary. She was read her rights, and she signed the detention warrant on the spot, meaning that she understood her rights.

 

What is more, the processing document produced by the police revealed what she possessed at the time of her detention, and it did not suggest that she was on the run. Ilıcak, who suffers from various medical conditions at the age of 75, was carrying some dozen medications and vitamins in her purse, the document that was signed at 18:48 hours showed. She also had TL 685 (about $228 at the exchange rate in effect at the time) on her person, suggesting that she had no plans to try to escape. Otherwise, she would have been carrying a large amount of cash for travel and accommodations. Ilıcak, who survived the military coup era of the 1980s, had nothing to fear and no reason to hide.

 

She was processed at the local police station upon the order of Muğla public prosecutor Sümeyra Çetin and sent to Istanbul on a flight at around 16:40 to report to Istanbul prosecutor Çağlak, who had issued the detention warrant for her. Police also seized a notepad at the summer home and listed it as criminal evidence against her in the case. The 38-page notepad shows she wrote talking points that she would raise in her TV commentaries or use in her newspaper articles. Most were related to current affairs and her contacts with journalists and sources — nothing incriminating.

 

In Istanbul, Ilıcak was charged under counterterrorism laws, yet she was processed by the homicide unit of the police station, which was a bizarre twist in the case. Her crime was listed as having been committed on July 15, 2016, suggesting that she had something to do with a failed coup on that date when she actually had nothing to do with it. But the false flag coup attempt was a perfect pretext for the Erdoğan regime to arrest and prosecute hundreds of journalists who were critical of the government.

 

She was fingerprinted, had her mugshot taken and was interrogated by the police. It was not until 21:22 when police wrapped up the interrogation and her lawyer Muhammed Emin Özkurt signed the police statement.

 

 

The fake story about her being a fugitive was also used against her by the partisan prosecutor during the arraignment, and she was considered to be a flight risk by the judge, despite the fact that she had turned herself in. Later, her lawyers even submitted documentation of her cancelled vacation plans in Greece where she planned to stay at Hotel Nireus, located on the Greek island of Symi, between July 22 and 25, 2016 but which she decided to cancel after the July 15 failed coup. She would not have done so if she had any intention of crossing to the Greek island off the coast of Bodrum, where her family kept a yacht. Lawyers raised that in the courtroom when she asked for her release pending trial, but Erdoğan was determined to keep her locked up to send a message to other critics.

 

 

Ilıcak’s case shows how the rule of law has ceased to exist in Turkey and how prosecutors, judges and police were turned into political operatives bent on cracking down on critical journalists. Her lawyers filed motions practically every month for her release pending trial, but the authorities rejected each and every petition. The case against her was finally wrapped up in February 2018, when she was convicted and sentenced to aggravated life, without the possibility of parole, on totally fabricated terrorism charges.

Ilıcak also faces another trial in a case that was opened against her due to an article she wrote in 2015 titled “Military intelligence and Tahşiyeciler,” about a Turkish al-Qaeda-affiliated group. The journalist is accused of publishing a secret document about Tahşiyeciler from the records of the General Staff in the Bugün daily on Jan. 2, 2015. Ilıcak faces a life sentence for espionage in this case, although she received the same punishment in the earlier trial. In her defense at the İstanbul 26th High Criminal Court, Ilıcak said many people used to send documents to her Twitter account because she is a journalist and that the document in question was sent to that account.

Mehmet Efe Çaman-tr724.co

When the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, some soldiers in the Turkish military thought Ankara no longer needed NATO and the West. With its political values, NATO was increasingly perceived by these soldiers as a hindrance. Controversial subjects such as Ankara’s human rights record and the condition of Kurds in Turkey that were overlooked during the Cold War due to the immense importance of Turkey in Cold War geopolitics started to dominate Turkish-Western relations, particularly in the context of Turkey’s aspirations as a potential EU candidate. There were a considerable number of people in both the military and the bureaucracy that considered institutionalized multilateral relations with the West (particularly with NATO, the EU, the US and Germany) as a security threat to the territorial integrity of the Turkish state. In particular the Kurdish insurrection during the 1980s, the emergence of the outlawed Kurdistan’s Workers’ Party (PKK) and the EU demand for democratic minority rights for Kurds in Turkey contributed to this negative perception of some factions in the Turkish state bureaucracy.

During the Cold War Turkish foreign policy behavior was based on the concept of political realism in which the military played the key role. Turkey was not powerful enough to protect itself against its “giant neighbor to the north,” as many Turkish policymakers had described the Soviet Union, and it had to integrate with NATO to safeguard its independence and statehood. Only through the NATO umbrella was Turkey successfully able to keep the Soviets away. After the end of the Cold War, however, everything changed. There was no longer any Soviet threat, and the post-Soviet geography, particularly the Caucasus and Central Asia, was full of new opportunities for Ankara. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in particular opened up a new world with common cultural, linguistic and religious roots with Turkey. These nations had considerable fossil energy resources, which Turkey did not have, and a large market. Also, the Balkans were viewed by Turkish political elites as former Ottoman territories and, accordingly, a natural zone of influence. Turks soon realized that getting rid of the West and increasing Turkish power on a global scale was an enjoyable and euphoria-generating discourse; however, it had no basis in reality. Turkey needed cooperation with other powers to counterbalance the West in order to gradually become independent from it.

A military memorandum of February 28, 1997 that removed the coalition government of the Islamist Necmettin Erbakan from power was primarily seen as a domestic “course correction” and a “secular-pro-Western” military intervention, but in reality, it was not. Yes, it was carried out by secular military officers, but they were not pro-Western regarding Turkey’s foreign policy orientation. They disagreed with the Copenhagen criteria of the EU (democracy standards for EU candidates) because they believed the EU was undermining the Turkish unitary nation-state by trying to strengthen Kurdish separatism. For example, the commanding officer of the Turkish War Academy, one of the highly influential posts in the country’s strategic position, clearly stated that joining the EU would destabilize Turkey. After the 1997 memorandum, the left-nationalist wing of the “social-democratic” Republican People’s Party (CHP) became stronger and increasingly opposed democratization reforms in Turkey, calling them concessions. Ironically, the pro-European and pro-Western dynamics were derived from the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP),which claimed to be the democratic center of the Turkish political spectrum. From the 1997 memorandum to 2005, the Turkish state – first and foremost the military and civilian bureaucracy – increasingly agreed with the EU orientation and the democratizing reform process of the AKP government. Also, a great majority of Turkey’s citizens, especially Kurds, liberals, democrats, other minorities, Gülenists and other Islamic/Islamist groups, supported Turkey’s EU strategy as they believed it would eventually lead to EU membership.

The zero-sum game mentality in Turkish foreign policy was replaced with a new regional policy of “zero problems” that emphasized cooperation with neighboring countries and other regional states. Turkey became a key actor in the European Neighborhood Policy. Turkish democracy improved, and the economy boomed through incredible amounts of foreign investment. A domestic and foreign policy de-securitization process occurred in which the role of the military in Turkish decision-making diminished. This process of “normalization” opened up the doors of EU accession. Moreover, military factions and their civilian accomplices in the bureaucracy lost a considerable amount of their influence. Some of the military cliques that perpetrated illegal activities such as outlining “war-game scenarios” that could potentially lead to a military coup were brought to justice and sent to prison.

This de-securitization brought transparency and accountability in domestic politics. It increased basic freedoms and per capita GDP. It restored Turkey’s relations with Greece and enabled constructive negotiations to reunify Cyprus – a country that had been divided between Greeks and Turks since 1974. This started a constructive normalization process with Armenia, which has a long border with Turkey that has been closed since 1991 due to the Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute. Turkey increased its bilateral trade relations with almost all regional countries, including Syria, Iraq, Bulgaria, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine.

There were three major interconnected game changers of this positive outlook: a large-scale corruption scandal in 2013, the release and reactivation of all jailed Eurasianist deep-state military personnel and an attempted military coup in 2016. The power situation in the Turkish military changed considerably after these three events, and consequently, Erdoğan and his inner circle had to abandon the successful negotiation process with Kurdish separatists for a political solution to the problem and give up their pro-Western foreign policy orientation, including its democratization side effects. This new power situation eventually culminated in the criminalizing of all former allies of Erdoğan: liberals, Kurds and Gülenists. The anti-Western faction in the Turkish military maximized its power and dismissed large numbers of military personnel of all ranks – almost 50 percent of all generals and admirals of Turkish forces and about 18,000 high, middle and low-ranking officers – after the 2016 coup attempt. Currently, the reactivated deep-state military personnel are in key positions in the Turkish armed forces.

In the Western media, analysts have difficulties explaining why Erdoğan turned his back on his Western allies, terminated the political solution process with Kurdish separatists, suspended the constitution and changed the state architecture. They cannot understand why he has arrested or detained about 500,000 people in Turkey, jailed 11 democratically elected Kurdish lawmakers as well as more than 100 Kurdish mayors from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and over 160 journalists, and discharged 170,000 public servants and 8,000 academics. These numbers indicate the extraordinary extent of this purge. Even the military intervention of 1980, which was a full-scale coup that abolished the constitution, led to the firing of only 4,891 public servants, 148 academics and 576 military officers. In the current situation, the number of fired public servants is 35 times higher, the number of purged academics is 54 times higher and the number of purged and jailed military personnel is 31 times higher than after the full-scale coup. The number of dismissed public servants and other purged people is evidence demonstrating that the Turkish Republic has been replaced by another state. Erdoğan and his inner circle do not reflect the real power constellation in Turkey.

Aside from the period during which Ankara warmed to the EU’s democratic values, the Turkish military has always played an important role in Turkey’s politics. The existence of several cliques or factions in the Turkish armed forces is also a well-known fact. The unusually high number of purged officers and civilian public servants after the 2016 coup attempt point to an obvious anomaly. In the current regime, Erdoğan and his inner circle are certainly not to be underestimated. But can Erdoğan alone control the powerful Turkish military? Why did Erdoğan terminate the “Solution Process” with the Kurds? It was his greatest project and the biggest risk of his entire political career. Why did he change course in Syria and in Turkey’s general foreign policy orientation? Why did he decide to develop a strategic partnership with Russia? Why did he purge so many soldiers in the Turkish military and bureaucracy? Did he really need a purge to such an immense extent? Understanding Turkey’s derailing is not only an academic concern but also highly relevant for NATO and the future of the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Europe.

I think this comprehensive policy shift occurred because of Erdoğan’s new deep-state partners. Current Turkish politics clearly demonstrates the immense influence of Eurasianist deep-state elements that control the Turkish military and – temporarily – tolerate/support Erdoğan, since they are using his power to convince Islamist-conservative grassroots groups in Turkish politics of the necessity of the current political course. Interestingly, the opposition (except for the Kurds, of course) such as the left-nationalist wing of the CHP, which currently controls the party, and the ultra-right-wing of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) agree, especially with the aggressive military strategy in Kurdish politics (both in Turkey and in Syria) and the anti-Western foreign policy orientation. It is hard to say whether the cooperation of the opposition with current key policies is based on voluntary cooperation or on direct strategic collaboration with the deep state. This alliance, which is currently powerful but also fragile, will remain until Erdoğan loses his credibility and charisma with the masses in Turkey. In Turkey, there is no iron-fisted type of monolithic Erdoğan regime, but rather a power balance. Once we face this reality, we will start to truly comprehend Turkey’s present situation.With turkishminute.

A Turkish al-Qaeda-linked operative who worked as a handler for the killer of Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov in 2016 turns out to have been on the Turkish government payroll as a cleric attached to the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) since 2011, while his elder brother was also working for the Diyanet as a mufti in a district of Ankara, Nordic Monitor has found out.

İbrahim Bilal Oduncu, a 35-year-old jihadist figure who had worked with the assassin, Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, has been serving as muezzin (deputy imam) at Ankara’s Gimat Mosque, according to the indictment in the Karlov case. The investigation determined that as of January 2017 he was still receiving a salary from the government under the budget allocated to the Yenimahalle district Mufti Administration. A flurry of contacts, both in person and over the phone, between Bilal and the 22-year-old riot police officer who gunned down the Russian envoy in December 2016 were revealed.

 

 

Furthermore, according to an investigation report prepared by the Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK), the Russian ambassador’s killer wired funds to Bilal on Nov. 7, 2015 and July 7, 2016 for a total of TL 1,100. A day before he killed the Russian ambassador, Altıntaş called Bilal and told him he had a collection of religious books including jihadist materials written by leading al-Qaeda ideologues and wanted to donate them for the use of others because he was reassigned to a post in Diyarbakir and had to move.

 

 

Bilal gave three separate statements to authorities on Dec. 21, 2016, May 25, 2017 and Jan. 3, 2018, meaning that he had to respond to additional questions as the probe revealed more details about the extent of his contact with the killer. Yet the Turkish prosecutor did not conclude that he should be tried as a suspect or accomplice in the case but rather listed him as a witness. It is obvious that he was protected from criminal charges by people in the government who were watching out for him.

Nordic Monitor identified Bilal and his brother Murat Oduncu as individuals who have for some time been leading a Turkish al-Qaeda-affiliated front NGO that is operational in Turkey’s capital of Ankara with the protection of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. Both of them were in contact with the killer and involved in activities to support jihadists in Syria. Another brother, Metin Ali Oduncu, who is also a district mufti working for the Diyanet, and his son Muhammed Selman Oduncu were involved with the killer to varying degrees.

 

 

The NGO’s name is the Hamra Organization for Humanitarian Relief and Religious Research (Hamra İlmi Araştırma ve İnsani Yardımlaşma Derneği), which was established and run by the Oduncu brothers. The Cordoba Youth Movement (Kurtuba Gençlik Hareketi) is the youth wing of Hamra and has been active in recruiting Turkish jihadists for the war in Syria, raising funds and procuring logistical supplies for their brethren there. The Oduncu brothers also run operations on behalf of two other Islamist NGOs, namely İhsan ve Hizmet Derneği and Paylaş Uluslararası İnsani Yardım Derneği. The former mainly focuses on the dissemination of jihadist literature, while the latter is involved in charity work.

 

 

The assassin Altıntaş reached out to Bilal through Murat, the elder brother, over the Internet, and the two later met at Murat’s store, called Ünal Market. A friendship developed from there. Bilal later met Altıntaş three to four times and one time even invited him to his home for a talk. The conversation between the two mainly focused on Syria, and Altıntaş expressed his desire to leave the police force and go to Syria for jihad. The killer also attended Quran lessons delivered by Bilal in the Hicret Mosque in Ankara’s Etlik district. Altıntaş was part of a WhatsApp group set up by Bilal to communicate with the cell’s other members.

 

 

On Dec. 18, 2016 Altıntaş posted a message in the WhatsApp group asking if anybody was interested in taking his books as he was moving from Ankara. Bilal replied and said he could drop the books at his brother Murat’s store and that he would pick them up from there. Altıntaş brought the books in a suitcase and left them for Bilal in his brother’s store. When Altıntaş arrived at the store, Muhammed Selman was working at the market and took delivery of the books.

 

 

According to a report dated Sept. 21, 2018 and incorporated in the indictment, Altıntaş possessed several jihadist books written by Bülent Tokgöz, who used the assumed name of Yahya Konuk in his writings. Tokgöz is a battle-hardened, long-time jihadist who travelled to Chechnya, Bosnia and Kashmir in the 1990s. He was arrested along with five other Turkish nationals on Jan. 31, 2001 as part of a crackdown on radical religious groups. Tokgöz and his friends (İzzettin Tunç, Talip Kara, Burhan Kavuncu and two businessmen identified only by their first names, Halil and Salim) were responsible for planting bombs in front of the Russian Consulate General in Istanbul on Nov. 15, 1999 and at Russia’s Aeroflot ticket office in the Beyoğlu district of the same city on Dec. 8, 1999. Therefore, it is not surprising that Karlov’s assassin was inspired by Tokgöz, who had taken part in terrorist acts against Russian interests in the past. Tokgöz remains at large today and is believed to be in conflict zones outside of Turkey.

 

 

   

 

In the summer 2015 Murat Oduncu arranged a meeting with the assassin and Tokgöz’s cleric, Mehmet Emin Akın, a Turkish Salafist cleric who runs an Islamist NGO called Merhamet Eğitim ve Kültür Derneği (Mercy Education and Culture Association) in Ankara. Akın was detained by police in May 2017 as part of an Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) probe but was quickly released after the Erdoğan government’s intervention amid an outcry from his own supporters. Interestingly enough, Akın’s website published a letter he had received from the jailed Tokgöz, whose books inspired the Russian ambassador’s assassin. The letter was sent to Akın on March 22, 2002, when Tokgöz was serving time in a prison in central Eskisehir province. Akın addressed the jihadist Tokgöz as “brother,” while the latter called the former Aziz Ağabeyim ve Hocam (Respected Elder Brother and My Preacher).

In other words, both the man who tried to blow up the Russian Consulate with 35 kilograms of explosives in 1999 and the man who killed the Russian ambassador in 2016 had the same master. The Turkish prosecutor also ignored this link and did not pursue any probe into Altıntaş’s contacts with the cleric Akın. What Tokgöz failed to accomplish in taking down a high-profile Russian target in Turkey was accomplished by Altıntaş, who read Tokgöz’s jihadist books. Akın, who met killer and talked to him in person, was not named as a suspect, either. He testified as a witness.

 

  

Jihadist books owned by the killer of the Russian ambassador.

 

Another book the assassin had was popular jihadist reading material about Syria and resistance groups there written by Abdülkadir Şen, who was a suspect in a 2014 al-Qaeda probe in Turkey. Şen was exposed while moving supplies to jihadist groups in Syria, but the investigation, which also uncovered Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization’s (MIT) close cooperation with al-Qaeda groups in Syria, was quickly hushed up by the Erdoğan government. In the same case file Abdülkadir’s brother, İbrahim Şen, a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist who was running a recruitment and trafficking scheme between Turkey and Syria, was also a suspect. İbrahim Şen was detained in Pakistan on alleged al-Qaeda links and transferred to Guantanamo, where he was kept until 2005, when US officials decided to turn him over to Turkey. He was arrested in January 2014 and indicted in October 2014 but let go at the first hearing of the trial in October 2014. His brother Abdülkadir also escaped criminal charges thanks to political cover provided by Erdoğan. He was not named as a suspect in the Karlov case, either, even though Abdülkadir met the killer in person and talked to him.

 

 

Other books the Russian ambassador’s killer handed over to his contact in Ankara included translated volumes written by Abu Yahya al-Libi, one of the most senior figures in al-Qaeda who was killed in June 2012 in a drone attack in Pakistan, and Anwar al-Awlaki, known as the father of global jihad and a founding member of al-Qaeda who was killed in 1989 in Pakistan. Incidentally, these and many other jihadist books are freely sold in Turkey, while numerous publications critical of the Erdoğan government are banned and collected from bookshelves. In some cases even the publishing houses are unlawfully seized. It says a great deal about the approach of the Turkish government when it comes to violent jihadist literature.

 

 

In his testimony to the police, 26-year-old Muhammet Selman said his uncles went to the border province of Hatay on the night of Dec. 13, 2016 to attend a program organized by the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri ve İnsani Yardım Vakfı, or IHH) and came back few days later. The IHH was named by Russia as a front outfit that sends arms and supplies to jihadist groups in Syria with the help of the Erdoğan government. The intelligence documents attesting to that fact were submitted to the UN Security Council by Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin in January 2016. When the killer went to drop off the books, Selman was minding the store. He said his uncles had some business to attend to on Dec. 18, 2016 and that they had asked him to take care of the shop in their absence.

 

 

The Oduncu brothers shut down their social media accounts after the murder of the Russian ambassador and tried to cover their tracks, but there was overwhelming evidence already recorded to suggest that they are a dangerous gang bent on radicalizing more people like the assassin policeman. On the night of a false flag coup attempt on July 15, 2016 the Oduncu brothers were one of the jihadist groups that mobilized in the streets of Ankara. They were among the crowd in front of Ankara police headquarters where they were given MP-5 machine guns. A video recording I managed to find shows them preaching and distributing jihadist materials in front of Erdoğan’s palace in Ankara, while Murat Oduncu was waving a black and white jihadist flag. As of today, they continue to act with impunity from a base of operations in an Ankara neighborhood where the Turkish intelligence agency’s headquarters are located.

 

Mufti Metin Oduncu, a 54-year-old cleric who is on the government payroll and responsible for many Imams and mosques in the Güldül district of Ankara, also testified as a witness in the Karlov murder trial. Police brought him in for questioning at the counterterrorism department on Dec. 21, 2016. He claimed his brothers were innocent and framed by the killer. Metin Oduncu served as a Diyanet imam in Oslo, Norway, between 2003 and 2007. He has been working for the government as a mufti since September 2014.

 

 

 

 

Above are seen Kurtuba youth movement posters on the Internet that show how they praise Osama bin Laden, condemn Erdogan’s chief critic, the US-based Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, and run an operation to send pickup trucks to jihadists in Syria.