Political Witch Hunt Has Allowed An ISLAMIC Takeover,
Islamic Republic Advocates WINNING Battle over Military,
Turkey Now Headed Toward Becoming an Islamic Republic,
Turkish military was the only hope for Turkey to stay Secular!
Once Military Leaders Jailed or Subdued Turks Will Leave NATO,
Goodbye to the West and hello to Islamic Jihad for a Daniel Horn!
Turkish PRIME MINISTER Erdog an HAS Successfully Avoided A COUP,
He h
as Arrested or Discredited Military Foes like a Snake in the Grass!
Erodagan Calling Gaza Genocide is Like the Pot Calling the KETTLE Black,
When One Considers LOOKING BACK at 1915 TURK Armenia Genocidal Act,
Which Turkey Keeps Trying to Get All the World’s Nations to SURELY Retract!
February 15, 2009
http://www.tribulationperuiod.com/
Begin Excerpt 1 from CNN
Turkish military denies link to illegal groups
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Ex-police chief accuses top general of ordering him to create secret force
Ibrahim Sahin was testifying in court in Istanbul
He’s accused of membership in a shadowy organization plotting against govt.
“Ergenekon” linked to series of unsolved assassinations over last 15 years
ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) — The once-untouchable Turkish military again took to defending itself on its Web site, announcing Thursday that “the Turkish military has no connections with illegal organizations or criminals.”
The statement was released after a former police chief accused Turkey’s top army general of ordering him to create a secret counter-terrorism force charged with “cleaning out the interior of Turkey.”
Ibrahim Sahin, a former officer in charge of police special operations, testified in an Istanbul court this week is one of scores of suspects accused of membership in a shadowy organization that plotted to overthrow the Turkish government. He made the charges against the Turkish military while testifying to a state prosecutor.
Among those arrested are businessmen, politicians, journalists and army officers. News reports have linked the group — known as “Ergenekon” — to a series of unsolved assassinations over the past 15 years.
The Ergenekon investigation has been under way since 2007. In prosecutors’ first voluminous indictment, they charged suspects with plotting to attack a NATO base in Turkey, as one of a series of “bloody attacks aiming at creating serious crisis, chaos, anarchy, terrorism and instability.”
‘Plotters’ seized as tension mounts in Turkey
Critics say the investigation is a political witch hunt. They accuse Turkey’s observant Muslim prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of targeting staunch secularists.
Prosecutors are preparing a second indictment that is expected to charge several army generals who were arrested last year with membership in Ergenekon.
Begin Excerpt 2 from Jerusalem Post
Essay: Genocide by any international standard
February 12, 2009
Sean Gannon , THE JERUSALEM POST
“The persecution of Armenians is assuming unprecedented proportions. Reports from widely scattered districts indicate a systematic attempt to uproot peaceful populations and through arbitrary efforts, terrible tortures, wholesale expulsions and deportations from one end of the Empire to the other, accompanied by frequent instances of rape, pillage and murder turning into massacre, to bring destruction and destitution on them.” – Henry Morgenthau Sr., US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, July 10, 1915
But did this constitute genocide
? Not according to Israel which, for reasons of “practical realpolitik” regarding relations with Turkey has long refused to recognize the 1915-1923 massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks as an act of ethnic extermination.
Nor according to the United States, which bases its refusal on similar grounds.
And not without cause.
Most recently, Turkey responded to an October 2007 draft congressional resolution calling on president George Bush to characterize the killings as genocide by threatening to cut its logistical support for US operations in Iraq and close its strategic Incirlik air base to American aircraft. Turkey spent $300,000 a month on Washington lobbyists to ensure its message hit home. The resolution, which had already passed the committee stage and had 225 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, was quickly withdrawn.
Ankara’s indefatigable efforts to prevent international recognition of the Armenian genocide derive from the fact that its denial is part of Turkey’s founding mythology, a plank of official policy since the 1922 Lausanne Conference, where claims of mass killings were dismissed as “Christian propaganda.” In 1934, it successfully lobbied Washington to persuade MGM to drop plans to film The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Franz Werfel’s best-selling novel about the Armenian experience, by threatening to boycott American films.
This campaign of denial intensified after 1965 when Armenian commemorations of the 50th anniversary brought the issue to international attention. By the mid-1970s, Turkey was engaged in what Richard Falk described as “a major, proactive, deliberate effort to… keep the truth about the Armenian genocide from general acknowledgment.” By the 1990s, this included the endowment of chairs in Turkish studies at several US universities with the aim of disseminating Ankara’s version of events.
ACCORDING TO THIS VERSION, Armenians have willfully painted an inaccurate picture of what happened in the World War I period and why. And there is certainly truth in Turkey’s claim that the situation w as not
as clear-cut as generally presented. Rarely acknowledged, for instance, is that the rise of Armenian nationalism in the 19th century led to enormous tensions between Armenians and their Ottoman overlords, and that many had sided against the empire in the 1828, 1854 and 1877 wars.
It is also infrequently admitted that although 250,000 Armenians were conscripted into the Ottoman armies during World War I, another 150,000, out of a sense of religious affinity with the Orthodox Slavs and in the hope that a Russian victory would lead to an independent Armenian state, volunteered to serve under the czar, while a further 50,000 joined Armenian guerrilla groups which openly sided with him. Seldom spoken of either is the fact that hundreds of thousands of Muslim, Greek and Jewish civilians died directly at their hands.
But while Constantinople may have gained grounds for viewing the Armenians as a fifth column, nonpartisan sources make clear that their deportation and murder began before any attempted insurrection.
As David Fromkin, who studied German sources, has written: “There are historians today who continue to support the claim… that the Ottoman rulers acted only after Armenia had risen against them. But observers at the time who were by no means anti-Turk reported that such was not the case. German officers stationed there agreed that the area was quiet until the deportations began.”
Ankara also denies that 1.5 million Armenians actually died. While some Turkish historians allow that up to 600,000 were killed, the semi-official Turkish Historical Society puts the figure closer to 300,000 and argues that, of these, only 10,000 were massacred, the remainder dying of starvation and disease.
It further claims that these 10,000 were killed, not as part of a genocidal plan, but in the heat of battle and more often than not by Kurds.
But it is a matter of historical record that the Special Organization, an official arm of the Defense Ministry, oversaw the activities of Einsatzgruppen-style killing squads that, in the words of one US diplomat, “swept the countryside, massacring [Armenian] men, women and children.” And while Kurds were certainly involved in the killing, they were deliberately coopted for the task by the Turkish War Ministry in the knowledge that, as the Armenians’ historic blood enemies, they would lose no opportunity to avenge ancient grudges.
Ankara’s distinction between those directly murdered and those who died indirectly from starvation, disease and exposure is also highly questionable. With no provision made for clothing, food or shelter, the anticipated outcome of the deportations into the Syrian desert was obviously death. In fact, the Turkish interior minister termed them “marches to eternity” and his meaning was clear to his appalled German allies who distanced themselves from the policy. To say that the Armenians who died during the deportations were not deliberately killed is like claiming there were no intentional Jewish deaths during their “relocation” to the East or on the death marches to the West during World War II.
THE FACT IS that the Armenian massacres constituted genocide by any international standard, conforming to the UN’s criterion of having been “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Indeed, Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘genocide’ in 1944, used the Armenian massacres as an illustrative example.
Today Turkey’s campaign to prevent its recognition is assuming a Canute-like quality. Some 21 countries have already formally acknowledged it, including Russia, Canada and France, as has the European Parliament, the World Council of Churches and the International Association of Genocide Scholars. And with President Barack Obama (who twice pledged to recognize the genocide during his election campaign), Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, CIA chief Leon Panetta and the NSC’s director of multilateral affairs Samantha Power also on board, we now have what the Turkish daily Hurriyet described as the “most pro-Armenian [administration] in history,” and the Armenian National Committee of America is currently preparing to place another “recognition resolution” before Congress. In fact, Obama may well use this year’s April 24 White House statement commemorating the killings to recognize them as genocide.
Furthermore, an official with a leading American Jewish organization recently told The Jerusalem Post that the post-Cast Lead “deterioration in Israel-Turkey relations might prompt his group and others to reconsider” their traditional support for Ankara’s stance. And Israel, which Yair Auron, author of The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, describes as Turkey’s “principal partner” in denial, has itself made similar noises, with Deputy Foreign Minister Majallie Whbee warning that if Turkey persists in its claims that genocide is taking place in Gaza, “we will then recognize the Armenian-related events as genocide.”
Albeit for the wrong reasons, this is surely the right thing to do. For, while fears regarding repercussions for both bilateral relations and Turkey’s 25,000-strong Jewish community are unfortunately well-founded, Israel, perhaps more than other nations, has a moral obligation to call this crime by its name.
The writer is a freelance journalist, writing mainly on Irish and Middle Eastern affairs. He is currently preparing a book on the history of Irish-Israeli relations.
Begin Excerpt 3 from Jerusalem Post
Turkey irked by IDF general’s remarks
February 14, 2009
Herb Keinon , THE JERUSALEM POST
In what appears to some in Jerusalem as an attempt to create friction between the Israeli and Turkish military establishments, the Turkish Foreign Ministry called in Israeli envoy Gabi Levy Saturday to protest reports that an IDF general sharply criticized Turkey’s prime minister for his harsh condemnation of Israel during Operation Cast Lead.
“We confirm that the Turks protested to the ambassador. He [Levy] wrote it down and will pass it on to Jerusalem,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Saturday evening.
OC Ground Forces Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi was paraphrased in an Haaretz feature Friday as saying during a lecture at the Tactical Command College on Tuesday that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been vicious in his criticism of Israel since Operation Cast Lead, should first look in the mirror.
The report said that Mizrahi, not a household name in Israel, “did not leave it at a clear allusion to the massacre of the Armenians and the suppression of the Kurds, but mentioned the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus as well.”
The Turks asked Levy whether the comments were true, and for an explanation.
The IDF Spokesman’s Office issued a statement saying, “In his lecture, Maj.-Gen. Mizrahi referred to the moral level of IDF commanders and soldiers during Operation Cast Lead.
“When referring to the criticism Turkey leveled at Israel, the general said that the statements [made by Turkey] could also be interpreted as criticism of Turkey. The IDF Spokesman wishes to clarify that this does not reflect the official IDF position.”
Despite Erdogan’s extremely harsh comments during the Gaza operation – among them that Israel should be barred from the UN, that Israel was perpetrating inhumane actions that would lead to its destruction, and his upbraiding of President Shimon Peres at the Davos summit last month – Israel has never called in the Turkish ambassador to register a protest.
While Erdogan has gravely taken Israel to task, the Turkish military has stayed above the fray.
According to one school of thought in Jerusalem, however, making a major diplomatic issue over a paraphrased quote of an IDF general in the newspaper is an attempt to cause friction between the two military establishments.
Reuters
reported that the Turkish General Staff, in a statement carried by the state-run Anatolian news agency, said Mizrahi’s remarks were untrue and completely unacceptable.
“The comments have been assessed to be at the extent that the national interests between the two countries could be damaged,” it said.
Military ties between the two countries are important to both, with Israel one of Turkey’s key arms suppliers, and Turkey letting Israel use Turkish airspace for training exercises.
Turkey is extremely sensitive about three issues: the Armenian issue, the Kurds and Cyprus, and the feeling in Ankara is that Mizrahi managed to step on each of those blisters at one go.
The Turks also differentiate between what politicians, like Erdogan, say and what military men, like Mizrahi, say. The feeling in Ankara is that were the same comments made by Olmert or any other politician, they would not have elicited as strong a reaction as when uttered by a general.
Meanwhile, Erdogan continued his verbal sparring with Israel on Saturday, saying in an interview with Reuters and two Turkish newspapers that the Israeli elections left him “a bit sad.”
“Unfortunately we have seen that the [Israeli] people have voted for these [rightist] parties and that makes me a bit sad,” he said.”Unfortunately the election has painted a very dark picture.”
Erdogan, who has repeatedly condemned the Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip due to the continual rocket attacks against the western Negev, again called on Jerusalem to change its policy.
“With the cease-fire the embargo should be lifted,” he told Reuters.
“The Palestinian people should be freed from an open-air prison they are living in right now, this is against human rights.”
In a related development, sources in the Prime Minister’s Office downplayed media reports that Erdogan felt “betrayed” by Olmert because on the Israeli prime minister’s trip to Turkey in late December, just days before the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, Erdogan had called Syrian Prime Minister Bashar Assad, while Olmert was in his residence, and over a four-hour period tried to reach an agreement on beginning direct talks.
According to these reports, Olmert was being briefed in real time on the content of the discussions.
According to the report, Erdogan felt betrayed because while he was still awaiting Olmert’s final response to his efforts, Israel embarked on its Gaza operation.
“When Olmert was in Turkey before the war started, there was a feeling we were very, very close to direct talks with the Syrians, but it didn’t come together,” sources in the Prime Minister’s Office said Saturday night.
According to the source, “it didn’t come together,” because there was not enough common ground, not because of the Gaza operation.
“It didn’t come together before the beginning of the war, not because of the war,” he stressed.
Yaakov Katz contributed to this report
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more detailed information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
You may use material originated by this site.
However, if you wish to use any quoted copyrighted material from this site, which did not originate at this site, for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner from which we extracted it.