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Turkey threatens Israel:
https://www.haaretz.com/1.5176550

Turkey threatens Greece and Cyprus:
http://www.ekathimerini.com/220033/...reek-cypriots-with-measures-over-gas-drilling

Turkey threatens Europe:
https://www.euractiv.com/section/gl...eatens-to-send-europe-15000-refugees-a-month/

Turkey threatens Syria:
http://www.newsweek.com/turkeys-erdogan-aims-ending-rule-cruel-assad-526478

Turkey threatens Iran:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/02/iran-turkey-trade-barbs-syria-iraq-170221133606326.html

Turkey threatens Saudi Arabia, Gulf Countries:
https://www.geo.tv/latest/167838-erdogan-pledges-military-support-for-qatar-on-doha-visit

Turkey threatens Armenia:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8572934.stm

Turkey threatens the Netherlands:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ns-threat-angela-merkel-erdogan-a7627056.html

Turkey threatens Russia:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34941093

Turkey threatens China:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-33440998

Turkey threatens the US:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ed-corruption-banker-case-trump-a8143586.html

Turkey threatens Iraq:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...raq-oil-pipeline-cut-off-threat-a7966996.html

Turkey threatens Argentina:
https://armenpress.am/eng/news/816649/

Turkey threatens Australia:
https://thediplomat.com/2013/09/turkey-threatens-to-ban-australian-politicians-from-gallipoli/

Turkey threatens Germany:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/worl...ens-Europe-Germany-after-referendum-rally-ban


Learn 2 diplomacy yo!
Fvckn hell you're a drainer sometimes! :enjoy:
 
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Free Gaza spox admits activist initiated fatal 2010 violence aboard Mavi Marmara
Report on inner-workings of anti-Semitic group reveals that Greta Berlin belatedly acknowledged 'crazy' Ken O'Keefe seized IDF commando's gun, sparking fight in which 10 Turks died
By ROBERT PHILPOT13 March 2018, 10:05 am13

  • Footage taken from a security camera aboard the Mavi Marmara, showing the activists preparing to resist IDF soldiers about to board the ship. (IDF Spokesperson/Flash90)


    LONDON — A leading pro-Palestinian campaigner involved in the flotilla that attempted to enter Gaza in May 2010 has appeared to corroborate Israel’s version of the events which led to the bloody confrontation on board the Mavi Marmara.

    Ten Turkish activists died after IDF commandos boarded the ship — the largest in the six-vessel convoy — as it sailed towards the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave in defiance of an Israeli security blockade designed to prevent the terror group importing weapons.

    In newly revealed posts from a secret British Facebook group, Greta Berlin, the co-founder and spokesperson of the Free Gaza Movement, states that the Israeli troops did not open fire until after Ken O’Keefe, a former US marine aboard the Mavi Marmara, had seized a gun from one of them.

    During a heated online debate, in the safety of a Facebook group of pro-Palestinian activists who had all been approved or invited to join, Berlin repeatedly challenged comments from other members praising O’Keefe.


    Greta Berlin, spokesperson and co-founder for Free Gaza Movement. (Engelo, CC-BY-SA, via wikipedia)
    “He was responsible for some of the deaths on board the Mavi Marmara. Had he not disarmed an Israeli terrorist soldier, they would not have started to fire. That’s enough. Most of you have no idea what you’re talking about,” she wrote.

    Berlin’s comments, posted in 2014, were made on the Palestine Live group.

    Last week, a report by researcher and blogger David Collier uncovered a raft of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel material on the site, whose members once included the leader of Britain’s Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn.

    But Collier’s examination of the Facebook group also seems to throw new light on the events which unfolded in international waters off of the Gazan coast nearly eight years ago, which provoked a fierce diplomatic spat between Turkey and Israel and the severing of ties by Ankara.

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    Muslim activists hold pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli placards at a rally in Jakarta, Indonesia, in June 2010, days after the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident. (photo credit: AP/Achmad Ibrahim)

  • Dueling narratives
    Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara by descending on ropes from helicopters. The IDF later said that its forces were attacked with clubs, knives and metal rods as they began to land from the first helicopter, with three soldiers taken captive. It stated that soldiers opened fire after a protester grabbed a weapon from one of the commandos.

    “Unfortunately this group were dead-set on confrontation,” the then Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev told the BBC shortly after the clash.

    “Live fire was used against our forces. They initiated the violence, that’s 100 percent clear,” he said.

    The activists, however, claimed that Israeli forces began firing as soon as they hit the deck.


    One of their first accounts came from Berlin, who was not sailing on the Mavi Marmara. Speaking from Cyprus just hours after the raid, she told the New York Times that the commandos “opened fire on sleeping civilians at four in the morning.”

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    IDF commandos board the Mavi Marmara, 2010, to prevent it sailing to Gaza (photo credit: Youtube screen capture)

  • It was a line which she repeated to other international media outlets throughout the day, thus helping to shape a widespread narrative of Israeli aggression.

    Intense international condemnation of the violence followed, with several countries summoning the Israeli ambassadors serving there.

    During demonstrations in London, Corbyn, then a backbench Labour MP, accused Israel of committing a “war crime” and “an act of piracy” and branded it a “rogue state.”

    Berlin’s post, Collier argues, suggests “there was no Israeli fire while the soldiers were coming down from the helicopters, nor any at all until after the unexpected level of resistance had been encountered and soldiers had been taken ‘prisoner.’”

    The Israeli report submitted to a 2011 UN panel established to investigate the incident, he continues, was “accurate.”

    “It is difficult to logically read Berlin’s comment any other way,” he notes. “[She] clearly knows that what really happened isn’t the way they told it.”

    ‘Unacceptable’ loss of life in face of ‘violent resistance’
    While the UN panel criticized the loss of life on the Mavi Marmara as “unacceptable,” it also concluded that the commandos faced “significant, organized and violent resistance” which required them to “use force for their own protection.”

    Faced with differing accounts from Turkey — which accused Israeli forces of “excessive, brutal and premeditated” conduct — and Israel, the UN panel failed to come to a conclusion about the point at which the commandos opened fire.

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    Protesters in November 2012 stand outside Istanbul’s Palace of Justice, the site of the trial against Israeli army officers for the Mavi Marmara incident. (photo credit: Image capture from Channel 10)
    Collier, though, uncovered further posts from Berlin on the Facebook group which appear to back Israel’s description of how the confrontation unfolded.

    “You think it was smart that he took the gun away from these crazies on board the MM [Mavi Marmara]? Then ran around the deck saying he had the gun? Then hid it so that the Israelis could say they found a gun on board? Right,” she wrote in one thread.

    In another, she charges that O’Keefe, a fellow member of Palestine Live, was “not a hero and his actions put others on the Mavi Marmara at risk.” She also refers to “Ken’s crazy ideas to attack crazed and armed soldiers.”

    Berlin also appears to question O’Keefe’s motivations, noting that, “He’s a provacateur [sic] of the highest order and one wonders just why.” She then wrote: “Since he took the gun away and ran around holding it up, why didn’t the crazy Israeli terrorists shoot him? Why did they ONLY shoot people with cameras in their hands.”

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    In this 2010 photo, a Palestinian in the city of Hebron builds a miniature ship to show support for the flotilla to Gaza, which became the Mavi Marmara incident. Israel has offered new compensation to Turkey to normalize the strained relations from the incident (photo credit: NAJEH HASHLAMOUN/FLASH90)
    Berlin’s ire had been piqued by the posting in the group of a 2010 interview with O’Keefe and a 2014 YouTube video featuring him entitled “The ISIS (Israel State Intelligence Service) Genocidal Agenda.”


    Anti-Israel activist Ken O’Keefe (Facebook)
    Her animus towards O’Keefe, whom she brands “a menace,” seems to stem from her experience with him aboard an earlier, 2008 ship which sailed to Gaza. On this occasion, and four others, Israel allowed convoys to breach the blockade and travel to Gaza.

    “He created all kinds of problems for us on that first trip to Gaza,” Berlin argues in one post, and later alleges that O’Keefe “lied about having a captain’s license.” She also strongly hints that he had been spoiling for a fight with Israeli forces during that voyage, writing of his “rather crazy ideas of wanting to have a ‘suicide boat.’”

    “We had all said Ken would not be invited onto this flotilla,” she says referring to the May 2010 convoy, “but he somehow got on board.”

    Paranoia and conspiracy theories
    Both O’Keefe and Berlin are long-time pro-Palestinian campaigners. He has previously called Israel a “racist, apartheid, genocidal state” which “must be destroyed” and claimed that the Mossad was “directly involved” in the 9/11 attacks. He regularly appears on Press TV, the Iranian state broadcaster’s English-language outlet.

    F100805HS01-1024x640.jpg

    The Mavi Marmara is tugged out of Haifa harbor long after the raid (photo credit: Herzl Shapira/Flash 90)
    Berlin’s first husband was a Palestinian and she initially became involved in anti-Israel activism after the 1967 war. She later spent time in the West Bank on behalf of the International Solidarity Movement and sparked controversy in 2012 when she was accused of promoting a video claiming that Zionists were responsible for the Holocaust.

    She subsequently said she had not watched the “disgusting” video before posting it.

    Berlin has described Israel as an “illegal entity” and “a country founded on terrorism.”

    The Mavi Marmara was operated by the Turkish charity, IHH, which was banned by Israel in 2008. The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center claimed in 2010 that “besides its legitimate humanitarian activities, IHH supports radical Islamic terrorist networks. In recent years it has prominently supported Hamas.”

    Even after Turkey and Israel restored full diplomatic relations in 2016, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continued to publicly insist that it was “impossible” that the IDF soldiers were acting in self-defense.

    “We have all of the documents and evidence,” Erdogan told Channel 2.

    “Regrettably, 10 of our brothers were martyred there,” he added.

    Berlin did not respond to a request by The Times of Israel for comment.
 
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March 15 2018
ERSU ABLAK

Why are Turks so easily conned?


The title should’ve actually been a bit longer: Why are we so easily conned, and what does technology have to do with it?

I know that there are con artists everywhere around the world. I know that the first Ponzi scheme happened in the U.S. But when it comes to mass conning, I believe that Turkey is a global leader. It’s recurring, such cases happen every 10 years or so. A self-proclaimed savior of poor Turks comes up with a revolutionary idea to make every Turk rich, only if they act quickly and give money from their savings. And thousands of people fall for it. The most notorious names in Turkish history are Sülün Osman, Banker Kastelli, Jet Fadıl, Kenan Şeranoğlu and the latest, Mehmet Aydın.

Among these names, Jet Fadıl deserves a special mention, because he swindled people numerous times since 1987. He says he is creating a fantastic project and takes money from people who hope that once the project is finished, they will become rich. He first promised to build a hotel called Caprice, then a housing project called Jetkent, then a 100 percent national car called “Proton.” He then promised to manufacture another car called “İmza.” His latest fraud was to build an Islamic hotel called “Caprice Gold” in the Maldives in 2014. These are all projects he promised he would do, but failed to. But I am sure that if he comes up with another project, people would still give him their hard-earned money, as they have done so very recently with Çiftlik Bank.

Çiftlik Bank, which means “Farm Bank” in Turkish, might be the biggest con in Turkish history. Mehmet Aydın, its founder, collected a staggering amount of 511 million Turkish Liras from 80,000 people and vanished. Çiftlik Bank was a gamified version of a classical Ponzi scheme. He set up a website called Çiftlik Bank where you could buy virtual animals and in turn the bank would give you the profits made from these animals. They believed they actually bought the farm animals and made profits by running huge farms.

According to a recent piece by Hacer Boyacıoğlu on Hürriyet Daily News, the owner of Çiftlik Bank, Birlik Beraberlik Tarım Hayvancılık İthalat İhracat Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi, collects money from members by promising them “halal” profits between 1,000 liras and 10,000 liras per month. Ekolium Bilişim Yazılım Firması, apparently based in the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri, claims its members make 2,253 liras a month by investing 10,000 liras. Another firm, Maden.im, collects money from members through an online mining game. The company claims that the more new players the existing users bring in, the more money they can make.

This really is the definition of Ponzi scheme, isn’t it?

But why are people falling for it again and again? What does technology have to do with it?

My shortest answer to that is that we fail to teach critical thinking to our people well enough, we give more importance to being rich than being satisfied with our lives, we praise the rich more than the educated. And technology makes it easier to find people with the lowest critical thinking abilities and create new methods to streamline cons like Ponzi schemes. Also the belief that people in the tech world can get rich instantly, makes people fall for new cars and virtual farms faster, just like the huge number of Turks who bought bitcoins when it was above the 15,000 dollar mark. I strongly urge the government to rethink about changing the education system. We really need to be better at critical thinking, understanding technology and having financial literacy. Otherwise, as new technologies emerge many more Turks will lose their-hard earned money.

Solomon2 comment: this change strikes me as comparatively recent; in my studies of Turks, they were noted for patient workmanship as a path towards wealth and competing among themselves to spend the most money to be the most generous of hosts. So when did this change take place?
 
Solomon2 comment: this change strikes me as comparatively recent; in my studies of Turks, they were noted for patient workmanship as a path towards wealth and competing among themselves to spend the most money to be the most generous of hosts. So when did this change take place?
Solomon, i think these con stories happen all around the world...not in Turkey only. Like getting a huge sum of money from a Nigerian via inheritence whom happens to have same surname with you. There are lot's of spam mails and fake advertisements about how to make easy money. So, i think this happens to be everywhere around the world.

But undeniable fact is Turkish people become much more attracted to earning easy money / getting more money. Not only through cons but this is causing huge corruption in Turkey. Corruption in Turkey reached unbelievable new heights.
 
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Turkey's top constitutional body on Friday ruled for the second time that the rights of a Turkish journalist jailed in the wake of the failed coup over his links to the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) had been violated while in detention.

The Constitutional Court had in January ruled that Şahin Alpay and fellow journalist and academic Mehmet Altan should be released on the grounds that their rights had been violated.

But the lower criminal courts hearing their cases defied the decision and they remain in jail. It remains to be seen if on this occasion the lower court will respond to the ruling by the higher court.

The court's decision was criticized by the government, saying the Constitutional Court overstepped its authority and acted as an appeals court.

Mehmet Altan was on February 16 handed a life sentence on charges of links to the FETÖ, along with his brother Ahmet, also a writer and former editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Taraf daily that acted as the mouthpiece of sham trials launched by the FETÖ, and veteran journalist Nazlı Ilıcak.

In a separate case, Alpay remains on trial, also charged with links to the failed coup and facing life in jail if convicted. He was arrested shortly after the failed coup and remanded in pre-trial detention in late July 2016.

Anadolu Agency reported that after the January court ruling, Alpay applied to the Constitutional Court for a second time which again ruled by a majority vote Friday his rights had been violated.

A similar application by Mehmet Altan would be examined at a later date, the agency added. The court said that Alpay should be paid 20,000 lira ($5,100) in compensation.

The latest ruling comes as the European Court of Human Rights is scheduled on March 20 to rule on the cases of Alpay and Mehmet Altan who both appealed to the Strasbourg court.

Turkey is a member of the Council of Europe rights watchdog, of which the court is a part, and is thus obliged to implement its judgments. The Council of Europe's chief Thorbjorn Jagland also expressed concern after lower courts refused to release Alpay and Altan, saying such decisions were "binding" otherwise "the rule of law will be undermined."

Alpay, a left-wing militant turned liberal active in the press since the early 1980s, was detained on July 31, 2016, along with other columnists of the now-defunct Zaman daily, the main newspaper of the FETÖ's once-sprawling media empire. In a court hearing in September, Alpay dismissed accusations that he was part of the FETÖ and only wrote for the newspaper because there were no other job offers and he needed the money. He said that he had "no idea" that the FETÖ, which he described as the Gülen Movement named after its leader Fetullah Gülen, was involved in anything illegal.

The terrorist group faces a new barrage of trials after the July 15 coup attempt, its latest bid to seize power through its infiltrators. The group is accused of running media outlets to vindicate its actions and orchestrating defamation campaigns against the group's critics. FETÖ once wielded considerable clout in the media where it ran TV stations and newspapers that spread the group's propaganda. Most were closed down as part of the crackdown on the FETÖ and were handed to trustees as the legal processes against the group's members commenced.

source: https://www.dailysabah.com/investig...n-favor-of-journalist-arrested-for-feto-links
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There is a lot of attention to the Afrin operation, but I think it's equally important that we keep an eye on the ongoing cases in our own society.

Especially the cases like this. If the rule of law isn't being respected then our society is going backwards. Regardless of what RTE says or wants us to believe.

I read the article and especially the part where the Alpay mentions he needed money which is why he wrote as a journalist shows that people might be innocent and if that is the case then the government needs to show fucking proper redemption and pay more than 100 times the compensation for messing up these peoples lives forever!
 
WTF? Trading Economics' corruption rank for Turkey quadrupled in the past twenty years! Turks used to be a model compared to the U.S. - what happened to you guys?
One islamist Terrorist, Fethollah Gulen, corrupted in all government institution one by one, in last 2 decades. That is what happened, hundreds of thousands islamist Fethollah terrorists have been kicked out but there are still same amount of them in institutions, if not more.

War against corruption of islamist Fethollah terrorist will not be won as long as US keeps harbouring and supporting Islamist terrorist Fethollah scum in US territory.
 
One islamist Terrorist, Fethollah Gulen, corrupted in all government institution one by one...War against corruption of islamist Fethollah terrorist will not be won as long as US keeps harbouring and supporting Islamist terrorist Fethollah scum in US territory.
As I've pointed out previously, U.S. law enforcement knows there's some questionable stuff associated with Gulen-supported institutions here in the U.S. However, Turkey isn't supplying information needed for more aggressive prosecutions. I suspect that's because Erdogan and Gulen were allied at the time and doing so would make Erdogan look bad, or because Erdogan is now trying to take control of them.

As for Gulen himself, he shouldn't be extradited until there's a pile of evidence supporting the most serious possible charges against him because under the U.S.-Turkey extradition treaty there's no room for discovery afterwards: under the treaty you can't extradite him for a minor fraud and clobber him with treason afterwards.

Still....do you really think that just this one bad apple spoiled the whole barrel?
 
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Turkish Prosecutors Want to Imprison American Pastor for Life
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BY BRIDGET JOHNSON MARCH 15, 2018

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Turkish prosecutors are seeking what would amount to a life sentence for a North Carolina pastor held on false coup-related charges.


Andrew Brunson was charged by the Turkish government with attempting to destroy the country's constitutional order and overthrow their parliament. Brunson has been sitting behind bars since last year, swept up in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's engulfing purge of perceived enemies. He has lost more than 50 pounds in custody.

Brunson and his wife, Norine, raised their family in Turkey and ministered through the Protestant Izmir Resurrection Church in the Aegean coast city. In October 2016, they found a note on their door telling them to report to the migration management office for what they thought would be a visit connected to their visa renewal. Instead, officials detained the couple.

Norine was eventually released and allowed to stay in the country. The pastor, though, was sent to jail in December 2016 on a hazy accusation of "membership in an armed terrorist organization."

The indictment this week charges that Brunson is linked to Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, the Erdoğan opponent blamed for the July 2016 coup attempt. The Turkish government has rounded up tens of thousands of people since then, using broad false claims of Gülen links to go after political foes.

Erdoğan has made clear that he wants a trade. “They want a pastor [Brunson] from us, you have a pastor [Gülen], too. Extradite him so that we can prosecute him," he said in September.

Pro-Erdoğan media have claimed that prosecutors have a 2010 recording of Brunson referring to a 2016 coup attempt as an "earthquake." Pro-Erdoğan media have also wildly claimed that Brunson is a CIA operative who would have been promoted to chief of the agency if the coup attempt had been successful. One Pro-Erdoğan paper dubbed Brunson "Rambo Pastor."

The prosecutor in the Aegean province of İzmir has asked for a 35-year sentence for 50-year-old Brunson. The court have 15 days to accept the indictment and move forward with prosecution.

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At a press conference alongside Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in Ankara last month, now-former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. continues "to have serious concerns about the detention of local employees of our mission in Turkey and about cases against U.S. citizens who have been arrested under the state of emergency."

"We will continue to engage with our Turkish counterparts to seek a satisfactory resolution to these cases, and we call upon Turkey to release Pastor Andrew Brunson and other U.S. citizens whom we believe are being unjustly detained," Tillerson said. "With regard to Serkan Gölge, we believe his release through the appeals process would be both just and appropriate."

A NASA scientist working on the U.S. mission to Mars, Serkan Gölge was visiting his parents in Turkey in July 2016 when he was arrested in Erdoğan's engulfing post-coup sweeps. Turkish authorities, claiming his NASA security card meant he has CIA links, threw him in solitary confinement and only let the physicist be seen by a U.S. consular official this October. Family later discovered through court documents that Serkan's sister's brother-in-law had been the tipster who turned in the NASA researcher over a family land dispute.

Gölge was recently sentenced to 7.5 years in prison. He is married with two sons and has been a U.S. citizen since 2011.

Çavuşoğlu replied that Turkey's judicial system "does not receive any direction from any other third country or a political intervention from within."

"The appeal process is open. You can go all the way up to the constitutional court," he said. "We do have an individual application system to the constitutional court and even the European Court of Human Rights."

State Department press secretary Heather Nauert said U.S. consular officials have been able to visit Brunson three times: Aug. 24, Sept. 18, and Feb. 6.
 
Its good to see that there still are independent courts in the country.
 
But the lower criminal courts hearing their cases defied the decision and they remain in jail. It remains to be seen if on this occasion the lower court will respond to the ruling by the higher court.
Wait, what? How?
 

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