Nadene Goldfoot
It used to be that Turkey was quite moderate and easy to get along with. However, Prime Minister/President Recep Tayyip Erdogen had been turning more toward Islam and Shaaria law than ever before along with the rest of Middle Eastern states under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogen became more extreme and seemed to be siding against Israel such as what happened in the ship incident of the Turkish "Mavi Marmara" during a Gaza flotilla of breaking the rules of running with ships filled with who- knew -what for Gazan terrorists. Israel was boarding all ships and checking for weapons being smuggled into Gaza, and Turkey's ship experience turned into an assault on the Israeli sailors and a few Turkish deaths were the result of that.
The latest news of November 10, 2014 is that Turkey's tourism wants to send 100,000 tourists to Jerusalem. That's wonderful for the tourism industry. We have had many Jews go to Turkey on vacation both from the USA and Israel. We have a lot of Turkish Jews living in both places. I just hope they all don't go to Jerusalem at the same time. The word is that a visa is not necessary between Israel and Turkey now, making it much easier to travel.
(now read article in Gatestone)1 below in resources
But here's a warning. Gene Hirshhorn LePere, who happens to be a lady on my family tree, took a trip to Turkey a long time ago. A peddler insisted that she buy some little statue and wouldn't leave her alone. She had lingered too long from her group while looking at a table full of goodies. She bought the statue to get rid of the pesky peddler and wound up in prison for stealing an antique and was there for years in the woman's prison. It wasn't like any American prison! This was a middle aged American lady, well, maybe not so middle aged. She wrote a book about it, "
Never Pass This Way Again" in January 1988 and her story was made into a TV teleplay titled "
Dark Holiday in 1989. Yes, she did finally get out, but it was touch and go, as you would see in the book. Because of her experience, Turkey came to realize they needed to have stickers on such pieces to identify them for buyers from then on. You must remember, when in a foreign country, be careful. It's not the USA and you can't get help like you could if at home.
In March 2013 "
, Erdogan’s response to domestic troubles had raised new concerns while failing to convince his critics of the sincerity of his “democratic” ways. They remain convinced that he favors an Islamist agenda." This is what he has been encouraging.
" Is he presiding, as a growing number of observers fear, over an Islamist transformation of Turkey that would put it at odds with the West as it consolidates a “neo-Ottoman” regime? Those who worry about such an outcome find a portent in his remarks—well noted in Turkey but not elsewhere—at his party’s recent Congress. There, Erdogan urged the youth of Turkey to look not only to 2023, but to 2071 as well."
Some citizens of Turkey see signs of moderation, but not the Jordanians. A report last month was that they caught more than 12 members of ISIS who told the interrogator that they received training from the NATO member, Turkey. That's going from moderation to violence; from Sunni Islam to Salfist Islam. That's like a 180 degree turn about.
A senior Jordanian security official who remains anonymous told the reporter that 16 ISIS members were caught attempting to infiltrate Jordan from the Syrian border. These ISIS jihadists were going to carry out attacks against Jordan, who are moderates. They are afraid that the insurgency is trying to spread from Iraq and Syria to Jordan, who is a key USA and Israeli ally.
While being interrogated,
ISIS prisoners said they were trained in Turkey. We realize this could have been admitted under torture, duress of some sort, so cannot be 100% accurate information about Turkey, BUT....
from Egypt also has collected information that
Turkish intelligence is passing satellite imagery and other data to ISIS. This is exposing the positions of Kurdish fighters and storage locations of their weapons and munitions.
The Jordanian security official also confirmed reports that
Turkey released ISIS terrorists from jail in a big deal with the Jihadist group that released 49 Turkish embassy hostages who were in Mosul and were being held by ISIS. So it was a trade-off.
Some news reports have come out saying that Turkey might have released about
180 ISIS terrorists in the deal which includes 2 British jihadists. The Egyptian official said the number of ISIS terrorists released by Turkey was closer to
700.
The end game is that the Kurds have been exposed, turned against by Turkey in this battle against ISIS in which the citizens of these states are having their lives in peril. It looks like Turkey is more against the Kurds than they are against ISIS.
Turkish armored personnel carrier looks on the smoke coming from Kobani, Syria
First of all, there is a city in Syria where the fighting has been going on between ISIS and the Kurds. It has 2 names. Kobani is its Kurdish name. Kobane is also its name which is also known as Ayn. It is south of the border of Syria with Turkey.
Turkey is close to the fighting in Iraq and Syria, but especially the Kurds who are doing the most fighting against IS on the ground. Turks are arresting Kurds from Kobani, Syria. "
A Kurd is fighting for the canton system, for the freedom of the Kurdish people and for the freedom of all people, ” Müslüm, a 31 year old Kurdish activist says. “The independence of Rojava is a big problem for Turkey, because its canton system is an example of what the future of Kurdistan could look like.” So Turkey has its own political reasons for not assisting the Kurds and are now exposing them to ISIS.
It was in the end of October that " reinforcements were the first Turkey had allowed to cross through into Syria after weeks of tense diplomacy. Syrian Kurdish officials in Kobani expressed hope that it meant Turkey and the United States were beginning to resolve their differences over how to fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. In the middle of the October, Turkey had been helping ISIS.
On October 14th the news was that Turkey had hit the Kurds in an airstrike. This happened while the Western countries conducted air strikes against ISIS! So Turkey was still busy with it's own conflict with the Kurds in trying to take some of Turkey's land, evidently.
By November 4th's news, we find that Kobani's 150,000 citizens have fled to Turkey from ISIS .for protection from ISIS. What did Erdogen have to say about ISIS?
“The U.S. is too focused on Kobani and isn’t paying enough attention to other places,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters on Monday. He also disclosed that some of the weapons provided to the rebels in the Kurdish town had fallen to Islamic State while others had been seized by fighters of the Kurdish Union Party, which is working with the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, which is listed internationally as a terror group."
IS has been trying to take Kobane, a small Kurdish town in Syria for the past 2 months. IS has put mines on the ground making it hard for the Kurdish fighters to get there to fight against them so they have to proceed slowly. 1,153 have died including 27 civilians and 398 Kurds and 16 non Kurdish rebels.
Rojava is a Syrian Kurdistan town also fighting for its independence from IS. The latest of facebook is that American, British and Germans people have come to help the fighting against ISIS.
Back in August of 2013, Ceylan Ozbudak, one of the TV newswomen in Turkey, like Sinem Tezyapar, ladies connected with Adnan Oktar, said that " the most reasonable and desirable course for Syrian Kurds is to break away from the Assad Baathist regime. The Turkish people have an undeniable right to decide who they will elect to rule or what flag shall fly over their land. These newspeople of Turkey are moderates, and friends.
Ceylan explained, "The Kurdish population was severely oppressed by Shah Reza Pahlawi in Iran, by Saddam in Iraq, by Assad’s Baathist regime in Syria and by the alleged Ergenekon Terror Organization in Turkey. They have endured a lot, and therefore the emergence of a Kurdish nationalist movement is understandable."
It appears to me that what is going on right now is the Kurd's defense against IS who is out to exterminate them in order to take their land. IS does not see them as proper Muslims, evidently. After all, they are slaughtering Sunni soldiers as it is.
The news from September 28th was that "ISIS militants had advanced in Syria to just a few kilometers from Turkey, sending tens of thousands of people fleeing across the border."
Turkey has been staying out of the war against ISIS but Erdogen just said he will hold a meeting about it and soon decide what to do. "Turkey cannot stay out of the international coalition fighting Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) jihadists, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday, as Ankara prepares in the coming week to define its military involvement." In October he had a meeting in the USA with Obama.
Update 11/21/14 "Hamas officials in Turkey who have set up a de facto command center in the Muslim country.. This information comes from Hamas terrorists operating in
Judea/Samaria. The network is operated and funded by Hamas officials in Turkey.
Resource: The Jewish Press, Friday, October 17, 2014 page 14, by Aaron Klein.
http://roarmag.org/2014/10/turkey-kurdistan-democratic-autonomy/
1. http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4867/turkey-jerusalem
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/world/middleeast/reinforcements-enter-besieged-syrian-town-via-turkey-raising-hopes.html?_r=0
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/.premium-1.624491
http://news.yahoo.com/us-led-strikes-syrias-kobane-monitor-112449668.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koban%C3%AE
https://www.facebook.com/rojavabreaking
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/world/2013/08/03/Looking-at-Rojava-from-Turkey.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/world/europe/turkey-airstrike-kurds-isis.html
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/09/28/Turkey-can-t-stay-out-of-anti-is-fight-Erdogan-.html
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/erdogan%E2%80%99s-grand-vision-rise-and-decline
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/israel-turkey-relations/
http://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/israel-turkey-relations/
Update: 11/21/14 http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-nabs-west-bank-terror-network-commanded-from-turkish-soil/
.jpg%2B%2BIsis%2C%2B2%2Bdays%2Bago.jpg)
