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Marine Captain Matt Manoukian among those killed by Afghan policeman

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August 11, 2012 – 14:04 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net –  A Camp Pendleton-based special operations captain was one of three Marines fatally shot before dawn Friday, August 10 in Helmand province by an Afghan police officer who had just shared a meal with them, UT San Diego said.

It was the third attack on coalition forces by their Afghan counterparts in a week.

Capt. Matt Manoukian, 29, of Los Altos Hills was killed along with two other yet-to-be-identified special operations troops after an Afghan police commander invited them to a meeting to discuss security issues. The meeting followed the meal, which took place early because of daytime fasting restrictions during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

The “green-on-blue” attack occurred in the volatile Sangin district of Helmand province, said U.S. military spokeswoman Maj. Lori Hodge. Sangin was a Taliban stronghold for years and has one of the highest concentrations of improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan.

Authorities are searching for the gunman, who fled after the shooting. Sangin’s district chief and the Taliban both identified the assailant as a member of the Afghan National Police who was helping Marines train the Afghan local police.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said by telephone that the attacker joined the insurgency after his attack Friday. “Now, he is with us,” Ahmadi said.

Last month, during an interview with U-T San Diego in Afghanistan, Manoukian said he trusted Afghan forces as his partners in a joint mission of “security, governance and development. It’s a full-spectrum operation.”

In 25 attacks this year, 31 U.S. coalition service members have died at the hands of Afghan forces or insurgents disguised in Afghan uniforms, according to NATO. There were 11 such attacks and 20 deaths last year, according to an Associated Press count. Each of the previous two years saw five such attacks.

The assaults have cast a shadow of fear and mistrust over U.S. efforts to train Afghan soldiers and police more than 10 years after the U.S.-led invasion to topple the Taliban’s hardline Islamist regime for sheltering al-Qaeda’s leadership. They also raise further doubts about the quality of the Afghan forces taking over in many areas before most international troops leave the country in 2014.

Manoukian, the son of two judges, joined the Marine Corps about seven years ago. He was on his fourth combat deployment — including his second in Afghanistan.

Turkish version of Islamic NATO as a new step towards Ottoman Empire revival

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The new organization first targets the Arab world, which Turkey is eager to attract under the “democracy protection” cover.
Turkey is trying to become a more active player in the Near East, voicing ideas which then appear to be alarming, if not dangerous. Complete failure of the foreign policy pushes Ankara to seeking new ways of implementing the “neo-Osmanism”. This, first of all, assumes the endorsement of caliphate and restoration of the following title:
July 28, 2012

PanARMENIAN.Net –  “Sultan (given name) Khan, Sovereign of the House of Osman, Sultan of Sultans, Khan of Khans, Commander of the Faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe, Protector of the Holy Cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem”, et cetera, et cetera.

This was not just a detailed listing of the sultan titles. Huge army that conquered vast territories in 400 years including Mecca and Medina, now under rule of Al Saudi dynasty, was of major importance for the Ottoman Empire. Establishment of a new caliphate needs an army as well – united Islamic forces, if possible.

Mustafa Kamalak, chairman of the Turkish Saadet (“Felicity”) Party voiced this idea in Morocco last week. Saadet is the hardliner wing of the former Turkish Refah (“Welfare”) Party, the moderate Eurocentric wing of which is now Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Kamalak declared that “Islamic NATO” and Islamic peacekeeping forces need to be established urgently.

“Today’s events in Islamic countries again proved that the former Turkish PM Necmettin Erbakan was right in his urge to create Islamic peacekeeping forces. We heartily welcome the awakening in Islamic states and pray for their success. Still, the Western states are trying to benefit from it. We must first push forward unity and integrity, rather than our conflicts,” Kamalak noted.

Former prime minister of Turkey Necmettin Erbakan is known as author of the “universal caliphate” concept. Ideologically, caliphate bases on Islam, while its martial aspect relies on the independent military-political bloc. Erbakan named this bloc the “Islamic peacekeeping forces” and its supporters – the “Islamic NATO”. The North-Atlantic Alliance is facing hard times now; meanwhile, Turkey is increasingly gaining weight entitling it to come up with such statements. No doubt, Azerbaijan will be the first to join the Islamic NATO in case it does emerge. Baku will definitely attempt to thus settle its issues; otherwise, it will lose the second Karabakh war as well if it relies on its own resources.

It should be noted that the “Islamic NATO” first of all targets the Arab world, which Turkey is eager to attract under the “democracy protection” cover. This “democracy” was quite apparent in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt; tragically, Syria is following the same path.

The “Turkish version of Islamic NATO” will definitely never lack funding: Saudi Arabia and Qatar will gladly undertake the financing of this formation, despite certain theological discrepancy between Sunnis of the Gulf monarchies and Turkey.

However, these obstacles can be overcome: monarchies, particularly Saudi Arabia dominated by Wahhabi branch of Islam will hardly insist on the Sunnism they practice.

The new structure will also try to move away from the West and just ignore Iran. The West may also welcome the new bloc hoping it will help settle the Syrian and Iranian issues. In a word, everybody will be happy.

Just one minor note: is the Arab world willing to see Turkey take the lead of their united forces? The history hints the answer is negative. The thing is that the ideas Ankara is coming with every now and then may once become a reality. So, one has to rely on Saudi Arabia and Qatar in this. Formal support to Erdogan with his sultanic aspirations is one thing, while tolerating, so to say, such a leader of the Islamic world is quite another. Saudi Arabia’s kingdom rightfully believes this to be its prerogative and is not going to step down as yet, “as yet” being the key phrase here…

By: Karine Ter-Sahakian

Global jihadist Turkish Imam Fethullah Gulen

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In 1999, Turkish television aired footage of Gülen delivering sermons to a crowd of followers in which he revealed his aspirations for an Islamist Turkey ruled by Shari‘a (Islamic law) as well as the methods that should be used to attain that goal. In the sermons, he said:

“You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here.” – Fetullah Gulen, Founder of Gulen Schools now operating in the USA

Gülen’s Background

Born in Erzurum, Turkey, in 1942, Fethullah Gülen is an imam who considers himself a prophet.[4] An enigmatic figure, many in the West applaud him as a reformist and advocate for tolerance,[5] a catalyst of “moderate Islam” for Turkey and beyond. He is praised in the West, especially in the United States, as an intellectual, scholar, and educator[6] even though his formal education is limited to five years of elementary school. After receiving an imam-preacher certificate, he served as an imam, first in Erdirne and later in Izmir. In 1971, the Turkish security service arrested him for clandestine religious activities, such as running illegal summer camps to indoctrinate youths, and was, from that time on, occasionally harassed by the staunchly secular military.[7] In 1981, he formally retired from his post as a local preacher.

Here’s the grotesque background on these jihadists:

Outcry in Turkey as Un-Published Book “The Imam’s Army” on Fethullah Gulen is Hunted, Destroyed MEMRI

Turkish publishers, writers and legal professionals protest the “undemocratic and unconstitutional” police raids to hunt and destroy the draft of the book, as main opposition (CHP) leader says “Even Hitler or Mussolini had not done this”.

Yesterday, armed with an order of the Ergenekon court and under instructions by the special prosecutor of the case, Zekeriya Oz, to find and confiscate every existing copy of the draft book, the police raided the offices and print houses of the publisher that was to publish the book upon its completion, and of Radikal where Sik worked..

The author of the book, the award winning, prominent journalist Ahmet Sik, was recently arrested and jailed for writing and intending to publish his book, titled “The Imam’s Army”. At the time of his arrest, Sik had said to the crowds: “Whoever touches them (i.e. Gulenists) gets burned!” Indeed most of the arrested journalists had written about Gulen’s infiltration of the police force and/or his involvement with Ergenekon, an allegedly armed, terrorist organization that planned to topple the AKP government.

The court issued an order to collect all copies of the draft and asked anyone (including Sik’s family members) who held a copy to submit it to the court, threatening that those who failed to submit the drafts would be charged with “membership in an illegal organization” and for “aiding and abetting terrorists”.

*This information published on http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com

Hayastan All-Armenian Fund opens donation accounts to help Syrian-Armenians

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August 10, 2012 | 11:30

Hayastan All-Armenian Fund opened up donation accounts to render direct assistance to Syrian-Armenians.

Due to difficult situation in Syria, mass fundraising campaigns are held in many states but the collected funds may disappear, the fund said in a statement. To avoid such an outcome, all our compatriots wishing to help Armenian community of Syria can make donations into the following AMD and foreign currency accounts:

HSBC Bank Armenia

9, V. Sargsyan Str. Yerevan Armenia

SWIFT: MIDLAM22

ACC NO 001-002195-102 (USD)

ACC NO 001-002195-104 (EUR)

ACC NO 001-002195-001 (AMD):

Reported By; News.am

The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity:

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The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire:

By, Taner Akçam, the first scholar of Turkish origin to publicly acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, holds the Kaloosdian and Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University. His many books include A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Metropolitan Books).

http://www.amazon.com/Young-Turks-Against-Humanity-ebook/dp/B007BP3BIU

Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in unprecedented detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects. Presenting these previously inaccessible documents along with expert context and analysis, Taner Akçam’s most authoritative work to date goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally condemned in 1915 as a “crime against humanity and civilization,” the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey’s “official history” rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this very source that Akçam now uses to overturn the official narrative.

The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third of Anatolia’s 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled, or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the Turkish Republic.

By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.

DNA Study Busts Myth that One Million Appalachians are of Turkish Descent.

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BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN

For decades, Turkish pseudo-historians and propagandists have made bizarre claims about Turks being the ancestors of various ethnic groups around the world, including Native Americans, African-Americans, and the strangest of all — Melungeons — a little-known group of dark-skinned residents of Appalachia.

To counter Armenian political activities in Washington, the Turkish government regularly reaches out to anyone who could be co-opted with all-expense paid trips, special gifts, and other financial inducements, including funding studies and conferences on the alleged Turkish origin of Melungeons. Even though these one million Appalachians do not carry much political clout in Congress, Ankara is interested in claiming them to be of Turkish descent, hoping to strengthen its political and economic clout in the United States. [Read more…]

Another Turkishness Gimmick! Davutoglu’s Revisionism Targets the Diaspora

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Turkish Foreign Minster Ahmet Davutoglu

BY ARA KHACHATOURIAN

Ahead of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and in its continuing efforts to revise history and distort the truth, official Ankara has set its eyes on the Armenian Diaspora, this time revising the definition of the word to water down the political and legal elements that define a diaspora. In an interview published in the Turkish Milliyet on July 7, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced that he has sent a directive to all Turkish embassies in which he redefined the Turkish diaspora. “We consider all those who emigrated from those lands, and not only the Turks, to be the diaspora—the Armenians, Jews, Greeks, the people called El Turco in Latin America, and the Arabs in Argentina…

Those are our people… Those are people whose culture and language resemble ours.” Based on these “redefined criteria,” Turkish representations around the world “ will now open their doors to those people who were once Ottoman subjects, they will contact them, and they will even invite them to national days. The contacts with the Armenian diaspora are said to have already started,” according to Milliyet. Asbarez warned its readers recently of an effort to infiltrate the Armenian community. It is a direct by-product of this diplomatic directive that has propelled the Turkish Consulate in Los Angeles to reach out to well-meaning yet confused community members to open, what is potentially a dangerous dialogue. According to Wikipedia, a Diaspora is “the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland; or “people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location”; or “people settled far from their ancestral homelands.” “In an article published in 1991, William Safran set out six rules to distinguish diasporas from migrant communities,” Wikipedia goes on to explain. “These included criteria that the group maintains a myth or collective memory of their homeland; they regard their ancestral homeland as their true home, to which they will eventually return; being committed to the restoration or maintenance of that homeland; and they relate ‘personally or vicariously’ to the homeland to a point where it shapes their identity.” Davutoglu’s redefinition of Diaspora and his blatant perpetuation of Turkish revisionism and denial is the second of a three-point outline he has concocted—introduced—to advance Turkish-Armenian relations ahead of the Genocide Centennial. The first point is what Davutoglu says concerns “feelings,” whereby the Turkish foreign minister wants to assure Armenians that “I understand your pain; we will listen to the Armenians.” This patronizing approach of showing “respect” toward Armenians’ feelings, not only diminishes the fact of the Genocide, but it waters down the incident, making the Genocide seem like an accidental mishap that must be dealt with. While he acknowledges that in past Turkey has denied the Genocide, his new approach is nothing more that using another euphemism to address this matter. “The Armenians are not facing a foreign minister who claims that nothing happened in 1915. I do not call the incidents genocide. We must develop a new language on the issue. We are not denying your suffering, we understand it. Let us get together and do whatever is necessary. That, however, cannot be a unilateral declaration of guilt,” Davutoglu told Milliyet. Davutoglu, the newspaper explains, has developed a concept called “just memory,” which is supposedly based on feeling the pain of the Armenians and “not trying to shut them up.” He either actually believes or wants the entire world to believe that the Turks should not be compared to the Nazis, because the Genocide was not a systematic effort to annihilate an entire race but rather a consequence of events the caused “paranoia in people who feared that they would be exiled from Anatolia.” Davutoglu also claimed that there are efforts to sign a joint declaration before 2015 with Armenia that reflects this version of the events. The third point in this preposterous plan deals directly with the provisions of the Armenia-Turkey protocols, whose ratification by Turkey is pre-conditioned on a pro-Azeri resolution to the Karabakh conflict. Armenia’s Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian rejected this three-pronged solution, saying Thursday at a press conference that the international community has already proposed its own three point plan, which includes ratifying the Armenian-Turkish protocols without preconditions; carrying out the provisions of the agreements, again without preconditions; and refraining from linking the Armenian-Turkish issue with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Nalbandian asserted that Turkey has failed to take serious measures toward any rapprochement for 97 years, saying “Turkey has been unable to face its own history.” “If Turkey intends to work in the same manner for the next three years and proposes ‘a combination of some steps’ which lead to nowhere, the result is obvious,” said Nalbandian. By redefining what a Diaspora is, Turkey is advancing a dangerous policy to change the role of its diplomatic representations into centers that can—and have started to—have an impactful role in [our] community life. Individuals who do not recognize this threat and are actively taking part in this divisive tactic, must closely evaluate their personal interests and not become pawns in this dangerous effort to diminish our national struggle. At the same time, the Armenian government must become more assertive on this issue and instead of the reactionary and tacit responses to Turkey’s malicious policies, must aggressively advocate and advance the Armenian Cause. Less than three years remain to the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide. The political aspects of this milestone, perhaps, far outweigh the efforts to properly mark this anniversary. Our national aspirations that include just reparations and restitution for the victims of the Armenian Genocide, as well the territorial demands of the Armenian nation are paramount to advancing the Armenian Cause. It is high time that we, as a Nation, start speaking the same language and acting on the imperatives that will advance justice. The government of Turkey began implementing this new approach to its decades-old denialist policy long ago by pouring millions of dollars into Turkish organizations outside of Turkey and bolstering Turkish presence in political life in various countries. Davutoglu can redefine terms and concepts as much as he wants. The fact remains that Turkey will have to pay for its crimes—current and past.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Milliyet article reference above was reported by Asli Aydintasbas and translated into English by Katia Peltekian.

Turkish colonel says headscarf a “symbol of terrorism”

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Turkish colonel says headscarf a “symbol of terrorism”
June 28, 2012 – 12:50 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Turkish Col. Ali Çakmakkaya, a judge, describes the headscarf as a “symbol of terrorism” in a voice recording, in which he also uses profanity while referring to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his wife, Emine Erdoğan.

According to Today’s Zaman, the voice recording was released on Twitter on Tuesday, June 26, although the date of the recording remains unknown. A caption provided with the recording says Çakmakkaya made the statements in an official military setting.

Criticizing Erdoğan for not wearing a tie during his meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Çakmakkaya says Erdoğan had put an end to state culture in Turkey. He talks about the wives of Erdoğan and Assad: “You look at the wife of the other [Assad]; she is pretty modern and [looks] European.” [Read more…]

New York Times’ Exposé: Imam Gulen’s Charter Schools

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Report By: boilingfrogspost.com/tag/fethullah-gulen/Is the Media Catching Up with the Turkish Imam’s US Operations?

For the last two years I have been pounding on Imam Fethullah Gulen’s web of organizations and his charter schools empire in the US. For years I have been marveling about the consistent media blackout on the Turkish Imam Fethullah Gulen’s past and present nefarious activities and highly suspicious partnerships with various US government agencies and elected officials. And of course for almost two years I have been writing and discussing Gulen with you over here at Boiling Frogs Post. Now the New York Times appears to be catching up; at least with a fraction of this notorious Imam’s multi billion dollar network of organizations and businesses. Yesterday, the Times ran a fairly detailed and long exposé on Gulen’s dubious and highly secretive penetration of US school systems via his rapidly growing charter school operations; let’s start with the attention grabbing intro:

TDM Contracting was only a month old when it won its first job, an $8.2 million contract to build the Harmony School of Innovation, a publicly financed charter school that opened last fall in San Antonio. It was one of six big charter school contracts TDM and another upstart company have shared since January 2009, a total of $50 million in construction business. Other companies scrambling for work in a poor economy wondered: How had they qualified for such big jobs so fast?

The secret lay in the meteoric rise and financial clout of the Cosmos Foundation, a charter school operator founded a decade ago by a group of professors and businessmen from Turkey. Operating under the name Harmony Schools, Cosmos has moved quickly to become the largest charter school operator in Texas, with 33 schools receiving more than $100 million a year in taxpayer funds. …

Some of the schools’ operators and founders, and many of their suppliers, are followers of Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Turkish preacher of a moderate brand of Islam whose devotees have built a worldwide religious, social and nationalistic movement in his name. Gulen followers have been involved in starting similar schools around the country — there are about 120 in all, mostly in urban centers in 25 states, one of the largest collections of charter schools in America. …

And this is what the paper says it is attempting to examine:
But an examination by The New York Times of the Harmony Schools in Texas casts light on a different area: the way they spend public money. And it raises questions about whether, ultimately, the schools are using taxpayer dollars to benefit the Gulen movement — by giving business to Gulen followers, or through financial arrangements with local foundations that promote Gulen teachings and Turkish culture.

I suggest you visit the site and read the entire article. It is definitely worth reading. You may also want to read a few select pieces from BFP on Gulen:

Did You Know: The King of Madrasas Now Operates over 100 Charter Schools in US?

Turkish Intel Chief Exposes CIA Operations via Islamic Group in Central Asia

Additional Omitted Points in CIA-Gulen Coverage & A Note From ‘The Insider’

http://turkishinvitations.weebly.com/gulenist-non-profits.html

The Sanitized Gulen Coverage Continues
Read More:
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/06/07/new-york-times%e2%80%99-expose-imam-gulen%e2%80%99s-charter-schools/#more-3859

Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story!

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In this startling new memoir, Sibel Edmonds—the most classified woman in U.S. history—takes us on a surreal journey that begins with the secretive FBI and down the dark halls of a feckless Congress to a stonewalling judiciary and finally, to the national security whistleblowers movement she spearheaded. Having lived under Middle East dictatorships, Edmonds knows firsthand what can happen when government is allowed to operate in secret. Hers is a sobering perspective that combines painful experience with a rallying cry for the public’s right to know and to hold the lawbreakers accountable. With U.S. citizens increasingly stripped of their rights in a calibrated media blackout, Edmonds’ story is a wake-up call for all Americans who, willingly or unwillingly, traded liberty for illusive security in the wake of 9/11.

You can visit the Classified Woman website here: http://classifiedwoman.com