Turkish-Dutch mafia war spills more blood: Report

April 28, 2015 By administrator

AMSTERDAM

The son of a Turkish man who had been questioned over alleged links to a recent series of mafia shootings in downtown Istanbul was killed in the Netherlands on April 26, Dutch media has reported.

Unidentified assailants raked through the speeding car of 26-year-old Barış Önder in Osdorp. The car stopped only after hitting parked vehicles, while Önder was killed and the assailants escaped in a dark colored vehicle late at night, the reports said. report hurriyetdailynews

The victim’s father, Atilla Önder, had testified in Istanbul as a suspect after two separate targeted hits in one day in upscale Istanbul neighborhoods left three people dead late Dec. 24, 2014.

Ali Ekber Akgün was killed when two men jumped out of a car traveling behind him and shot him in his car as he waited at a red light in Sarıyer’s İstinye neighborhood, while Vedat Şahin, the brother of known mafia boss Sedat Şahin, was killed in a hail of bullets along with a friend on Nişantaşı’s busy Vali Konağı Avenue.

Before the murder, Atilla Önder had been accused of threatening Akgün, who was also involved in real estate business with Dutch connections. After he testified, Önder had said “games are being played on his son.”

In January 2015, 44-year-old Okan Fidan was killed by two assailants in Amsterdam in a murder that officials believe could have links with drug trade.

Suspicions about an international mafia vendetta go even beyond Turkey and the Netherlands. Hüseyin Saral, the head of a gang that was at war with Sedat Şahin’s criminal organization, was found dead in Italy in 2005. Şahin and some of his accomplices were apprehended in the same year in connection with the crime.

Dutch opposition says has documents proving Turkey sent arms to Syrian jihadists

January 19, 2015 By administrator

The Dutch opposition Christian Democratic Party (CDA) announced that it has confidential documents proving that Turkey had sent weapons to al-Qaeda militants in Syria and that it conveyed the documents to the Dutch government, according to a BBC Turkish report published on Sunday.

CDA deputy Pieter Omtzigt said his party acquired the confidential documents in November and shared them with Dick Schoof, the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV). According to the report, the documents are duplicates from an ongoing criminal investigation in Turkey into the 2014 interception and search on three Syria-bound trucks that belonged to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT).

Turkish gendarmes and several prosecutors are accused of unlawfully intercepting and conducting search on the MİT trucks, which, according to media claims, transported arms to radical Islamists in Syria.

The BBC Turkish report said former Adana Governor Hüseyin Avni Coş, who was in office at the time of the interception of the MİT trucks, said in a testimony that the arms-filled trucks belonged to MİT and were being sent to Syria upon orders from then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Omtzigt asked Dutch Minister of Security and Justice Ivo Opstelten whether he conveyed the documents to Foreign Minister Bert Koenders ahead of his recent visit to Turkey. Koenders visited Turkey on Jan. 5-7.

Meanwhile, CDA deputy Raymond Knops, a member of the Dutch Parliament Foreign Affairs Contact Group, accused the Dutch government of “playing ostrich” regarding Turkey’s relations with terrorist groups in Syria. Knops submitted a parliamentary question addressing Koenders regarding the claims of Turkey aiding al-Qaeda in Syria with weapons and ammunition. In his parliamentary question, Koenders cited the report by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team.

Koenders stated that the UNSC report had highlighted that the weapons and ammunition held by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the al-Nusra Front were largely transported via Turkey through secret ways. According to Koenders, this information has also been confirmed by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

The Dutch lawmaker asked, “Do you find it disturbing that weapons and ammunition have been sent to terrorist organizations in Syria through the land of NATO member Turkey?” Koenders described launching air strikes on ISIL while Syrian jihadists receive arms via Turkey as “mopping the floor while the faucet remains open.”

Last Thursday, five Turkish prosecutors who investigated the claims of illegal arms shipments to opposition groups in Syria by the MİT trucks were suspended by a top judicial board.

The suspension of the prosecutors came a day after the government obtained a blanket gag order from Adana Fifth Criminal Court of Peace, preventing the Turkish media from reporting on documents that were leaked on Twitter on Jan. 12 by anonymous Twitter user @LazepeM, who claimed the information came from the General Staff and gendarmerie investigations.

Dutch journalist in Turkey briefly detained on terrorism charges

January 6, 2015 By administrator

A Dutch journalist based in Turkey was temporarily detained on charges of terrorist propaganda on Tuesday, as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan repeated his claim that the media is freer in Turkey than anywhere else in the world.

“Terrorism police just searched my house, team of 8 guys. they take me to the station now. charge: ‘propaganda for terrorist organization’,” Frederike Geerdink tweeted on Tuesday.

The journalist was released after she was questioned at the Diyarbakır Police Department’s counterterrorism unit for three hours.

It was not exactly clear why Geerdink was detained. Diyarbakır Bar Association Chairman Tahir Elçi wrote on Twitter that the Dutch journalist was detained because of some of her tweets, which were deemed to be spreading terrorist propaganda.

Geerdink, who moved to Turkey in 2006, has been living in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır since 2012. She is focused on issues related to Kurds, human rights and women’s rights. She has a blog and runs a website .

The journalist’s detention came even as Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders is in Turkey for a visit. Koenders was scheduled to meet with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, on Tuesday.

In a message posted on the Dutch Foreign Ministry’s Twitter account, Koenders said he was “shocked” by Geerdink’s arrest. He said he “will personally discuss this here in Ankara with my Turkish colleague.”

The Dutch journalist is the latest to bear the brunt of what critics say is growing pressure on the media in Turkey. On Monday, journalist and television presenter Sedef Kabaş was summoned to testify again after she was detained and later released on Dec. 30 for posting tweets critical of the government’s handling of a major corruption investigation launched on Dec. 17, 2013.

On Dec. 14, Zaman Editor-in-Chief Ekrem Dumanlı was detained along with more than two dozen people on charges of leading and being members of an armed terrorist organization. The detentions sparked a wave of criticism from the US, the European Union and leading international human rights and journalist organizations.

On Tuesday, President Erdoğan once again dismissed criticism that media freedom is at risk in Turkey, reiterating his claim that the media in the country is freer than anywhere else in the world.

“Attack the president or the prime minister in those [other] countries, if you dare. You can’t do it in America, Germany or Russia,” he said during a meeting of ambassadors in Ankara, urging the envoys to confront their foreign colleagues when they raise the issue of press freedom.