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Istanbul the most dangerous city for visitors, Serbian Red Star fan stabbed to death in Istanbul

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n_74668_1The body of the killed Serbian basketball fan is taken to the Forensics Institute. DHA photo

A supporter of the Serbian basketball club Red Star was stabbed and killed on Nov. 21 in Istanbul in front of the venue where a Turkish Airlines Euroleague game between Galatasaray Liv Hospital and the visiting side was being played.

The Serbian club claimed in a written statement that the 25-year-old Marko Ivkovic was killed by Galatasaray hooligans, while the Istanbul police said the killing was the result of a fight between Red Star’s supporters.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic voiced “outrage over the monstrous murder,” a government statement said on Nov. 22.

Serbia demands that the perpetrator be urgently “found, arrested and most severely punished,” it added.

Canadian Consulate in Istanbul evacuated after suspicious powder found

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suspicious-powderA consulate employee speaking to a Turkish television interviewer said workers received an email telling them to leave the building immediately.

“We couldn’t grab our bags or jackets,” she said in Turkish. “They took us outside. We gathered outside the consulate, We were told an envelope came to the consulate, there was a powder inside, that it was dangerous, and that we were being sent home.”

The Belgian Consulate, asked by CNN about the security incident, said police were investigating a substance found in an envelope sent there.

The air conditioning system in the consulate has been turned off, Semple reported. “And … anyone who was exposed to the package has been kept in that room, cordoned off from everyone else as a precaution.”

The Canadian Embassy in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, is also closed, but that has been attributed to shortened Friday hours, and not any threat.

On Thursday, Canadian Forces officials said they were assessing whether heightened security was necessary at bases after a shooting on Parliament Hill on Wednesday left an Ontario reservist dead. Also mentioned were installations abroad.

“We will carry on all our missions at home and abroad in a steadfast, resolute and vigilant manner, and serve our nation and her people,” said Gen. Tom Lawson, chief of Canada’s defence staff, in a statement.

ISIL militants moving freely in Istanbul

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isil-in-turkeyA newly-released online video shows people in ISIL clothes with the group’s flag travelling freely in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

The video filmed on the Istanbul subway shows two young men wearing ISIL T-shirts freely heading for their destination. report presstv.com

This comes as shops in several countries have been promoting ISIL clothes, toy equipment and gifts.

The footage has raised major concerns that those purchasing such clothes are somehow showing loyalty to the terrorist group.

Experts say the footage circulating online appears genuine and has been corroborated by other reports.

Quoting Turkish government officials and media reports, The New York Times reported on Monday that Turkey is one of the biggest sources of foreign fighters for the Takfiri group, which has captured large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria.

The newspaper cited the example of one former fighter who had been taken to Syria along with 10 of his friends and joined the ISIL after 15 days of training in the city of Raqqa.

This is not the first time that media expose links between the Turkish government and Takfiri militants.

German television station ARD has recently revealed that an office, run by ISIL-affiliated Turks, helps foreign militants cross the Turkish border to join the terrorist group’s militants in Iraq and Syria. The report said militants have been paid up to 400 euros to join the battles.

The German state TV station added that there are more than 2,000 militants joining ISIL who come from Europe, adding that they enter Istanbul as a tourist and then cross borders into Iraq and Syria.

The West and its regional allies, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, are reportedly giving financial and military support to the militants.

 

ISIS Starts Recruiting in Istanbul’s Vulnerable Suburbs “THE JIHADI HIGHWAY”

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NewsWeek

By and / September 12, 2014

istanbul-jihadi-highwayIn June, Turkey’s Milliyet newspaper reported that as many as 3,000 Turks have joined the group. “No other Nato country is as exposed to the threat of Isis jihadism as Turkey is,” says Sinan Ulgen, a former diplomat and head of Edam, an Istanbul-based foreign policy think tank. In the past, Western diplomats have accused Turkey of indirectly facilitating the flow of arms and foreign fighters to Isis by operating an open-

border policy with Syria in its eagerness to help the rebels seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad. After the group overran Turkey’s consulate in Mosul in June and took dozens of staff hostage, however, most now agree that authorities in Ankara has woken up to the seriousness of the threat, but may now have its hands tied in responding to it.

Forty nine Turkish citizens, including the consul general, remain Isis’ prisoners. In the past month it has beheaded two American journalists it was holding hostage in retaliation for US airstrikes.

“Turkey is not ‘soft’ on Isis,” a Turkish government official says. “It just avoids unnecessary rhetoric, in particular on the issue of hostages in Mosul.” He adds that “all necessary actions and precautions are being taken” to combat the domestic threat posed by the group.

ISIS IN ISTANBUL

That claim is disputed by the family of Ahmet Beyaztas, a 25-year-old Kurdish car mechanic, who joined the group last month. Speaking at home in the bleak factory town of Dilovasi, a polluted and poverty-stricken community on the fringe of Istanbul, his brother Kenan tells of how local Isis supporters openly displayed its flag in the windows of their cars and homes.

A month ago, Ahmet was among 19 young men from the neighbourhood who boarded two minibuses and headed to Syria to join the fighters. A member of parliament for an opposition party recently told a local newspaper that he believed 90 young men from another nearby town have made a similar journey in recent weeks.

“There are many, many more who are joining. And the police are doing nothing,” says Kenan, 30, a schoolteacher. “I’m Kurdish and a leftist. If four Kurds get together the state will break them apart. Of course they can stop them if they choose to.”

Turkey situation are so bad in Istanbul residents on streets to keep guard against robbers

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Residents of Istanbul’s Eyüp district are keeping guard against rising theft in their neighborhood, hoping to stop the criminals before being robbed. Report Doğan News Agency 

n_71023_1The rising number of robberies in the last month has triggered the locals in the Karadolap neighborhood to keep a close watch on their streets. They have been waiting on the corners and patrolling the premises with sticks, knives, and machetes throughout the night to intimidate potential robbers.

The locals have complained about the insufficient street lighting, urging officials to take necessary measures against theft in the area.

Police were dispatched to the neighborhood late Aug. 27 to record the complaints of the locals who are determined to keep guard until the morning.

August/28/2014

Residents of Istanbul suburb in violent protest over Syrian refugees

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ISTANBUL – Agence France-Presse

 syrian-refugeesCars were smashed and turned upside down in the İkitelli neighborhood in the early hours of Aug. 25 following violent protests targeting Syrian refugees. DHA Photo

Hundreds of Istanbul residents angered by the presence of Syrian refugees clashed with police early Aug. 25 in a violent protest in a suburb of Turkey’s biggest city, reports said.

The clashes were the latest violence amid growing tensions between Turkish locals and Syrian refugees who fled the civil war in their country and whose numbers in Turkey have now swelled to 1.2 million according to the official figures.

The protest in the İkitelli neighborhood in the west of the European side of Istanbul was sparked by claims that young Syrian men had sexually harassed a teenage girl, Doğan news agency reported.

Television pictures showed a group of some 300 people, armed with sticks, knives and machetes, attacking shops and cars belonging to Syrians and shouting anti-Syrian slogans. Cars were smashed and turned upside down while the window panes of shops belonging to Syrians with Arabic lettering on the shopfronts were broken.

Riot police, using tear gas and water cannon, then moved in to disperse the protest. Private boradcaster CNNTürk said five Syrian women were injured in the protest.

There have been repeated protests against the presence of Syrian refugees in Turkey over the last weeks but the actions have until now been largely in the south and southeast, where most of the refugees are concentrated.

However the refugees are also a visible presence in Istanbul, with many seeking to make ends meet by begging. A similar protest sparked by allegations that a Syrian refugee had abused a Turkish child erupted last week in the city of İskenderun in the Hatay province on the Syrian border.

Following violent protests against the presence of Syrians in the southeastern city of Gaziantep earlier this month, the authorities moved hundreds of the refugees into refugee camps in a bid to calm tensions.

According to Turkey’s relief agency, some 285,000 Syrian refugees are living in camps in Turkey, but a far greater number of 912,0000 are living outside the camps in cities across the country.

Group with alleged links to Islamic State gathers in Istanbul

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There has been much speculation over the past three years about Turkey’s supporting radical Islamist groups in an attempt to end Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Militant Islamist fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of RaqqaErdogan’s government, however, has categorically denied these allegations.

By Tulin Daloglu
Yet the release of a video, allegedly showing a “jihadist” crowd gathering in Istanbul on July 28 for the prayers marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, has sparked controversy. The recording was released by takvahaber.net, described by Turkish media as an online portal close to the Islamic State (IS).

This website was the only source that reported the assembling of this crowd in Omerli, on the Anatolian side of Istanbul. The 26-minute recording includes a long preaching segment. “Let God make us fight the just war of jihad,” the preacher says. “May God help jihadists and those who are patient for victory. May God help their shots hit the mark.”

Although the Turkish parliament was in summer recess, Sezgin Tanrikulu, a main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy, submitted a written query through the speaker’s office, asking that it be answered by Interior Minister Efkan Ala. Asking the security establishment to confirm first whether this gathering took place in Istanbul and whether this was really a crowd affiliated with IS, Tanrikulu asked whether there were any IS camps within Turkey’s borders.

“Are the allegations true that the IS militants also use this open field for militant training?” Tanrikulu asked. “Have these people asked for any official permission to gather this crowd to mark the end of Ramadan? If so, who gave them this permission? What were the Istanbul security director and the head of gendarmerie in the Istanbul area doing when these people were calling for jihad there?”

He added, “Is it true that both the police department and the gendarmerie units were ordered not to interfere when the group, the extension of a terrorist organization, was calling for jihad in Istanbul? Who gave these orders?”

No Turkish government official has yet said a word about the affair. Speaking to Al-Monitor, Turkish authorities said they were so far dependent on this website’s allegation that this event took place in Istanbul. “Although we cannot provide you any official confirmation that this event took place in Istanbul, it seems quite likely that it was recorded where they claim it was,” one official who asked to remain anonymous told Al-Monitor.

These authorities also note various challenges they face. Although Turkey designates al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization, there is a big question mark whether IS militants are also categorized as “terrorists.” Once the state depicts a group as a terror organization, it activates all its tools to fight against its members. “It is not really clear whether there is any such order here,” this official told Al-Monitor. “What makes everything more complicated is that IS kidnapped Turkey’s Mosul Consulate members, and there are rumors about a tough ransom negotiation to rescue them.” The rumor is that Turkey will pay about $300 million to get its diplomats back.

IS stormed the Turkish Consulate in Mosul on June 11, taking hostage all 49 members of its staff hostage, including Consul General Ozturk Yilmaz.

The same authorities Al-Monitor talked to suggested that IS has actually shown its muscle to the Erdogan government by releasing this video. “The government has already put a gag order on the media not to report anything that could offend the IS. And they release this video footage — all in Turkish, shot in Istanbul, and there is no word from the government yet. They have taken the government hostage as well with this video,” this official told Al-Monitor. “If they don’t act today for the sake of saving these 49 diplomats, it is not clear what they can do next. It is a very delicate and tough decision for the government, but one has to draw the line before it gets too late.”

Put simply, whether the Erdogan government helped the radical Islamic groups fight against the Assad regime could be irrelevant, as these groups already openly operate in Turkish territory. What is relevant today is that these groups are posing a threat to Turkey in terms of potentially recruiting and radicalizing its own population. If IS is not really considered a terrorist organization, the security establishment is quite restricted in how it may act against these militants. Therefore, only the government can determine when it is time to call them one. The media, however, remain restricted in talking about this group until the Turkish diplomats’ fates become clear.

Tulin Daloglu
Columnist

Tulin Daloglu is a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse. She has also written extensively for various Turkish and American publications, including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Middle East Times, Foreign

In Istanbul, ISIS Operated Mosques Said to Be Training Azeri Jihadists

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ISTANBUL (Panorama.am)—The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the terrorist organization that has been waging war in Syria and now Iraq, is reportedly known to be operating mosques in Istanbul, where istanbul-mosqueAzerbaijani jihadist recruits, among others, are trained for the war in Syria, according to a report by Azerbaijani news agency Haqqin, citing an announcement by one of the leaders of the clerical community of Istanbul, Hasan Kanaalti.

Kanaalti reported that ISIS has taken control of a number of mosques in the neighborhoods of Fatih, Ataşehir, Esenyurt, and Bağcılar. Young people from Azerbaijan undergo training in these mosques, he says, after which they are sent to war in Syria.

“The authorities do nothing and we are going to ensure the security of our community ourselves. We have called for meetings with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but we haven’t received any response from him for more than 10 days,” said Kanaalti.

According to the source, just days ago an attack occurred on Istanbul’s Muhammadi Mosque, where members of the Jafari Muslim community were holding a gathering. The attack was probably carried out by members of ISIS, Kanaalti says.

“We were told that we would not be allowed to pray Azan. One of the neighborhoods in which ISIS is based is Fatih. There the Salafis distribute booklets and fuel anti-Shia aggression. They have created an extended network of their missions in Ataşehir [district in Istanbul] where prior to being sent to Syria young jihadists from Azerbaijan are hosted for a couple of days. The government cannot but know about this,” Kanaalti explained.

As reported by Iranian news agency IRNA, the restraints on political and religious activities in Azerbaijan are one of the main reasons why ISIS considers the country a fertile land for the recruitment of jihadists.

Citizens of Azerbaijan are reportedly fighting among various terrorist groupings in Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. According to the data of Azerbaijani information agency Vesti.az, the total number of Azerbaijani terrorists in these countries is 300. Meanwhile, according to information provided by the Azerbaijani media, about 200 Azerbaijani terrorists have died within the last three years in Syria alone.

Istanbul-based Islamic charity organization ‘uses ISIL-adopted insignia’ on logo

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ISTANBUL

The Haznedar Islamic Research, Sustenance and Helping Association (HİSADER), is located in Güngören, one of Istanbul’s popular districts.

n_67896_1An Islamic charity organization based in an Istanbul suburb is using an insignia adopted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), daily HaberTürk has reported.

The report comes amid claims that some Turkish associations were recruiting militants for the jihadist group who have recently launched a wide-scale offensive in Iraq.

The Haznedar Islamic Research, Sustenance and Helping Association (HİSADER), located in Istanbul’s popular district Güngören, have for a long time been campaigning to raise funds for charity work to be undertaken in Syria.

The association notably uses “the stamp of the Prophet Muhammad,” nowadays associated with the ISIL, but previously used by several other Islamic organizations. The insignia includes the Shahadah (the Islamic declaration of faith) and the Quranic phrase: “There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.”

According to its website, the association is also involved in combatting drug addiction and prostitution.
The same insignia can also be found in neighborhood shops, where many parents claim their children have been sent to Syria or Iraq to fight alongside the militant group. HaberTürk’s reports claim a woman threw stones at the shop, shouting, “Give back my child.”

Another man told the newspaper that his 21-year-old son joined ISIL after choosing the path of religion as a means of fighting his drug addictions.

“[First] he was gathering with a group of young people. He [then] dedicated himself to prayers. Then he started to accuse us of being infidels. One weekend, he left and he never came back. His friends told me he went to Syria with 15 other people. I begged him to come back, but he said he couldn’t and he was [in Syria] for jihad,” the boy’s father explained.

‘Ignorance’

HİSADER President Volkan Sağlam rejected the report on June 17. Sağlam said in a written statement that his association had no relationship with ISIL or any other organizations. “Not knowing the meaning of the writing on the logo shows the ignorance of those who prepared and published this report,” Sağlam said.

HİSADER also stressed that it focused on “anti-narcotics efforts and humanitarian relief,” albeit with a political twist.

“Drugs are a chemical weapon. And our lands are occupied by the Zionist-Crusader,” said the HİSADER board in a recent statement.

Reports claiming that around 3,000 Turkish citizens have joined ISIL militias, who are mainly from Istanbul’s suburbs, have been rejected by the Turkish government.

June/17/2014