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A medical center belonging to Armenian Aret Kamari was closed in Istanbul because of alleged ties to Gulen movement and for national security reasons.
Three universities, 149 schools, 150 unions, 15 foundations and four medical centers have been closed under similar accusations, Agos reported.
The claims of Armenian doctor that he is a Christian and he has no relation to Gulen did not yield any result. The owner was deprived an opportunity to appeal the decision.
Thirteen suspects, including ten Turks, were charged and jailed Sunday night in Istanbul for “membership of a terrorist organization”, in connection with the triple suicide bombing that killed 45 people on Tuesday in the airport of the Turkish megapolis, reported Dogan news agency.
The suspects are also accused of “undermining the unity of the state and the people” and “intentional homicide”, the agency said, without specifying the nationality of the foreigners.
As part of the investigation, police arrested 29 people “including foreigners,” said Sunday the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters.
“All will be revealed in time, we are conducting a broad investigation into the matter,” he added.
The governorate of Istanbul for his part said Sunday in a statement that 49 people were still treated, including 17 in intensive care. The Turkish authorities had reported on Thursday a record of foreigners among 19 killed, without giving a precise count.
The attack, the fourth and the deadliest in Turkey since the beginning of the year, has still not been claimed but Turkish officials have pointed to the Islamic State group (EI).
The authorities said that suicide bombers were a Russian, an Uzbek and Kyrgyz while the Anadolu agency, she has advanced the names of Rakim Bulgarov and Vadim Osmanov, without specifying their nationality. The former Soviet republics of Central Asia are among the most important providers jihadists in Syria and Iraq.
Turkish media have identified a Chechen Akhmed Chataev named as the mastermind of the bombing of the airport. It would be the head of EI in Istanbul, the daily Hurriyet.
Moreover, a team of 80 members of the special police forces started from Sunday to patrol the airport in question, one of the busiest in Europe, and its terminals, according to media.
An armed Turkish policeman patrols behind a police line following the attack at Ataturk international airport in Istanbul on June 29.
By RFE/RL June 30, 2016
A Turkish official has said three suspected Islamic State (IS) suicide bombers who attacked Istanbul’s Ataturk International Airport this week were from Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Authorities also announced the detention of 13 more people, including three foreign nationals, in connection with the June 28 gun-and-bomb attack that killed at least 43 people and injured more than 200 more.
The attack on Europe’s third-busiest airport was the deadliest in a series of suicide bombings in Turkey this year, and the latest of more than a dozen major attacks in that country in the past 12 months.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Ankara has blamed the IS militant group.
Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, told journalists after the suspected perpetrators’ identities were leaked on June 30 that he had no information regarding the involvement of any Russian citizen in the attack.
“I do not have any information on that matter,” Karlov said.
Interfax quoted Russian law enforcement as disputing that one of those named had ever lived in Chechnya, as local media suggested.
A spokesman for Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry, Ernis Osmonbaev, meanwhile told RFE/RL that the government was “investigating the reports.”
“At this point, we cannot say that our citizen was among [the attackers],” Osmonbaev said.
Uzbekistan’s security service could not immediately be reached for comment.
To varying degrees, all three of those post-Soviet states are said to be sources of IS recruits who have traveled to fight in the Middle East, where the group has declared a “caliphate” in swaths of conflict-torn Syria and Iraq.
Russian officials say thousands of its citizens have fled to join the IS military effort in Syria — representing as much as around 10 percent of IS’s foreign fighting force. Russia has also battled a long-running Islamist-fueled insurgency in its North Caucasus region, including in Chechnya and Daghestan.
Kyrgyz authorities have reported thwarting a number of terrorist attacks in that predominantly Muslim country that they said were planned by IS members, and they have tried to crack down on alleged recruiters for the group.
Officials in Uzbekistan, which is also predominantly Muslim, have warned of IS recruiting efforts there not only for fighters but also targeting “specialists” including engineers and doctors. Authorities in Tashkent have estimated that many hundreds of Uzbek nationals have joined the fight alongside IS in Syria.
The Turkish official who was quoted by local and Western media as identifying the nationalities of the attackers on June 30 declined to be named because details of the investigation have not yet been released. He did not disclose any further details.
Links To North Caucasus
Investigators had been struggling to identify the bombers from their limited remains.
The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper said the Russian bomber was from Daghestan, which borders restive Chechnya in Russia’s long-beleaguered North Caucasus region.
Yeni Safak said the suspected organizer of the attack was a man of Chechen origin called Akhmed Chatayev. Chatayev is identified on a United Nations sanctions list as an IS leader responsible for training Russian-speaking militants, and he is wanted by Russian authorities.
Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper named one of the attackers as a Chechen, Osman Vadinov, and said he had come from Raqqa, the de facto capital of IS militants in Syria and Iraq.
But Interfax quoted Russian law enforcement as disputing anyone with that name had ever lived in Chechnya.
The Dogan news agency said the Russian attacker had entered Turkey one month ago and left his passport in a house the men had rented in the Istanbul neighborhood of Fatih.
The Karsi newspaper, quoting police sources, said the three suspected attackers were part of a seven-person cell who entered Turkey on May 25. The attackers raised the suspicion of airport security on the day of the attack because they showed up in winter jackets on a summer day, local media reported.
The Turkish government confirmed the attackers arrived at the airport by regular taxi. Hurriyet newspaper quoted sources as saying the taxi driver told the authorities the assailants spoke a foreign language.
Revelations of the suspects’ nationalities came shortly after Turkish police said they had detained three foreigners among 13 individuals being held in connection with the attack.
In separate large-scale police operations, nine suspects believed to be linked to IS were also detained in the coastal city of Izmir. It was not clear if those suspects had any links to the carnage at the airport.
NATO member Turkey shares long, porous borders with both Syria and Iraq. Ankara has blamed IS militants for several major bombings over the past year, including in the capital and against tourists in Istanbul.
Critics say Turkey woke up too late to the threat from IS militants, focusing instead on efforts to oust President Bashar al-Assad, arguing there could be no peace without his departure.
Ankara adjusted its military rules of engagement this month to allow NATO allies to carry out more patrol flights along its border with Syria.
Baha Güngör was the head of DW’s Turkish department until 2015
The toll of the brutal terrorist attack on Istanbul Ataturk Airport is alarming and not only because of the high number of victims. There is much speculation as to how the terrorists with explosive belts and guns were able to slip past security at the international terminal of Turkey’s largest airport. It is no longer a question of whether the ugly face of terrorism will appear in Turkey, but when it will happen again.
Momentum for the enemies of democracy
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent attempts to take the bull by the horns have come too late. The foreign policy maneuvers being made in an attempt to mend broken relations with Russia and Israel are significant because both countries have a wealth of intelligence information and analyses that can anticipate the direction in which terrorism is evolving and what regions and countries are particularly under threat. Whether actions against terrorism are sufficient and effective measures are possible is another matter.
Not only Russia and Israel, but also the US and European allies have long been witnessing how Turkey has developed into a hub of supposedly religiously driven henchmen working for the patrons of terrorism. And people are paying the price for Erdogan’s political misjudgment with their lives, while Turkey has been burdened with economic setbacks that have set the country back decades.
By not recognizing the results of parliamentary elections, rejecting the country’s constitutional court as “not worthy of respect” and ending the reconciliation policy with the Kurds, Erdogan has given the enemies of democracy momentum.
The submissively applauded speeches in which Erdogan relentlessly promises his people better and safer times can, at best, blind the trusting supporters and beneficiaries of the system. The critical observers of the country, unlike journalists and scientists who subscribe to Erdogan’s convictions, can expect to be charged with criminal offenses and given prison sentences, instead of the president’s recognition. It’s simple: Anyone who undermines a democratic constitutional state, restricts freedom of the press and speech, and harmonizes essential state structures such as the police and judiciary, paves the way to terrorism.
Polarization must be stopped
The Turkish Republic, which will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2023, originally wanted to develop along the lines of contemporary, western civilization. What has happened instead after 14 years under Erdogan’s rule threatens to become a cesspool of war and terrorism, like all the crisis regions in the Middle East.
Erdogan would be well advised to respond with less hostility to his critics, starting now, and instead, to go along with the advocates of European values. This will not necessarily reduce the risk of new terrorist attacks like everywhere else in the world; however, a closer alliance with Europe would at least offer the hope of having a positive influence on the mood in Turkey – and moving away from the fruitless and disastrous polarization of the people.
ISTANBUL — Two explosions at Turkey’s largest airport left at least 10 people dead and injured as many as 20 people on Tuesday night, according to Turkish authorities and television reports.
The Turkish justice minister, Bekir Bozdag, said 10 people had been killed in a bombing attack on Ataturk airport. He said that one attacker fired an automatic weapon before blowing himself up.
Another Turkish government official said that the police fired shots at two suspected attackers at the entryway to the airport’s international terminal, in an effort to stop them before they reached the building’s security checkpoint. The two suspects then blew themselves up, the official said.
CNN Turk reported that one suicide bomber detonated explosives inside the terminal building and another outside in a parking lot.
NTV reported that airport workers were streaming out of the building, crying. A witness told CNN Turk that injured people were being taken away in taxis, Reuters reported.
Turkey has been rocked by a series of bombings in recent months. Officials have variously blamed Kurdish separatists or Islamic State militants for the attacks.
Ataturk airport has expanded in recent years and is now the third busiest in Europe, ranked by the annual number of passengers, after Heathrow in London and Charles de Gaulle in Paris.
A group of Armenians of Istanbul parishioners gathered outside the Armenian Patriarchate in Kumkapi to require a new patriarch is elected representative of the apostolic community.
For a statement to the press, Jaklin Çelik, demanded that the holding of elections to be enacted. Mesrob Mutafyan, who have not resigned, still in intensive care after being hit by Alzheimer’s disease in 2008, the Patriarch Aram Atesyan who supervises function.
The group filed a black wreath in front of the Patriarchate of Istanbul on which is inscribed the phrase “We want to choose our patriarch.”
British rock band Radiohead condemned an attack on customers at an Istanbul record store attending their album release party. Islamists said they were angry with the event coinciding with their holy month, Ramadan.
A group of about 20 men violently attacked customers and employees at the Velvet IndieGround music store in Istanbul’s Cihangir district, a liberal neighborhood in close proximity to Taksim Square and Gezi Park. They said they were angered by people drinking alcohol and listening to music during the Muslim holy month.
One of the attackers was heard as shouting “If you dare to drink here one more time we will come burn you.”
The Velvet IndieGround record shop was among hundreds of shops around the world marking the release of Radiohead’s first album in five years. The attackers managed to cause considerable damage, trashing the store while hurling insults at release party of the band’s new studio album “A Moon Shaped Pool”.
One person was seen bleeding with head injuries after being hit with a bottle.
Banning gay pride
The attack coincided with the announcement of a ban on Istanbul’s annual gay pride march, which was set to take place later in June. The city’s governor banned the event, citing security concerns. Islamists and far-right extremists had threatened the march, as it would also coincide with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The gay pride march was broken up by police last year. Many have blamed a growing atmosphere of intolerance in general and homophobia in the country in particular.
Similar attacks like those on the Velvet IndieGround record store and altercations during gay pride events have taken part also at art galleries in the area in the past. Critics say that Turkey’s Islamic-rooted government under the leadership of the AK Party (Justice and Development Party) has been undermining the country’s secular tradition, culminating in the Gezi Park protests in the summer of 2013, which resulted in 22 deaths without leading to any change.
ss/jm (AFP, dpa)
AA photo
The police raided the house of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ in Istanbul on June 15, reportedly as a part of an operation against the outlawed Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP). Yüksekdağ is the former head of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP), which allegedly has links to the outlawed organization, as the HDP claimed the operation was against the ESP.
“An operation against the ESP is already an operation against the HDP. They’re acting like bandits in raiding my house,” Yüksekdağ told journalists during a visit to the ESP’s headquarters in Istanbul, while adding that the raid was unlawful and illegitimate.
Several ESP members and directors were detained in the operation, which was carried out in nine Istanbul districts.
“They are throwing a bullet at the head of the CHP [main opposition Republican People’s Party] and raiding the co-chair of the HDP. This is what politics in Turkey has been made into,” she added, referring to CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who had a bullet thrown at him during the funeral of a soldier who was killed in an attack by the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), a group linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in Istanbul’s Vezneciler neighborhood.
The ESP announced its support for the HDP in the Nov. 1, 2015, general elections, in which the latter gained 59 seats in parliament.
“All of our components are a source of power for the HDP. They think that they can intimidate us by killings and arrests, but we became stronger each time,” Yüksekdağ also said.
Meanwhile, a statement on the raid was released from the HDP, which said that new lawlessness was being carried out against the party each day.
“The government and the [Presidential] Palace, which makes the jurisdiction conduct operations on their orders every day, continue unlawfulness in all areas. The house of our co-chair was unlawfully raided early on today. The raid was carried out despite the fact that it was known that the house was Yüksekdağ’s,” the statement read, while adding that the party did not accept this “indifference” and condemned it.
“The government in Turkey doesn’t act in accordance with any universal and democratic law principle,” the statement added.
Saying that an investigation against the ones who gave the orders for the raid should be launched, the HDP also sent a message to the other opposition parties.
“They should know that the same practices will be applied to them when the time comes,” the statement read.
The HDP also said that the Presidential Palace, an apparent reference to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been trying to push the party out of the democratic political area via targeting the party, its administrators, lawmakers and components.
An operation was carried out in the Istanbul districts of Sultangazi, Arnavutköy, Beyoğlu, Güngören, Başakşehir, Kartal, Eyüp, Maltepe and Üsküdar on 24 different addresses. A police helicopter also gave aerial support to the operation.
June/15/2016
The head of the Armenian church in Turkey has condemned the Bundestag’s approval of a resolution recognizing the World War I-era killings of Anatolian Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire as “genocide,” claiming the vote politicized a sensitive issue.
“As we have expressed on a number of occasions, the use of this pain, which traumatized the Armenian nation, in the international political arena is a real source of sorrow and pain,” acting Patriarch Aram Ateşyan said in a letter addressed to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Ateşyan added that the painful history of the Armenian people was being utilized as a tool to “blame and punish the Turkish nation and Turkey in the international political arena,” calling all to understand the “use of the Armenian nation by imperialist powers.”
The acting Patriarch also said it was “unacceptable” for Germany to express its opinion and pass laws on the killings – an issue on which it has no right to comment on, according to Ateşyan.
https://www.facebook.com/gagrulepage/videos/vb.437104506487526/522122667985709/?type=2&theater
Imagine, bizarre story #Germany 11 #Turks vote for #ArmenianGenocide Istanbul Coward Armenian Patriarch condemned pic.twitter.com/Uk97BLjed9
— Wally Sarkeesian (@gagrulenet) June 9, 2016
Clashes have broken out between police and demonstrators, who gathered in the Turkish city of Istanbul in support of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
The confrontations came after about 1,000 CHP supporters attempted to march on the headquarters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Thursday. Some of those attending the event also threw eggs at police.
However, the Turkish policemen fired rubber bullets to disperse the protesters and blocked their way to the AKP headquarters.
Several people were also reported to be bending over in agony after being hit by the rubber bullets.
The demonstrators denounced death threats against Kilicdaroglu, who faced a protest, with a live bullet being thrown at him, during the funeral of the victims of Tuesday’s car bombing in Istanbul. A group of Kilicdaroglu critics torn up a wreath he had laid for the victims.
The Istanbul incident, which was blamed on Kurdish militants, killed 11 people, including six police officers and five civilians.
The attack against the CHP leader “was a black mark in the history of Turkish politics,” party spokeswoman Selin Sayek Boke said, adding the AKP had “drowned Turkey in blood” during its 14 years in power.
Threats against Kilicdaroglu came one day after he said on a live TV interview that he visited the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in prison.
The CHP chief has repeatedly been accused of failing to give enough support to the Turkish government’s crackdown on the militant group.
Ankara has been engaged in a large-scale anti-PKK campaign in its southern border region over the past few months. The Turkish military has also been pounding the group’s positions in northern Iraq as well in breach of the Arab country’s sovereignty.
Turkey’s operations began in the wake of a deadly July 2015 bombing in the southern town of Suruc, which the Turkish government blamed on the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.
After the bombing, the PKK militants, who accuse Ankara of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, prompting the Turkish military operations.
A shaky ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK that had stood since 2013 was declared null and void by the militants following the Turkish strikes against the group.
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