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.

Macedonian police clash with Albanians

July 5, 2014 By administrator

Associated Press

SKOPJE: Police in Macedonia fired tear gas and stun grenades Friday in clashes with around 2,000 demonstrators protesting against the jailing of six ethnic Albanians for murder and terrorism.

A Reuters reporter at the scene said several people were injured and others arrested during clashes in the center of the capital, Skopje.

The ethnic Albanian protesters, who pelted police with stones, were angry at the life sentences handed down for the murder of five Macedonian fishermen at a lake near Skopje in 2012.

Described by authorities as Islamists, the defendants were charged with terrorism and accused of trying to destabilize the state.

Macedonia continues to struggle with deep ethnic division 13 years after narrowly avoiding full-blown civil war during fighting between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and government security forces.

Ethnic Albanians, most of them Muslims, make up a quarter of the former Yugoslav republic’s population of 2 million, and say they are discriminated against. The guerrillas laid down arms in 2001 in return for greater rights and representation, and entered politics. Integration, however, has been slow to come about.

During a trial that lasted 18 months, prosecutors said the six accused had intended to use the murders to destabilize the country.

The fishermen were shot at close range by more than one gunman. Twenty people were arrested at the time in raids at more than 20 locations around the capital, involving 800 police officers.

Authorities described the suspects as followers of radical Islam. Defense lawyers said there was no evidence to support the charges.

Friday’s protest appeared to have been organized via social media, with calls going out for Albanians to rally against “politically motivated court cases”

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/World/2014/Jul-05/262718-macedonian-police-clash-with-albanians.ashx#ixzz36cPxwEnn
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

Turkey, new sponsor of international terrorism

March 29, 2014 By administrator

Turkey became a rear base for the rebels to the Syrian regime, where the radical Islamist fighters hold their attacks. All in the apparent indifference of the international community.

By Francis Lawrence and Leleykian Balanche

Recent events in Ukraine have provisionally released the attention of the international community on the current developments of the Syrian crisis, and in particular the fighting currently taking place at the Turkish border. It’s just if a dispatch from press reported that the Turkish army has killed a hunter who bombed Syrian rebels.

The growing involvement of Turkey in the conflict should however be an additional cause for concern. For if the economic objective of Ankara bring down the regime of Bashar Assad is possibly consistent with the wishes of the West, the methods used should generate the greatest concern. Turkey is indeed becoming a major regional “hubs” of international terrorism, far ahead of other states that have been dragging this reputation.

The latest example of Turkish practices that began March 21. In the morning, radical Islamists have penetrated Syrian territory from three bases in Turkey to tackle Township Kessab. To this end, the Islamist fighters identified as belonging to Jabhat Al-Nosra recently renamed Al-Qaeda in the Levant, are necessarily passed between the Turkish army barracks. The fighting is still ongoing but is reported from reliable sources that the Islamists wounded were repatriated to Turkey, where their care is provided. It is in this context that occurred the episode of the downed aircraft.

Kessab is not any village in Syria. It was indeed the last village of Ottoman Armenia: an administrative oddity Kessab was the only village linked to Syria when France shamefully abandoned the Sanjak of Alexandretta to Kemalist in 1938.

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