Gagrule.net

Gagrule.net News, Views, Interviews worldwide

German towns cancel Turkish ministers’ campaign rallies

By

The cities Gaggenau and Cologne have blocked campaign rallies for Turkey’s upcoming referendum that Turkish ministers were due to attend. The cities cited security and parking concerns as reasons for pulling permission.

The small, southwestern German town of Gaggenau withdrew permission on Thursday for an event where Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag planned to address a campaign rally in support of a controversial constitutional referendum to boost President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powers.

Bozdag had been scheduled to give a speech in Gaggenau on Thursday night, but the city pulled its permission for the event to take place, saying that the hall where the rally was supposed to take place was too small to accomodate the expected crowd.

Due to the fact that the event picked up a great deal of media attention, “the city expects a large number of visitors for which the Bad Rotenfels Hall, the parking lots and the access roads are not enough,” the city said in a statement on its website.

The statement also said it did not know whether the event would continue to be held at a different location.

Cologne follows suit

The next minister to travel to Germany as part of the Turkish referendum campaign was supposed to be Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci, who wanted to address German Turks in Cologne on Sunday.

Following the ban in Gaggenau, a Cologne court also banned the weekend rally there, a citing security reasons.

Of the more than 3 million people of Turkish descent living in Germany, some 1.4 million are eligible to vote in the controversial referendum taking place in April.

rs/rg  (dpa, AFP, Reuters)

Syrian Army Liberates Over 18 Towns from Turkish terrorist ISIS

By

Syrian-Army-20LATAKIA (Public Radio of Armenia) — The Syrian Army’s General Command said in a statement that the army forces in cooperation with popular defense groups managed to liberate over 18 towns and villages in the Northern countryside of the Latakia province.

Syria’s Army General Command mentioned that the most notable of the emancipated  towns and villages are Al-Ghanimeh, al-Qalai’e, Beit Sukkar, al-Ouainat, Khan al-Joz, Beit Riha, Bradon, al-Souda, al-Khadra, Reef Mekhtaro, al-Jamousiye, al-Saraya, al-Rayyana, al-Shakria, and a number of vantage points and hills covering an area of over 120 square kilometers. They added that the liberation was achieved after eliminating large numbers of terrorists while others fled towards the Turkish borders as their ranks suffered a complete breakdown.

The statement was published after the army units and pro-government forces established control over Rabi’a area on Sunday morning, an achievement by which the pro-government forces restricted terrorists’ movement and cut off their supply lines.

The statement pointed out that last week’s victories made by the Armed Forces were significant in the liberation of this week’s territories. Specifically, the territory of Rabi’a was one of the biggest gathering points and a nexus for transportation for terrorists in the area, therefore establishing control over it cut off terrorists’ supply lines and restricted their movement

Syrian Army General Command said that establishing control over Rabi’a area serves as a catalyst for eliminating the remaining terrorist groups in Latakia’s countryside. The statement concluded by stressing commitment to continue fighting terrorism and calling on all those who were involved in bearing arms against the state to abandon their weapons and resolve their legal status before it’s too late.

Before liberation of the region, the Syrian army had besieged the Rabi’a, the second stronghold of the militants in the Latakia countryside from the West, South and North. The militant groups, while withdrawing from the region, left behind dozens of dead or wounded members and pulled back the rest of their forces from more territories in the Northern parts of Latakia.

The militant groups suffered a heavy death toll in the attacks and fled the battlefield to evade more casualties.

ISIL kills 15, abducts 300 Kurds in attacks on Kurdish towns in Syria

By

TODAY’S ZAMAN / ANKARA

The al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) killed 15 Kurds, including seven children, in an attack on a village in northern Syria and 185841_newsdetailabducted 300 Kurds in a village close to Aleppo, according to news outlets.

The attack, in which 15 people were killed, is the latest in the ISIL offensive against Syrian Kurds during a six-month period in Rojava, the Kurdish name given to northern Syria, where the Kurds have gained the upper hand in control of the area in recent months.

There have been ongoing clashes for months between ISIL and Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD) — an offshoot of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — over control of several key towns in northern Syria along the Turkish border. During the clashes, the son of PYD leader Saleh Muslim was killed. However, the clashes have escalated in the past days between the PYD and ISIL for control of areas.

Kurds have gained considerable swathes of territory in Syria’s north as a result of fierce fighting with al-Qaeda-linked radical groups, tightening their grip on an area where they have set up autonomous rule.

The reports based the information on the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a freelance photographer, who stated that the attack took place on Thursday at Tilleye, a village 100 meters away from the Turkish border, after militants stormed the village.

According to news reports, around 30 people were killed in the attack. The reports added that the People’s Defense Units (YPG), the armed militia of the PYD, came to the village in the early hours of Friday and clashed with the ISIL forces in order to gain control of the village.

“This village is known to be Yezidi. However, the village was evacuated due to the clashes and the YPG gained control of the village. Later on, the Arabs who fled from Aleppo settled in the village. They [ISIL] probably thought these Arabs were Yezidis,” said Muslim in an interview with the Turkish Hürriyet daily.

Muslim noted that Serekaniye was an area in which clashes between the YPG and ISIL frequently took place and that clashes between the two groups were still going on.

Last year, the PYD had seized control of Ras al-Ain following days of clashes with fighters affiliated with the al-Nusra Front. Ras al-Ain is part of Syria’s northeastern oil-producing province of Hasaka, home to many of the million-strong Syrian Kurdish minority. One Reuters photograph showed six bodies, including three young boys.

The attack is said to be retaliation for a recent PYD bomb attack near the ISIL-controlled Lazor Hotel located in the northern city of Raqqa, where ISIL has control. Sixty-seven people were killed in that attack.

Three hundred Kurds were abducted by ISIL during the al-Qaeda-affiliated group’s recent raid on Al-Bab village in Syria’s Aleppo province. Recently, Kurdish residents of the town of Al-Bab and surrounding villages stated that they were deeply concerned about deadly fighting among rival opposition groups and about a takeover by al-Qaeda groups. Al-Bab, which is close to Ceylanpınar, a town in Turkey’s southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, is a multiethnic town home to Kurds, Arabs, Christians and Turkmens.

According to reports, on Thursday night members of ISIL raided the town and carried out an identity check of residents there. After the identity check, the group abducted 300 people and left the town.

According to Al Jazeera, those abducted were all Kurds and that the place where they were taken was unconfirmed.

The PYD leader had previously accused Turkey of having a hand in the atrocities committed by extremist groups fighting against the regime in Syria. Ankara has denied the claims several times, saying it will not take part in the ongoing fighting in Syria.

Muslim later said Ankara’s policy towards radical groups changed after Syria’s extremist groups started to pose a threat to the security of Turkey and it cut support to al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria. “Moreover, international pressure has also contributed [to the change of policy on radical groups],” Muslim added.