Turkish police find author of anti-Armenian video

April 29, 2016 By administrator

The Turkish police have identified the man whose video footage with racist and anti-Armenian content was widely shared in the social media recently.
A deputy interior minister, Sebahattin Ozturk, said the man was a security officer who has been dismissed from service, Agos reports.
In the footage, he appears against the background of the ruins in the town Sur (Diyarbekir province).
The district where he shot the scene has been under curfew since December. It is home to the Armenian church of St Giragos.
The man was sacked after a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party, Nadir Yildirim, applied to Interior Minister Efkan Ala, calling his attention to the racist and xenophobic statements, and threats heard in the footage. In a subsequent phone conversation with Garo Palyan, a Turkish-Armenian MP elected from the HDP party, Ozturk said that the man was no longer in service.

The video features the ravages in the district, caused by the recent violent clashes. The Turkish-Armenian publication claims that it has been shot by a team of professionals.

Turkish Police Break the Doors of Armenian Church in Mardin

December 17, 2015 By administrator

St.-Kevork-Merdin YEREVAN (Public Radio of Armenia)—Turkish policemen have broken the door of Sourp Kevork (St. George) Armenian Church in Mardin, Turkey.

Hatun Jajur, who has voluntarily undertaken to clean the church, had left for a while and found everything turned upside down upon return.

“Not only the main entrance, but also all other doors of the church were broken,” Jajur said.

The Church is one of Europe’s seven most endangered monuments. For 15 centuries the Church of St. George was the spiritual home of the large Armenian community in the Turkish city of Mardin. This Grade I registered historical building was founded in 420 AD and was in use until the Armenian genocide of 1915. In spite of its outstanding historical and cultural importance, this monument is currently in an advance state of decay.

Turkish police detained 11 anti-ISIL protesters in western Turkey İZMİR

March 11, 2015 By administrator

Eleven people were detained in the western Turkish city of İzmir on March 11 while commemorating Ivana Hoffman, the first female western fighter who died while fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria.

Demonstrators gathered in the Alsancak neighborhood to erect a tent in memory of Ivana Hoffman, a 19-year-old German citizen fighting with Syrian Kurdish militiamen who was killed in northeastern Syria on March 7. Police asked the group to disperse, saying the demonstration was unwarranted, before detaining 11 people and removing the tent and posters, Doğan News Agency reported.

In a separate incident in the city, four university students have been detained for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan while planting trees at Ege University. The detentions came after police reviewed the security camera footage of the event and the four students were detained while leaving the school.

Scores of people in Turkey have been detained or have testified for “insulting” Erdoğan over the past few months. Defendants include prominent journalist Can Dündar, former Miss Turkey Merve Büyüksaraç, singer-turned-Twitter-activist Atilla Taş, and several teenagers.

Source: hurriyet daily news

Turkish police raid critical news website

September 30, 2014 By administrator

ISTANBUL

Turkish police raided the headquarters of a news website Sept. 30, allegedly demanding that a critical article about last year’s massive corruption investigations be removed immediately.

Police officers came to the office of Karşı, a newspaper that shut down its print edition in April and turned itself into a digital-only publication, in Istanbul’s Mecidiyeköy neighborhood early on Sept. 30. After preventing five of its employees from working on the news website, the Anti-Cyber Crime Unit conducted a search in the office.

Emrah Direk, editor-in-chief of karsigazete.com, said the police officers asked the paper to remove an article about the corruption probes initiated in December 2013 that implicated several government figures. “We are a press organization. We have the right to inform the public,” Direk said. “We have just five employees. We were surprised that 10-15 police officers raided our office.”

Direk claimed that the unit did not produce a search warrant when it asked for the removal of the article, which was published by compiling social media reactions to the government’s claims that the wiretapping records were montaged. “They didn’t explain to us their reasoning,” he said. “They didn’t tell us which crime we committed by publishing that article. But we are not intimidated. We will keep walking our line.”

The Istanbul Police Department rejected claims that the raid was conducted without a court order. “The process regarding the aforementioned newspaper is being conducted according to court orders and laws,” read a written statement.

The Turkish Journalists’ Association (TGC), on the other hand, condemned the police raid. “This is the latest example [of] the censorship that is present in this country. It is a fresh blow to the right of the people to be informed,” TGC said in a Sept. 30 statement on its website.

September/30/2014

According to Kurdish PYD many Turkish police officers from elite units are said to be fighting with the terrorist group ISIL.

July 15, 2014 By administrator

Report TODAYSZAMAN

Officials from the Syrian pro-Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) have claimed that Turkey ignores illegal border crossings conducted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in order to attack Syria’s Kurdish-populated Rojava region.

According to Turkish media reports, Abdulsalam Ahmad — co-chairman of the PYD-led People’s Council of Western Kurdistan (PCWK) — has claimed that not only some villages in Rojava but also some Turkish villages close to the Turkey-Syria border are under ISIL’s sway and are used for medical treatment for the group’s militants who attack Rojava.

The clashes with Kurdish groups have increased since ISIL — which now calls itself the Islamic State — seized territories straddling Syria and neighboring Iraq and declared a self-styled Islamic caliphate. Most of the land was seized in June during a push across Iraq.

The PYD executive council member Bashira Darwis said in remarks to media outlets that there are many groups fighting with ISIL against Kurdish militants in Syria and that Turkey ignores the fact that these groups illegally cross through Turkish territory.

He noted that many ISIL members killed in Rojava had Turkish identity cards and further claimed that they are professional fighters with military training. Darwish also said there are fighters from the UK, Germany and many other countries.

In remarks to the Taraf daily, Darwis said that ISIL and other similar groups kill children, the elderly and the unarmed, rather than only combatants. “This is a strategic massacre. The main aim of those groups is to fight against Kurdish people, since none of them are fighting against the [Assad] regime,” she said, adding that many Kurdish people have been forced to flee.

In addition to the claims that Turkey supports ISIL by providing medical treatment to fighters, many police officers from elite units are said to be fighting with the terrorist group.

In addition, some Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members and sympathizers in Turkey are reported to have crossed into Syria to join the People’s Protection Units (YPG) — a Kurdish militia based in Syria — to support the YPG against ISIL, the Cihan news agency reported on Sunday.

According to the report, when ISIL insurgents attacked the Kurdish-populated Syrian town of Ain al-Arab — known as Kobani in Kurdish and strategically located on the border with Turkey — with heavy weaponry last week, PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and PKK operatives in the Kandil Mountains in northern Iraq called on Kurds to join the YPG.

http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_pyd-claims-turkey-turns-blind-eye-to-isil-attacks_353011.html