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Turkish Businessman Describes $50M Bribe at Sanctions Trial

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In this courtroom sketch, Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, center, testifies before Judge Richard Berman, right, that he helped Iran evade U.S. economic sanctions with help from Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla, Nov. 29, 2017, in New York. At left is an interpreter.

NEW YORK — A Turkish-Iranian gold trader testified at a New York trial Wednesday that he paid over $50 million in bribes to Turkey’s economy minister in 2012 to overcome a banker’s fears he was too well-known in Turkey to launder Iranian money in violation of U.S. sanctions.

Reza Zarrab calmly described his arrangement with one of Turkey’s most important public officials as he began what will be several days on the witness stand at the trial of Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who is charged in a conspiracy that involved bribes and kickbacks to high-level officials.

In a conversation about shady transactions involving suitcases stuffed with gold, the economy minister, Zafer Caglayan, “asked about the profit margin,” Zarrab testified. “And he said, ‘I can broker this.’ ”

Zarrab’s decision to plead guilty and cooperate with U.S. investigators — revealed Tuesday on the trial’s first day — was a surprise twist in the trial. The prosecution seemed in jeopardy just months earlier after Zarrab tried to free himself by hiring prominent and politically connected American attorneys to try to arrange a prisoner transfer between Turkey and the United States. The effort by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey failed.

Prisoner’s outfit

The government’s star witness appeared before jurors Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan wearing tan prisoner scrubs, even though he testified he was released from jail two weeks ago and into FBI custody. At the end of the day with the jury gone, the judge asked Zarrab why he was wearing the outfit, telling prosecutors he would sign an order allowing him to wear civilian clothes if he wanted.

Once Zarrab, 34, was on the stand, prosecutors wasted no time in getting him to name names and muddy reputations in the banking industry and in government.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sidhardha Kamaraju elicited details of what the United States has said was a well-orchestrated conspiracy to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran and enable $1 billion in Iranian oil proceeds to move through international banking markets.

Zarrab said he ran into resistance from a Halkbank executive when he approached the Turkish government-owned bank in late 2011 or early 2012 to try to gain access to Iranian money through trades in gold. The executive, he said, feared that Zarrab’s marriage to Turkish pop star and TV personality Ebru Gundes made him “too popular” to make the trades.

“I was a person who was in the public eye all of the time,” he said.

Undeterred, Zarrab said he met with Caglayan, who was economy minister when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prime minister. Caglayan told him he would smooth the way for gold trades, but only if he got half the profits, which he said ended up totaling more than $50 million.

Diagrams drawn

At one point, Zarrab drew diagrams for the jury to illustrate the elaborate web of transactions used to beat the economic sanctions and make him a fortune as the middleman.

The tactics included using Iranian proceeds from gas and oil sales to Turkey to buy gold, having couriers carry the gold in suitcases to Dubai, converting it back into cash that was deposited in a front company account, and laundering the money with multiple bank transfers, including some through the United States.

Zarrab testified that the sanction-evasion scheme was done in consultation with Atilla, a 47-year-old former deputy CEO of Halkbank who has pleaded not guilty. A lawyer for Atilla attacked Zarrab’s credibility Tuesday during opening statements, saying the trial is about Zarrab’s crimes.

Caglayan is indicted in the U.S. case. The indictment describes his alleged role in the gold-transfer scheme and in another scheme in which he and other Turkish government officials supposedly approved of and directed the movement of Iranian oil proceeds by claiming they were connected to the sale of food and medicine to Iran from Dubai.

Erdogan has called on American authorities to “review” the decision to indict Caglayan, saying the former minister had not engaged in any wrongdoing because Turkey had not imposed sanctions on Iran, an important trade partner.

The prosecution of Zarrab has been major news in Turkey, where Erdogan has repeatedly asked the U.S. to release him and more recently portrayed the U.S. case as a sham.

Source: https://www.voanews.com/a/turkish-businessman-describes-bribe-at-sanctions-trial/4143027.html

Greek police raids find explosives, nine held over links to banned Turkish group

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George Georgiopoulos
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greek police found bomb-making equipment and detonators in raids in Athens on Tuesday and were questioning nine people over suspected links to a banned militant group in Turkey ahead of an expected visit by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan next week.

Eight men and a woman thought to hold Turkish citizenship were being detained after morning raids at three different addresses in central Athens.

Earlier, police officials told Reuters the individuals were being quizzed for alleged links to the leftist militant DHKP/C, an outlawed group blamed for a string of attacks and suicide bombings in Turkey since 1990.

The police found materials available commercially and which could potentially be used in making explosives were found, they said in a statement. They also retrieved digital material and travel documents.

Witnesses saw police experts in hazmat suits and holding suitcases entering one address in Athens. Tests on an unknown substance found in jars were expected to be concluded within the day.

Turkey’s Erdogan is widely expected to visit Greece in December, although his visit has not been officially announced. It would be the first visit by a Turkish president in more than 50 years.

Another official told the semi-official Athens News Agency that the case was unconnected to domestic terror groups or militant Islamists, and described those questioned as being of Turkish origin.

DHKP/C, known also as the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front, is considered a terrorist group by the European Union, Turkey and the United States.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-greece-arrests/greek-police-raids-find-explosives-nine-held-over-links-to-banned-turkish-group-idUSKBN1DS0TF

Turkey Islamizes Denmark with More Mosques

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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan clearly sees Turks living in the West as a spearhead of Islam.

by Judith Bergman,

 

  • Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan clearly sees Turks living in the West as a spearhead of Islam.
  • “Yes, integrate yourselves into German society but don’t assimilate yourselves. No one has the right to deprive us of our culture and our identity”, Erdogan told Turks in Germany as early as in 2011.
  • This assessment of Milli Görüs, however, does not seem to bother Danish authorities, who appear to see no problems with their cities becoming Islamized by the Turks. How many more mosques will it take?
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan clearly sees Turks living in the West as a spearhead of Islam. This year, he told Turks living in the West: “Go live in better neighborhoods. Drive the best cars. Live in the best houses. Make not three, but five children. Because you are the future of Europe. That will be the best response to the injustices against you.” (Photo by Gokhan Sahin/Getty Images)
“Islam cannot be either ‘moderate’ or ‘not moderate.’ Islam can only be one thing,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on November 9. “Recently the concept of ‘moderate Islam’ has received attention. But the patent of this concept originated in the West… They are now trying to pump up this idea again. What they really want to do is weaken Islam…”
Erdogan is working on strengthening Islam in the West, something he does, among other ways, by building Turkish mosques in Western countries. It is hardly surprising that he does not want the West to “weaken Islam”, but at the moment there seems little risk of that happening. The establishment of Turkish mosques in Western countries appears to be proceeding apace with very little opposition. Conversely, building Western churches in Turkey is inconceivable.

Erdogan clearly sees Turks living in the West as a spearhead of Islam. “Yes, integrate yourselves into German society but don’t assimilate yourselves. No one has the right to deprive us of our culture and our identity”, Erdogan told Turks in Germany as early as 2011. This year, he told Turks living in the West:

“Go live in better neighborhoods. Drive the best cars. Live in the best houses. Make not three, but five children. Because you are the future of Europe. That will be the best response to the injustices against you.”

Erdogan is evidently working to ensure, by continuously building new mosques and expanding old ones across Europe, that Muslims will indeed be the future of the continent.

One Western country where Erdogan is ramping up Islam is Denmark. Two new Turkish mosques are about to open in the Danish cities of Roskilde and Holbæk; in the past year, two Turkish mosques opened in the cities of Fredericia and Aarhus. New Turkish mosques were opened in Ringsted and Hedehusene in 2013; and in Køge the existing mosque opened a cultural center. There are 27 Turkish mosques in Denmark; eight of them are expanding or wish to expand.

The new mosque in Roskilde, complete with minarets, is owned by Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). The inclusion of minarets is due to second- and third-generation Turkish immigrants, who wanted the mosque to look like a “proper mosque”.

“It is a general trend in all of Europe that Diyanet is expanding physically with new mosques, and through [the mosques] also religiously, politically and culturally” said professor Samim Akgönül, of the university of Strasbourg. He has analyzed the Friday sermons that Diyanet sends to mosques all over Europe; his analyses show that the sermons are full of political and nationalistic messages favoring Erdogan’s regime.

According to Tuncay Yilmaz, chairman of the board of Roskilde’s Ayasofya Mosque, “Diyanet is not political, I can promise you that. Obviously they belong to the Turkish state, but they are independent of the government”.

That statement is false. Diyanet is an agency of the Turkish government — and an extremely active one. As Gatestone’s Burak Bekdil has noted:

“In a briefing for a parliamentary commission, Diyanet admitted that it gathered intelligence via imams from 38 countries on the activities of suspected followers of the US-based preacher Fetullah Gülen, whom the Turkish government accused of being the mastermind of the attempted coup on July 15… Diyanet said its imams gathered intelligence and prepared reports from Abkhazia, Germany, Albania, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Montenegro, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Kosovo, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Mauritania, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Turkmenistan and Ukraine”.

In Denmark, nonetheless, the newest Turkish-state mosque was welcomed with open arms. The mayor of Roskilde, Joy Mogensen, who knew that the Turkish government owned the mosque, participated in the ceremony of laying the foundation stone in February 2016. She claims that the very fact that she and the city’s bishop were invited to the ceremony meant that there were “good people” in the mosque working for “integration” — otherwise they would not have allowed “a Christian woman like myself without a headscarf” to participate in their ceremony.

One of those people “working for integration” is the chairman of the board of the mosque, Tuncay Yilmaz, who is also a member of the Roskilde city council for the Social Democratic party. He happens to have close ties to the radical Islamic organization Milli Görüs, which runs a travel agency where Yilmaz works. He organizes their trips to Mecca. “I am not a member of that organization” Yilmaz says. “The only connection is that I work for their travel agency”.

Clearly, Roskilde’s mayor does not consider Yilmaz’s affiliation a problem, nor does the city council. “If we had observed anything suspicious about that organization, we would have talked to him about it; but we haven’t heard anything like that” said Søren Kargaard, chairman of the Social Democratics in Roskilde, when asked by journalists about Yilmaz’s connection to Milli Görüs. Well, perhaps if Kargaard had bothered to look up Milli Görüs to inform himself about it, this is what he would have found, according to a 2005 report from the Middle East Quarterly:

“Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, has repeatedly warned about Milli Görüş’s activities, describing the group in its annual reports as a ‘foreign extremist organization’. The agency also reported that ‘although Milli Görüş, in public statements, pretends to adhere to the basic principles of Western democracies, abolition of the laicist government system in Turkey and the establishment of an Islamic state and social system are, as before, among its goals… As the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Landesverfassungsschutz) in Hessen notes: The threat of Islamism for Germany is posed … primarily by Milli Görüş and other affiliated groups. They try to spread Islamist views within the boundaries of the law. Then they try to implement … for all Muslims in Germany a strict interpretation of the Qur’an and of the Shari’a. … Their public support of tolerance and religious freedom should be treated with caution”.

This assessment, however, does not seem to bother Danish authorities, who appear to see no problems with their cities becoming Islamized by the Turks. That kind of ignorance — or pretense of ignorance — amounts to the dereliction of duty on the part of people such as the mayor of Roskilde and Mr. Kargaard.

How many more mosques will it take?

Judith Bergman is a columnist, lawyer and political analyst.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11400/turkey-denmark-mosques

 

Forced into Genocide: Memoirs of an Armenian Soldier in the Ottoman Turkish Army

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The Armenian Assembly of America is pleased to co-sponsor a book presentation of Forced into Genocide: Memoirs of an Armenian Soldier in the Ottoman Turkish Army by Adrienne G. Alexanian. The event will take place on Thursday, November 16th in Glendale, CA at Abril Bookstore, with an introduction of the author by Armenian Assembly Western Region Director Mihran Toumajan. Click here for the flyer.
There will be a book signing immediately after the book presentation, during the reception. Admission is free and open to the public.

Forced into Genocide is the riveting memoir of Yervant Edward Alexanian, an eye-witness to the massacre and dislocation of his family and countrymen in Ottoman Turkey during World War I. Adrienne G. Alexanian, Yervant’s daughter, has spent years preparing her father’s manuscript for publication.

Turkish Imam Fethullah Gulen, a pious Muslim or a radical Islamist?

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Illustration of Fethullah Gulen by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

The cleric should go home and face the music in Turkey

By Abraham Wagner,

Washington Times: Controversial Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen is back in the news following a diplomatic standoff between Turkey and the United States. On Oct. 8, the U.S. mission in Turkey announced a decision “to suspend all non-immigrant visa services at all U.S. diplomatic facilities in Turkey,” in retaliation for the arrest of a Drug Enforcement Administration liaison in Turkey with suspected ties to Mr. Gulen. Turkey has answered in kind by freezing the issuance of new visas.

The media spotlight on the deteriorating relationship between the two allies, however, misses the point: the self-exiled imam’s history of corruption and radicalism. Mr. Gulen’s actual record deserves the utmost scrutiny, and should not be overshadowed by the unfolding diplomatic intrigue.

The website of the cleric’s Gulen Movement, or Hizmet Movement, bills its leader as “a dedicated, pious Muslim,” who has “devoted his life to bringing peace to the world.” Yet U.S. State Department cables, divulged by WikiLeaks, reveal that Foggy Bottom, which has closely monitored Mr. Gulen since 2003, describes the preacher as “a ‘radical Islamist’ whose moderate message cloaks a more sinister and radical agenda.”

While in the United States, Mr. Gulen has received hundreds of millions in American taxpayer dollars to fund his vast network of charter schools, which have been under state-level and federal investigations for alleged, yet dire financial malfeasance in Texas, Louisiana, Illinois, Ohio and elsewhere.

In 2011, The New York Times reported that in Texas, two Gulen schools gave $50 million to Gulen-connected contractors, despite the fact that other contractors offered lower bids. Similar malfeasance and shell games has been reported elsewhere.

The curriculum and administration of Gulen schools are also suspect, with former teachers attesting to being fired and immediately replaced by new arrivals from Turkey — predominantly young men, with no English or teaching skills. Allegations have also surfaced that curricula, taught to American children, are surreptitiously comprised of Gulen’s particular brand of radical Islam.

Agency: in cooperation with the ‘the Turkish National Intelligence (MIT) leaders of the ISIS with its funds are in Turkey

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A number of the ISIS Terrorist leaders managed to escape from Syria, after repeated defeats by the Syrian Democratic forces in Raqqa and Rural area of Deir al-Zour, arrived in Turkey after taking their money with them, and the suspicions about the role of Turkish intelligence “MIT” in this process.
According to informed sources, the leaders fleeing the fighting have entered the Turkish territory, through the crossings controlled by terrorists “Euphrates shield” in the countryside of Aleppo eastern and north-east, backed by the Turkish occupation state.
For his part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the health of this information and the director of the Observatory, Rami Abdulrahman said that the fugitives were able to enter Turkey by paying bribes to the leaders of the mercenaries of the so-called “Euphrates Shield”, ranging from 20-30 thousand US dollars per person , And the mercenaries entrusted coordination between them and the Turkish intelligence to cross the border.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented during the past months the escape of hundreds of “Supporters” elements of the ISIS organization, including local leaders to the province of Hasaka-Syria, and then disappeared there and some of them were seen inside Turkish territory. The Syrian Observatory also documented the escape of elements and leaders of the terrorist organization from the eastern Homs To the control areas of the mercenaries operating in the process of “shield Euphrates” forces backed by the Turkey in the countryside of Aleppo north-east, and then move to Turkish territory by coordination between the Turkish dead and smugglers.
Arabic Sources
وكالة : بالتعاون مع “الميت التركي” قيادات من داعش تصل الى تركيا مع أموالها

 

Washington: Armenian Genocide deniers introduce “fake” Turkey-Armenia resolution

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Stop Turkifikation of Washington

In a highly offensive political move aimed at derailing H.Res.220, a bipartisan genocide prevention measure drawing upon the lessons of the Armenian Genocide, three of the U.S. House’s remaining enemies of Armenian Genocide remembrance have introduced “fake” legislation on Turkish-Armenian relations, controversially stripped of any mention of the Armenian Genocide, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

“A sick and cynical ploy: historically inaccurate and morally offensive. All the world knows that any improvement in Armenian-Turkish relations will need to start with Ankara openly acknowledging the Armenian Genocide and accepting its modern-day responsibility for the vast moral and material consequences of this still unpunished crime,” said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the ANCA.

“Reps. Stivers, Cohen, and Sessions, – in stripping out language about the Armenian Genocide from a bill about Turkish-Armenian relations – are, effectively, carrying Turkish President Erdogan’s water in Washington, advancing his shameful denial campaign even as he’s doubling down on his government’s anti-American actions and attitudes.”

H.Res.573 was introduced by Ohio Congressman Steve Stivers (R-OH) with the support of Congressional Turkey Caucus Co-Chairs Pete Sessions (R-TX) and Steve Cohen (D-TN).

Rep. Sessions spearheaded a similar resolution in the previous Congress, by all accounts, at the urging of former Congressman Connie Mack, who, upon retiring, was retained by the Turkish Institute for Peace. That resolution secured a total of 2 cosponsors.

Iraq PM: Half of IS Families Detained Near Mosul Are Turkish

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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS,

BAGHDAD — Turkish nationals make up half of the hundreds of families being held in a camp near Mosul for suspected links to the Islamic State group, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press Saturday.

The Iraqi leader also confirmed that the German teenage girl found in Mosul last month is still being held in a Baghdad prison and may face the death penalty.

At the camp near Mosul, Iraqi forces are holding 1,333 women and children who surrendered to Kurdish forces. The families handed themselves over after an Iraqi offensive drove the extremist group from the northern town of Tal Afar, near Mosul at the end of August.

Many of those detained at the camp are not guilty of any crime, al-Abadi said and his government is “in full communication” with their home countries to “find a way to hand them over.”

So far, al-Abadi said, Iraq has repatriated fewer than 100 people.

“But we are working very hard to accelerate this. It is not in our interest to keep families and children inside our country when their countries are prepared to take them,” he added.

Sixteen-year-old Linda W. ran away last summer from her hometown of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany after communicating with extremists from the Islamic State group online. She was found in the basement of a home in Mosul’s Old City by Iraqi forces, arrested and brought to Baghdad.

Iraqi intelligence officials told the AP the girl allegedly worked with the IS group’s police force.

Al-Abadi said Iraq’s judiciary will decide if the teen will face the death penalty.

“You know teenagers under certain laws, they are accountable for their actions especially if the act is a criminal activity when it amounts to killing innocent people,” Al-Abadi said.

The German teen is being held in a prison at Baghdad’s airport together with other foreign women found in Mosul, including citizens from Belgium, France, Syria and Iran. Hundreds more non-Iraqi women with IS links and suspected of carrying out terrorist attacks are being held at a prison in the Mosul area, Iraqi officials told the AP earlier this week.

Also this week, Baghdad’s central criminal court sentenced a Russian national to death by hanging for his membership in the IS group.

The individual was tried under Iraq’s anti-terrorism law and confessed to carrying out “terrorist operations” against Iraqi security forces since 2015, said Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, spokesman for Iraq’s supreme judicial council.

Iraqi has repeatedly faced criticism for its use of the death penalty. Iraq consistently ranks among the top countries in the world in numbers of executions.

When al-Abadi attempted to fast-track death sentences in 2016, the United Nations warned the move would likely result in “gross, irreversible miscarriages of justice … given the weaknesses of the Iraqi justice system,” according to a statement from U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.

Tens of thousands of foreigners traveled to Iraq and Syria to live in the IS group’s self-styled Islamic caliphate. As the territory under IS control has rapidly shrunk over the past two years, Iraqi forces have arrested and detained thousands of men, women and children for suspected IS links.

Iraqi forces retook the country’s second largest city of Mosul from the extremists in July, leaving only scattered pockets of IS held territory in Iraq.

Terrorist State of Turkey continued bombardment on neighboring countries Turkish jets kill three civilians in Iraq: Report

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Three civilians have been killed when Turkish fighter jets bombarded Duhok province in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, a report says.

“The Turkish aerial bombing that targeted the border area of Saidan of Amadiya city in Duhok province, left three civilians dead” on Wednesday, Iraq’s al-Sumaria news website quoted a media official in the province as saying. Mahmoud Nahily said an unspecified number of people were also injured.

Eyewitnesses had earlier said Turkish warplanes attacked border areas north of the province.

Turkish forces have been conducting ground operations as well as airstrikes against the positions of the the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in Turkey’s troubled southeastern border region and Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region for nearly two years.

The campaign began following the July 2015 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc, which claimed more than 30 civilian lives. Turkish officials held the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group responsible for the act of terror.

The PKK militants, who accuse the Ankara government of supporting Daesh, launched a string of supposed reprisal attacks against Turkish security forces after the bomb attack, in turn prompting the Turkish military operations.

The militants have been waging a bloody campaign in southeastern Turkey for decades, which has left more than 40,000 people dead.

Turkish Thieves break into Istanbul’s Armenian church, steal several items

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A number of items have been stolen from St. Gregory the Illuminator Armenian church in Beyoğlu district of Istanbul, Turkey.

The thieves managed to steal several objects from the church. However, they were forced to run away after being spotted taking out a massive icon and a cross out of the church, according to Ermenihaber.am.

Leaving the icon and the cross outside the church, the thieves ran away taking a number of stolen objects with them.

The prove is under way.