Tag: Turkey

Quake strikes Turkish coast and Greek island, killing 19

ZEYNEP BILGINSOY and ELENA BECATOROS – October 30, 2020

ISTANBUL (AP) — A strong earthquake struck Friday in the Aegean Sea between the Turkish coast and the Greek island of Samos, killing at least 19 people and injuring over 700 amid collapsed buildings and flooding, officials said.

A small tsunami struck the Seferihisar district south of Izmir, the city in western Turkey that was the worst affected by the quake, said Haluk Ozener, director of the Istanbul-based Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute.

At least 17 people were killed in Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, including one who drowned, and 709 were injured, according to Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, or AFAD.

Among the dead were the wife and two children of the secretary-general of the Turkish Medical Association’s Izmir branch, the group said.

On Samos, two teenagers died after being struck by a wall that collapsed. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis tweeted condolences, saying “Words are too poor to describe what one feels before the loss of children.”

At least 19 people were injured on the island, with two, including a 14-year-old, being airlifted to Athens and seven hospitalized on the island, health authorities said.

https://apnews.com

Erdogan Tells Turkish Leaders: ‘Jerusalem is Our City’

Emily Jones – October 2, 2020

JERUSALEM, Israel – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested that Jerusalem belongs to his country during an address to Turkish lawmakers in Ankara on Thursday, The Times of Israel reported.

“In this city that we had to leave in tears during the First World War, it is still possible to come across traces of the Ottoman resistance. So, Jerusalem is our city, a city from us,” he said. “Our first qibla [Islamic direction of prayer] al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem are the symbolic mosques of our faith. In addition, this city is home to the holy places of Christianity and Judaism.”

The Ottoman Empire ruled Jerusalem from 1516-1917 until Great Britain took over after World War I. Erdogan is increasingly pushing the constitutionally secular country towards conservative Islam and considers Jerusalem an extension of Turkey.

Shortly after converting Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia church into a mosque in July, Erdogan set his sights on the holy city.

He said in a Facebook post that the “revival of the Hagia Sophia is a sign towards the return of freedom to the al-Aqsa mosque” in Jerusalem.

https://www1.cbn.com

Sea of troubles: Tensions flare across Mediterranean as world powers jockey for power

Guy Taylor -September 2, 2020

The Mediterranean — an on-again, off-again geopolitical hot spot since before the pyramids were built — is emerging anew as a sea of division and instability, with powers including Russia, China, Turkey and Israel jostling aggressively for influence, natural resources and military advantage.

Moscow is eyeing a possible military base along the oil-rich shores of Libya. China is seeking investment deals across the region. Turkey is clashing with NATO partner Greece over drilling rights and militarized islands. Newly discovered offshore natural gas deposits have nations scrambling to stake their claims.

Even the Trump administration on Wednesday partially lifted an arms embargo with Cyprus in what was widely interpreted as a shot across Turkey’s bow.

Analysts generally agree that NATO is failing to ease regional tensions. The U.S., despite multiple interests, lacks leverage in many of the disputes, with President Trump accelerating a U.S. pullback begun under President Obama that opened a power vacuum that others are now scrambling to fill.

While a range of unsavory players are making moves — Iran, Hezbollah and the Islamic State are among those seeking to exploit the situation — many in Europe and Washington are pointing the finger at Turkey for escalating the crisis by threatening to use force to take possession of natural gas finds beneath a string of Mediterranean islands that most in Europe say belongs to Greece.

The two NATO member states are now locked in a dangerous maritime standoff that is shaking the alliance to its core, with mediation attempts by Germany and others in the European Union so far going nowhere while the Trump administration warily monitors the situation.

https://www.washingtontimes.com

The Quiet Struggle Over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount

Joseph Puder – June 12, 2020

There is a quiet struggle going on over control of East Jerusalem’s Noble Sanctuary (Haram al-Sharif) or Temple Mount.  It is not as you might guess between Israel and the Palestinians.  It is actually between two Sunni-Muslim nations, the Hashemites Kingdom of Jordan and Erdogan’s Turkey.  To the extent that Israel is involved in this quiet struggle, it is to strengthen Jordan’s position against the encroaching Turks, by adding Saudi representatives to the Islamic Waqf Council.  The Islamic Waqf Council controls the activities surrounding the Noble Sanctuary or Temple Mount.  Israel has engaged the U.S. administration to mediate the issue with the Saudis.

The Hashemites, who once controlled Mecca and Medina, Islam’s holiest sites, lost out to the Saudis in the 1920’s.  The Hashemites are related by a bloodline to the Prophet Mohammad through his daughter Fatimah and her husband Ali, the Fourth Caliph.  Hasan, the son of Fatimah and Ali, is the progenitor of the Hashemite line, which is a subdivision of the Quraysh tribe.  The consolation prize was control over Islam’s third holiest site -The Noble Sanctuary or Temple Mount where the Al-Aqsa and Omar mosques are located. The Prophet Mohammad is said to have flown from the al-Aqsa mosque to heaven on his horse named Buraq.

Given the historical rivalry between the House of Saud and the Hashemites, Jordanians in the past would not contemplate allowing their Saudi rivals a foothold in Jerusalem’s holy places.  But now, after 100 years, Erdogan’s Turkey is challenging Jordan’s control over the Temple Mount. Jordan, under the Hashemite King Abdullah II, is finally relenting to the Saudis out of financial necessity and a looming threat from Erdogan’s Turkey.

Even more significantly, Turkey’s influence peddling in Jerusalem is not limited to the Temple Mount.  In its efforts to bolster the Palestinians, Erdogan’s Turkish government delivered a treasure trove of 140,000 pages of microfilm, which includes land registrations under the Ottoman Empire from 1517-1917.   The Palestinian Authority (PA) has used it to challenge Israeli ownership of real estate in various parts of the country.  The Turkish development NGO or TIKA, working on behalf of the Turkish government has invested around $1.3 million annually in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. The Turkish organization, “Our Legacy,” funded by TIKA, has as its goal the “protection of the Al-Aqsa mosque, and the Ottoman legacy in Jerusalem.

https://www.frontpagemag.com

Europe Under Siege

Bruce Bawer – March 10, 2020

In 1683 a massive army of the Ottoman Empire laid siege to the Christian city of Vienna. After two months, an allied force that consisted of men from all over the Holy Roman Empire and from other central European states, including Hungary, and that was led by John III Sobieski, the King of Poland and Lithuania, turned the Ottoman soldiers back, preventing the potential Islamization of the continent.

In recent days, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of the Ottoman Empire’s successor state, Turkey, has unleashed thousands of Muslims, mostly young males of military age, upon the European Union, today’s not-so-holy but increasingly imperial reincarnation of the Holy Roman Empire. More specifically, Erdogan, in violation of an agreement with the EU that netted him billions, has allowed – and encouraged – these people, who have been routinely described in the Western media as “refugees” and “migrants,” to storm the border separating his country from the EU’s southeasternmost satrapy, Greece. Indeed, he’s lent them active support, providing many of them with free transport to the border, which they’ve attacked with rocks, “makeshift battering rams,” and tear-gas canisters (supplied by Ergodan) while setting fires and shouting “Allahu akbar!” Photos taken at the border underscore just how perverse it is to call these thugs “refugees” or “migrants.”

Seems like old times. What’s different this time around is that whereas seventeenth-century Europeans understood that they were confronting, in the Islamic invaders of their day, an existential threat to their way of life, many of their descendants don’t seem to have a clue about what they’re dealing with. On Tuesday of last week, and again on Saturday, thousands of Germans, rallying in Berlin and other cities, demanded that the “migrants” on the Greek borders be allowed to pour into the continent and to find their way to Germany, if they wish, so that they can help form “a solidarity society” in which there will be “no more suffering.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com

Turkey in social media BLACKOUT amid fears of all-out war in Syria

RT- February 27, 2020

Social media platforms across Turkey winked out after reports of an airstrike in Syria killing dozens of Turkish soldiers fueled rumors of an all-out war. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and YouTube were all reported down.

Twitter was the first to go, with national provider Turk Telekom shutting off access around 11:30pm local time on Thursday. This was shortly after news broke that at least nine – the number has since continued to rise – Turkish soldiers were killed in Syria’s Idlib province.

This was followed by all other social networks, clustered by provider, according to multiple services monitoring internet outages across the globe.

Accounts of major media outlets remained active however, as they flashed updates about the alleged Syrian airstrike and the Turkish response – described by officials in Ankara as air and artillery strikes against multiple “regime” targets.

News that multiple soldiers were killed in Syria was confirmed on Thursday evening by Rahmi Dogan, governor of the Hatay province that neighbors Syria. Casualties from the strike were reportedly being treated at hospitals in the border town of Reyhanli.

Among the rumors circulating on social media in the aftermath were reports that Turkey would open its borders for Syrian refugees seeking to cross into Europe. It was also suggested that the parliament in Ankara intended to declare war on Syria in the morning.

So far, the only thing that has been officially confirmed is that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called an emergency session of security officials, and that Ankara has reached out to NATO and Washington.

https://www.rt.com

Syria and Turkey Edge Toward All-Out War While Putin Smiles

Rick Moran – February 12, 2020

There have been several clashes between Syrian and Turkish military forces in the last two weeks, as Syria attempts to retake Idlib province from rebel forces. Turkey has carved out a demilitarized zone in Idlib, which is supposed to be a safe zone for Syrian civilians. Their goal is to prevent a flood of refugees from crossing the Syrian border.

But Syria is ignoring the Moscow-negotiated cease-fire and driving hundreds of thousands of refugees toward Turkey, most of them in desperate straits.

The UN is warning of a humanitarian catastrophe as 700,000 Syrians are on the move with nowhere to go. But there are likely to be more refugees as Syria and Turkey have now come to blows, with President Erdogan promising to “punish” Syria for attacking Turkish positions in Idlib.

Washington Times:

Analysts say the reignited Syrian crisis threatens to engulf  Turkey and force Ankara to greatly expand its military mission inside the country. The winner, they say, could ultimately be Russia, as President Vladimir Putin may emerge as the only player powerful enough to prevent a full-blown war.

“Erdogan went into Syria for entirely selfish and cynical reasons, and now finds that it was a lot easier to go in than get out,” said former Defense Department official Michael Rubin, now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who tracks the region extensively.

https://pjmedia.com

6.8 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Eastern Turkey – EMSC

Sputnik News – January 24, 2020

A strong 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck eastern Turkey at 17:55:10 GMT, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) reported. The epicentre of the earthquake was located 210 kilometres northeast of Gaziantep and 10 kilometres north of Doganyol, Turkey at a depth of two kilometres, according to the centre.

Fourteen people have been killed in the quake, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said.

According to the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, tents and warm blankets have been sent to the region affected by the quake.

According to the EMSC, the earthquake was felt in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.

“A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck near the city of Sivrice at 20:55 [17:50 GMT]. The epicentre was located at a depth of 7 kilometres. There is no information about any damage and victims yet”, Mehmet Gulluoglu, the head of the country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, said, as aired by the Turkish NTV broadcaster.

https://sputniknews.com