What brought the presidents of Turkey and Russia into an alliance with no name? Their geo-political opportunism was part of it, but mainly it was the inherent ideological hatred of Western civilization that eventually made the Turkish president a useful instrument in the Russian president’s reckless campaign to harm the interests of the West.
If logic worked in politics, the question to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should have been: Why has your country had so passionately sought out, in vain, membership in the European Union?
Erdoğan talks about an “evil West” but wants to become part of it — perhaps to “improve” it? Why did Turkey send its 15,000 sons, only to greet with honor 700 dead soldiers in a war that took place 8,000 km away on the Korean Peninsula? Turkey has been a full member candidate for the EU since 1987, but the Korean military campaign earned it NATO membership in 1952.
When India hosted a key G20 conference in Srinagar, the capital of the Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory of India, on May 22 and 23, even though the conference was reportedly attended by around 122 delegates, including 60 foreigners, it was boycotted by Pakistan as well as its longtime allies, China and Turkey.
Pakistan called the meeting “illegal.” Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India, but it is claimed by Pakistan, which has violently targeted the region through terror groups. Hundreds of people therefore rallied in the Pakistan-occupied area of Kashmir to protest the meeting.
Turkey’s Hizbullah is not to be confused with the Lebanese Shia terror group Hezbollah, although their name has the same meaning in Arabic: The Party of God. Turkey’s Hizbullah is radically Sunni and pro-Kurdish.
At the peak of its violent campaign between 1991 and 2001, Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate announced that the organization’s ideology was “to fight every non-Islamic regime and administration in lands where Islam is not predominant.” In those years, Hizbullah had nearly 100 associations and NGOs under its auspices.
In Turkey, criticizing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or his family, requesting equal rights or autonomy for Kurds, or posting on social media your criticism of almost any government policy can land you in jail. Even if you may be committed to non-violence and have nothing to do with any terrorist activity, you might, for these so-called charges, spend years in prison. It is common in Turkey for citizens to be labelled “terrorists” and jailed on charges of “terrorism”.
The Christians of Iraq and Syria have for decades suffered from persecution and instability caused by oppression by the Ba’ath regimes, the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the outbreak of Sunni-Shiite fighting in 2006, al-Qaeda terrorism, the 2014 genocide by ISIS, ongoing Turkish airstrikes on Iraq and Syria, and in many cases, pressures and harassment at the hands of their Muslim neighbors. All this persecution has forced many of them to leave their home countries and seek asylum elsewhere.
When multiple earthquakes first struck Turkey on February 6, the death toll, according to the Turkish government after a month, reached 48,448. Unofficial sources estimate that the real number is much higher. Around 200,000 people were still waiting to be rescued from under buildings that had collapsed, according to a prediction from early February by geophysical engineer Professor Ovgun Ahmet Ercan.
Compare the response of two countries, one Middle Eastern, the other European.
In Turkey, twin earthquakes on February 6 took more than 50,000 lives, even though there was warning about the impending earthquake.
In Greece, a train crash on March 1 killed more than 50 people.
On January 21, far-right provocateur Rasmus Paludan travelled from Denmark to Sweden to set the holy book of Islam alight in what appeared to be a one-man show in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.
The act sent shockwaves across large parts of the Muslim world, sparking mass protests in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and of course in Turkey, where anti-Sweden rallies grew so violent that the Swedish embassy in Ankara was briefly forced to close.
This unpleasant story persists. Islamists, citing the hadith – a dubious source of Prophet Mohammed’s sayings written 200 years after his death and on which Islamist scholars have never agreed for 14 centuries — defend their lust for underage girls. [Here is a long list of Turkish Islamist practices of pedophilia in the past years.]
Most recently, in November, Turkey was shocked at news that a prominent Islamic sheik, the leader of a religious order fiercely devoted to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had married off his six-year-old daughter to a 29-year-old disciple. Six! The girl had been forced into sex and became a mother at 14. She complained to the prosecutor’s office, but Erdogan’s authorities apparently did not want to bother the sheik.
At 4:17 am on February 6, an earthquake of 7.8-magnitude hit 10 provinces in Turkey’s east, which account for a sixth of the country’s total population. The worst disaster in modern Turkey’s history, the earthquake killed, as of February 15, more than 35,000 people and injured 100,000. The death toll will likely reach 40,000 or more. According to one estimate, the quake will result in $84 billion in economic losses to Turkey, more than 10% of gross domestic product.
Due to a significant security threat on the Israeli rescue and relief mission in Turkey, and following a joint situational assessment with the heads of the IDF Home Front Command and Search and Rescue Units which took place on Saturday night, United Hatzalah CEO Eli Pollack and Vice President of Operations Dov Maisel instructed the head of United Hatzalah’s rescue mission Major (res.) Yossi Cohen to end the mission and return to Israel as soon as possible.
h/t MP
The news out of Turkey and Syria is horrible. As of the time of writing, the death toll from the earthquakes there has reached more than 23,000 and no one thinks it has peaked.
The devastation is overwhelming. It is almost impossible to reconcile the piles of rubble with the apartment buildings, places of worship and historical treasures they once were, even with the graphic photos of before and after provided by those on the ground.
Why are western nations always expected to bail out Muslim states?
Quake Devastation Tied to Turkey’s Failure to Enforce Building Codes
ISTANBUL — Turkey has for years tempted fate by not enforcing modern construction codes while allowing — and in some cases, encouraging — a real estate boom in earthquake-prone areas, experts say.
The lax enforcement, which experts in geology and engineering have long warned about, is gaining renewed scrutiny in the aftermath of this week’s devastating earthquakes, which flattened thousands of buildings and killed more than 22,700 people across Turkey and Syria.
“This is a disaster caused by shoddy construction, not by an earthquake,” said a professor of emergency planning at University College London, David Alexander.
STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Swedish domestic security agency warned Wednesday that the threat of attacks in the Scandinavian country has increased in the weeks since a far-right activist burned a Quran outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm.
The agency noted that international reactions to the events outside the embassy last month” have been extensive” and “the assessment is that the security situation has deteriorated.”
“Sweden is judged to be in greater focus than before for violent Islamism globally,” the security service, which is known by the Swedish acronym SAPO, said.
Turkey has been hit by a second massive earthquake, hours after an earlier catastrophic quake devastated the region, killing more than 1,500 people and injuring thousands more, while toppling thousands of buildings.
The second quake hit at 1:24 pm (1024 GMT), two-and-a-half miles south-southeast of the town of Ekinozu and around 60 miles north of the first quake that wrought devastation across Turkey and Syria, and as rescue workers continued their efforts.
The 7.5 magnitude trembler struck as hundreds were still believed to be trapped under rubble as a result of the first, and the toll was expected to rise as rescue workers searched mounds of wreckage in cities and towns across the area.
Twitter – Turkiye
#BREAKING #TURKIYE #TURQUIA #TURQUIE #TURKEY
🔴TURKIYE :POWERFUL EARTHQUAKE MAGNITUDE 7.4 HIT 10 CITIES IN SOUTHEASTERN REGION💔#VIDEO SANLIURFA CITY
Buildings continue to collapse due to AFTERSHOCKS #BreakingNews #UltimaHora #Earthquake #Terremoto #Temblor #Gempa #Deprem pic.twitter.com/kgEtacneUJ
— loveworld (@LoveWorld_Peopl) February 6, 2023
#BREAKING: The collapse of buildings in Turkey after the earthquake, and the total number of victims in #Turkey and #Syria, the number of deaths exceeded 1,500, and the number of injured 7,000. #deprem #Turkiye #تركيا #سوريا pic.twitter.com/Yzi6DS955T
— MGreen (@mgreentv) February 6, 2023
May Allah forgive all the Muslims who died in the Powerful 7.8 earthquake in Turkey and grant a speedy recovery to thousands of injured people.Prayers for Turkiye #earthquakeinturkey #Istanbul #Syria #Iran #زلزال pic.twitter.com/ma4xFPSenp
— HAMZii AWAN (@hamza_awan28) February 6, 2023
Hatay Province, Turkey — "All the buildings have collapsed."pic.twitter.com/z0W39W2zHq
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 6, 2023
