170 new prisons will be built in Turkey to accommodate more than 100,000 inmates

170 new prisons will be built in Turkey to accommodate more than 100,000 inmates

    Thursday, September 15, 2016   No comments

Erdogan claims high-ground  when questioned about his support for armed groups fighting to overthrow the Syrian government: It is shameful to negotiate with the Syrian president who is responsible for hundreds of thousands of lives lost, he argues. But he shrugs off any criticism that he is authoritarian or dictator. Yet, the numbers that his own ministers are making public proves that he is just as cruel: since the failed coup, thousands of soldiers, teachers, professors, doctors, lawyers, students, and anyone suspected of being a follower of Gulen were arrested. It is estimated that nearly 200,000 people were arrested. To accommodate this large number of inmates, the government released thousands of criminals. Signaling the large number of arrests, the government revealed that it will build new prisons, not schools or research centers, prisons, 170 of them, in the next five years. 
 

More than 170 jails will be built over the next five years in Turkey, according to a statement from the Justice Ministry. The ministry’s move comes after the overcrowding in jails caused by the arrests linked to the July 15 failed coup attempt, believed to have been masterminded by the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ). Source

One could understand that soldiers who take part in a coup to overthrow an elected government should be arrested and punished. But arresting teachers, professionals, and ordinary citizens because they are suspected of being follower of Gulen is what dictators so. When these hundreds of thousands of inmates are added to tens of thousands of Kurdish people killed and tens of thousands imprisoned, Erdogan will be indistinguishable from the dictators he likes to criticizes.

Body of Russian pilot is dragged through the dirt and stamped on after helicopter is shot down by Syrian rebels

Body of Russian pilot is dragged through the dirt and stamped on after helicopter is shot down by Syrian rebels

    Tuesday, August 02, 2016   No comments

    WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

    Russian Mi-8 helicopter carrying three crew and two officers was shot down by Syrian rebels in the Idlib region
    Gruesome pictures show what is believed to be body of a Russian pilot being dragged through dirt and onto truck
    Russian officials say aircraft was returning from delivering aid to war-torn Aleppo when it was gunned down

A Russian military helicopter has been shot down by rebels in Syria killing all five people on board, it has been revealed.

The aircraft, carrying three crew and two officers, crashed down in the Idlib province in north western Syria on its way home to a Russian airbase.

Gruesome pictures have since emerged showing what is believed to be the body of a Russian pilot being dragged through the dirt and loaded on to a truck.  Source
 

Rights group: There is"credible evidence" that Turkey has tortured hundreds of people detained following the July 15 coup attempt

Rights group: There is"credible evidence" that Turkey has tortured hundreds of people detained following the July 15 coup attempt

    Sunday, July 24, 2016   No comments

Rights Group Says Turkey Coup Detainees Have Been Tortured

Amnesty International says it has "credible evidence" that Turkey has tortured hundreds of people detained in a wave of arrests following a failed July 15 coup attempt.

The global rights watchdog said on July 24 that some of those in custody were being "subjected to beatings and torture, including rape, in official and unofficial detention centers in the country."

Turkish authorities have detained more than 13,000 people in a crackdown following the failed military coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Some 6,000 of those detained have been formally arrested.

London-based Amnesty International cited interviews with doctors, lawyers, and an official in a detention center in saying that evidence suggests detainees have been subject to brutal abuses.

A senior Turkish official was cited by the AFP news agency as denying the group's allegations and pledging that the country would not violate human rights.

"The idea that Turkey, a country seeking European Union membership, would not respect the law is absurd," the unidentified official was quoted as saying.

Confirming what was rumored in 2013, Saudi Arabia Offered Russia influence in the Middle East in return for dropping its support for Assad

Confirming what was rumored in 2013, Saudi Arabia Offered Russia influence in the Middle East in return for dropping its support for Assad

    Saturday, July 23, 2016   No comments

ISR Weekly: 
The Saudi rulers must think that there are no limits to the power of money in shaping the world according to their desires. After all, they have been so successful in building an image of a moderate nation when the kingdom actually have troubling human rights record. They have used money to pay off coalition partners to have their coutnries' names attached to the Saudi war on Yemen. They threatened to withhold money from UN relief organizations unless the UN removes the kingdom's name from the UN Blacklist of nations that kill children. They threatened to dump $750 billion of U.S. government bonds if the administration released documents that point to the kingdom's role in 9/11 attacks and passing laws that allow the 9/11 victims to sue Saudi citizens and government officials. And now they are confirming that they tried to bribe Putin so that he drops his support for the Syrian government. Apparently, they are mistaken. Putin turned down their offer and U.S. released the 28 pages. The kingdom's name will be linked to killing children in Yemen regardless. The truth cannot be obscured forever.


__________
Saudi Arabia will offer Russia access to the Gulf Cooperation Council Market and regional
investment funds if it ends its support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Kingdom’s Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said in an interview with the Politico.eu news website.

Russia’s military intervention in Syria began in September last year, purportedly to fight the Islamic State, but many analysts have seen it as a way to prop up Assad's government by mostly attacking groups opposed to the regime.

Saudi Arabia provides financial and military support to several rebel groups in Syria and has long proposed a handover of power or the forcible removal of Assad.           

Saudi Arabia, according to Al-Jubeir, can offer Russia a foothold in the Middle East if a compromise can be found on the Syria conflict.

“We are ready to give Russia a stake in the Middle East that will make Russia a force stronger than the Soviet Union” with access to a pool of investment “greater than China’s," he said.

“It would be reasonable for Russia to say, that’s where our relations will advance our interests, not with Assad. We don’t disagree on the end game in Syria but how to get there," he claimed.

“Assad’s days are numbered," he said, “so make a deal while you can.”

The Islamic State is a terrorist organization banned in Russia. Source

Amnesty: Syrian rebels guilty of war crimes

Amnesty: Syrian rebels guilty of war crimes

    Friday, July 08, 2016   No comments

ISR comment: Four years later, NGOs and western media start to report on the crimes committed by opposition groups in Syria. As early as 2012, ISR reported on war crimes and crimes against humanity--self-documented crimes-- committed by the so-called Free Syrian Army groups, which were--and many of them still are--sponsored and protected by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey and their Western allies.

_______________
Armed groups surrounding the Sheikh Maqsoud district of Aleppo city have repeatedly carried out indiscriminate attacks that have struck civilian homes, streets, markets and mosques, killing and injuring civilians and displaying a shameful disregard for human life, said Amnesty International.

The organization has gathered strong evidence of serious violations from eyewitnesses, and obtained the names of at least 83 civilians, including 30 children, who were killed by attacks in Sheikh Maqsoud between February and April 2016. More than 700 civilians were also injured, according to the local field hospital. Video evidence seen by Amnesty International shows artillery shelling, rocket and mortar attacks carried out by the Fatah Halab (Aleppo Conquest) coalition of armed groups in the area, targeting the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) controlling the area.

“The relentless pummelling of Sheikh Maqsoud has devastated the lives of civilians in the area. A wide array of armed groups from the Fatah Halab coalition has launched what appear to be repeated indiscriminate attacks that may amount to war crimes,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, interim Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International.

There are around 30,000 civilians living in Sheikh Maqsoud which is a predominately Kurdish part of Aleppo city. The area is controlled by YPG forces and surrounded from the northern, eastern and western fronts by opposition armed groups who have targeted it from all three sides. Syrian government forces control areas south of Sheikh Maqsoud. In 2014, YPG forces started fighting against the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS). In recent months however tensions have increased with opposition armed groups, particularly in the Aleppo area. Attacks by armed groups have killed at least 62 YPG fighters, according to the Families of the Martyrs Association.

In recent days the very fragile cessation of hostilities across Syria agreed to in Geneva in February was extended to areas around Sheikh Maqsoud in the Aleppo Countryside governorate. However, attacks on Sheikh Maqsoud have continued unabated over the past few months.
Mounting evidence of indiscriminate attacks

Satellite imagery, obtained by Amnesty International and corroborated by testimony from residents, shows destroyed and badly damaged houses in a residential street in the western part of Sheikh Maqsoud, more than 800 metres away from the frontline.

Mohamad lost seven members of his family when his home in Sheikh Maqsoud was struck by an improvised ‘Hamim’ rocket launched by an armed group on 5 April 2016. Those killed included his 18-month-old daughter, his two sons, aged 15 and 10, and an eight-year-old nephew. He and two of his other young nephews sustained shrapnel wounds and were critically injured. His home is 800 metres away from the frontline.

“There are no [military] checkpoints near my house. It is a residential street and there are even people displaced by fighting or who fled airstrikes in Aleppo city living on the same street,” he told Amnesty International.

Two days earlier Mohamad’s neighbour’s house was hit by a mortar which killed two children.

Another resident of Sheikh Maqsoud told Amnesty International that the shelling intensified in February and that people spent days in their homes unable to leave. She described how her home was attacked in April by what she believed was a weapon fitted with a gas canister.

“All I remember was the walls collapsing and hearing an explosion. We got injured – I had shrapnel in my hands and legs […] We live […] very far away from the frontline. There are no checkpoints close by or any other military points,” she said.

Saad, a local pharmacist living in Sheikh Maqsoud, described 5 April 2016 as “the bloodiest day the neighbourhood had witnessed”. Shelling from armed groups continued for nine hours straight, he said.

source...

U.S. ally, Bahrain, rearrests top human rights activist Nabeel Rajab

U.S. ally, Bahrain, rearrests top human rights activist Nabeel Rajab

    Monday, June 13, 2016   No comments

DM, UK: Bahraini security forces on Monday rearrested leading human rights activist Nabeel Rajab in a dawn raid in the Gulf kingdom, his family said on Twitter.

Rajab, 51, who was detained in 2014 for tweets deemed insulting to the authorities before his release on health grounds, was apprehended at his home in the mainly Shiite village of Bani Jamra near Manama, his family said.

"Rajab was arrested from his house and his house was searched," tweeted his wife Sumaya Rajab.

There was no immediate clarification on the reason for his latest arrest.

Rajab, who has led anti-government marches and heads the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, had previously served two years in jail for taking part in unauthorised protests.

He was sentenced to six months in jail for his tweets but pardoned in July 2015 after King Hamad issued a royal pardon "for health reasons".

Bahrain, home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, has been rocked by unrest since security forces crushed Shiite-led protests in 2011 demanding a constitutional monarchy and an elected prime minister.

Washington had previously called for Rajab's release, and international rights groups have condemned trials against opponents of the Sunni regime.

His arrest comes a week after another leading opposition activist, Zeinab al-Khawaja, fled Bahrain following her release from jail on "humanitarian grounds".

"It pains me to leave, but I leave carrying our cause on my back, and my love for my country in my chest," Khawaja, who left for Denmark where she also holds nationality, said on Twitter.

The Gulf Centre for Human Rights has said Khawaja was jailed for three years and one month on charges including tearing up the monarch's picture and insulting a police officer.

Amnesty International's deputy MENA director James Lynch said Rajab's arrest "appears to be another alarming example of Bahrain's zero-tolerance stance towards peaceful dissent and activism, which it enforces through arbitrary measures including revolving-doors detention".

#IslamicSocietiesReview: Saudi Arabia blackmails UN, "no money unless the Kingdom is removed from the blacklist"

#IslamicSocietiesReview: Saudi Arabia blackmails UN, "no money unless the Kingdom is removed from the blacklist"

    Wednesday, June 08, 2016   No comments

FP published an exclusive story reporting that "Saudi Arabia threatened to break relations with U.N. over human rights criticism in Yemen." The magazine added that "Riyadh warned Turtle Bay it would pull hundreds of millions of dollars from U.N. programs if it was singled out for killing and maiming children in Yemen."

FP reported:

Saudi Arabia threatened this week to break relations with the United Nations and cut hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to its humanitarian relief and counterterrorism programs to strong-arm the U.N. into removing Riyadh and its allies from a blacklist of groups that are accused of harming children in armed conflict.

The threat — which has not been previously reported — worked, and the U.N. subsequently dropped the Saudis from a rogues’ gallery of the world’s worst violators of children’s rights in conflict zones.

Saudi Arabia often uses its wealth to influence poor countries' diplomatic policies and actions. The Arab coalition that is ostensibly supporting its war on Yemen consists of the weaker and smaller GCC partners and several other Arab countries who depend on Saudi money. The Same applies to the so-called "anti-Terrorism" coalition, assembled by the heir apparent, Mohammed Ibn Salman. 

The Saudis might have told the UN that it will use its influence over these 34 countries to leave UN institutions unless Saudi Arabia is removed from the list.

The UN cave in to the rulers of Saudi Arabia shows that an intergovernmental organization, such as the UN, is not fit to objectively and effectively report on human rights abuses, which are by definition, committed by governments and large corporations with immense influence over governments. The proper way to advocate for human rights is to support NGOs and strengthen civil society institutions instead.

The rulers of Saudi Arabia also use religion for political ends. Reuters reported that, in addition to using OIC, which is a tool created by Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi religious figures were to meet and issue a fatwa, declaring UN, anti-Muslims. This bizarre use of fatwa-on-demand shows the true nature of Saudi brand of Islam which uses religious institutions to legitimize the rulers archaic political power structure.

Saudi-led military coalition added to UN's blacklist over the deaths of hundreds of children in Yemen

Saudi-led military coalition added to UN's blacklist over the deaths of hundreds of children in Yemen

    Thursday, June 02, 2016   No comments

children are among the victims of Saudi Arabia's airstrikes in Yemen

On Thursday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon  placed the Saudi-led military coalition that launched a war on Yemen on an annual blacklist over the deaths of hundreds of children in airstrikes.

Yemen's Shiite Huthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa in September 2014 were also added to the list of children's rights violators released Thursday, detailing offenses in 14 countries.

"Emerging and escalating crises had a horrific impact on boys and girls," said a statement from the office of the UN envoy for children and armed conflict.

"The situation in Yemen was particularly worrisome with a five-fold increase in the number of children recruited (by armed groups) and six times more children killed and maimed compared to 2014," it said.

The Saudi-led coalition is responsible for 60 percent of the total 785 children who were killed and 1,168 wounded last year in Yemen, said the report.

Saudi Arabia to behead 14 people--under "haraba" law

Saudi Arabia to behead 14 people--under "haraba" law

    Thursday, June 02, 2016   No comments

Absence of details provided by government officials, local Saudi media reported Wednesday that 14 people were sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia. According to Alarabiya, the decision was made by a court in the eastern city of Al Qatif with the predominantly Shia population.
The 14 people were charged of crime of "haraba", whose punishment is beheading by the sword.


The suspects were accused of several crimes, including the murder of representatives of law enforcement forces, the destruction of private property, the armed attack on collectors of a bank.

Some family members accuse the government of torturing their relatives to secure false confessions. They deny that their relatives were involved in any armed activities. They add that their relatives were arrested for participating in peaceful protests in 2011.


Saudi Arabia often uses anti-terror laws to prosecute dissidents, bloggers, and human rights activists.

In 2015, a Saudi blogger convicted of "insulting Islam" received a 1,000-lash sentence in addition to prison. Raif Badawi has been behind bars since 2012 for his online posts and running a blog called "Saudi Arabian Liberals," where he hosted political and religious debate and advocated secularism in a highly religious society.

In January 2016, 47 people were executed in Riyadh, including a prominent Shia theologian Nimr al-Nimr.

Saudi Arabia is among the top five countries with the highest number of executions in 2015. Other countries include China, Iran, Pakistan and the United States, according to Amnesty International.

Saudi Arabia's alliance with Western powers provide it with cover to commit human rights abuses at human and interfere in other nations affairs and face no consequences. For instance, Saudi Arabia is known supporter of terrorist groups in Syria but beheads dissidents who protest its abuses at home, while meeting no condemnation from Western governments.

The rulers of the kingdom often use perverted interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism, to carry out practices that are cruel and inhumane.

Dalai Lama: 'Refugees Go Home... Germany should never be an Arab country"

Dalai Lama: 'Refugees Go Home... Germany should never be an Arab country"

    Wednesday, June 01, 2016   No comments

Refugees should only be accepted in Europe on a temporary basis, and Germany can never become an Arab land, the Dalai Lama told German newspaper FAZ.

Too many people have arrived recently in Europe seeking refuge and most of them should go home, the Dalai Lama told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on Tuesday.

"If you look at each individual refugee, especially women and children, we feel their suffering. A person who is doing better has a duty to help them," the Dalai Lama said.

"On the other hand, there are now too many. Europe, for example Germany, can't become an Arab country. Germany is Germany. There are so many (refugees), that things are difficult in
practice. Also from a moral point of view I think that these refugees should only be accepted on a temporary basis. The goal should be that they return and help to rebuild their own countries."

#IslamicSocietiesReview: ISIL's cruelty as catalyst for positive social change in Syria and Iraq

#IslamicSocietiesReview: ISIL's cruelty as catalyst for positive social change in Syria and Iraq

    Thursday, May 12, 2016   No comments

They share little more than an enemy and struggle to communicate on the battlefield, but together two relatively obscure groups have opened up a new front against Islamic State militants in a remote corner of Iraq.

The unlikely alliance between an offshoot of a leftist Kurdish organization and an Arab tribal militia in northern Iraq is a measure of the extent to which Islamic State has upended the regional order.

Across Iraq and Syria, new groups have emerged where old powers have waned, competing to claim fragments of territory from Islamic State and complicating the outlook when they win.

"Chaos sometimes produces unexpected things," said the head of the Arab tribal force, Abdulkhaleq al-Jarba. "After Daesh (Islamic State), the political map of the region has changed. There is a new reality and we are part of it."

In Nineveh province, this "new reality" was born in 2014 when official security forces failed to defend the Sinjar area against the Sunni Islamic State militants who purged its Yazidi population.

A Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) came to the rescue, which won the gratitude of Yazidis, and another local franchise called the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) was set up.

The mainly Kurdish secular group, which includes Yazidis, controls a pocket of territory in Sinjar and recently formed an alliance with a Sunni Arab militia drawn from the powerful Shammar tribe.
source

#IslamicSocietiesReview: rights NGO says "Syrian refugees beaten, shot by Turkish border guards"

#IslamicSocietiesReview: rights NGO says "Syrian refugees beaten, shot by Turkish border guards"

    Tuesday, May 10, 2016   No comments

Turkish border guards have beaten and shot Syrians trying to reach Turkey, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday, as fighting in the border province of Aleppo intensifies threatening to force more people to flee.

HRW said in a report based on interviews with victims, witnesses and Syrian locals that in March and April 2016, five people, including a child were killed and 14 were seriously injured as a result of border guards' shootings and beatings.

In response to the report, a senior Turkish presidency official said the authenticity of the video could not be verified. Reuters was not able to verify the report.

A video released by HRW purporting to show the victims of the beatings and shootings depicted a bloodied body with bandages around his exposed torso. Another male corpse is shown with red and purple marks all over his back and arms.

A recent surge in fighting in Aleppo, Syria's largest city before the war, wrecked a 10-week-old partial truce sponsored by Washington and Moscow that had allowed U.N.-brokered peace talks to convene in Geneva.


Ankara says it keeps an "open door" policy for those fleeing the five-year conflict. For over a year, only those requiring emergency medical treatment not available on the Syrian side have been able to cross legally while others rely on expensive smugglers to guide them on the dangerous route.

source

#IslamicSocietiesReview : Flying while brown in the age of trump

#IslamicSocietiesReview : Flying while brown in the age of trump

    Saturday, May 07, 2016   No comments

On Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man — with dark, curly hair, olive skin and an exotic foreign accent — boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short, uneventful hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse.

Or so dozens of unsuspecting passengers thought.

The curly-haired man tried to keep to himself, intently if inscrutably scribbling on a notepad he’d brought aboard. His seatmate, a blond-haired, 30-something woman sporting flip-flops and a red tote bag, looked him over. He was wearing navy Diesel jeans and a red Lacoste sweater – a look he would later describe as “simple elegance” – but something about him didn’t seem right to her.

She decided to try out some small talk.

Is Syracuse home? She asked.

No, he replied curtly.

He similarly deflected further questions. He appeared laser-focused — perhaps too laser-focused — on the task at hand, those strange scribblings.

Rebuffed, the woman began reading her book. Or pretending to read, anyway. Shortly after boarding had finished, she flagged down a flight attendant and handed that crew-member a note of her own.

Then the passengers waited, and waited, and waited for the flight to take off. After they’d sat on the tarmac for about half an hour, the flight attendant approached the female passenger again and asked if she now felt okay to fly, or if she was “too sick.”

I’m OK to fly, the woman responded.

She must not have sounded convincing, though; American Airlines flight 3950 remained grounded.

Then, for unknown reasons, the plane turned around and headed back to the gate. The woman was soon escorted off the plane. On the intercom a crew member announced that there was paperwork to fill out, or fuel to refill, or some other flimsy excuse; the curly-haired passenger could not later recall exactly what it was.

The wait continued.

Finally the pilot came by, and approached the real culprit behind the delay: that darkly-complected foreign man. He was now escorted off the plane, too, and taken to meet some sort of agent, though he wasn’t entirely sure of the agent’s affiliation, he would later say.

What do know about your seatmate? The agent asked the foreign-sounding man.

Well, she acted a bit funny, he replied, but she didn’t seem visibly ill. Maybe, he thought, they wanted his help in piecing together what was wrong with her.

And then the big reveal: The woman wasn’t really sick at all! Instead this quick-thinking traveler had Seen Something, and so she had Said Something.

That Something she’d seen had been her seatmate’s cryptic notes, scrawled in a script she didn’t recognize. Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3950. She may have felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.

The curly-haired man laughed.

He laughed because those scribbles weren’t Arabic, or another foreign language, or even some special secret terrorist code. They were math.

Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.

Had the crew or security members perhaps quickly googled this good-natured, bespectacled passenger before waylaying everyone for several hours, they might have learned that he — Guido Menzio — is a young but decorated Ivy League economist. And that he’s best known for his relatively technical work on search theory, which helped earn him a tenured associate professorship at the University of Pennsylvania as well as stints at Princeton and Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/05/07/ivy-league-economist-interrogated-for-doing-math-on-american-airlines-flight/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Hiroshima survivors look to Obama visit for disarmament, not apology

Hiroshima survivors look to Obama visit for disarmament, not apology

    Thursday, April 14, 2016   No comments

Progress on ridding the world of nuclear weapons, not an apology, is what Hiroshima would want from a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to the Japanese city hit by an American nuclear attack 71 years ago, survivors and other residents said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said during a visit to the city on Monday that Obama wanted to travel there, though he did not know if the president's schedule would allow him to when he visits Japan for a Group of Seven summit in May.

No incumbent U.S. president has ever visited Hiroshima.

A presidential apology would be controversial in the United States, where a majority view the bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and of the city of Nagasaki three days later, as justified to end the war and save U.S lives.

The vast majority of Japanese think the bombings were unjustified.

"If the president is coming to see what really happened here and if that constitutes a step toward the abolition of nuclear arms in future, I don't think we should demand an apology," said Takeshi Masuda,
a 91-year-old former school teacher. source

#IslamicSocietiesReview : As human rights organizations charge Saudi Arabia of war crimes, European Parliament calls for arms embargo

#IslamicSocietiesReview : As human rights organizations charge Saudi Arabia of war crimes, European Parliament calls for arms embargo

    Thursday, February 25, 2016   No comments

Saudi airstrikes on civilians in Yemen is a war crime

The European Parliament called on the European Union to impose an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia on Thursday, saying Britain, France and other EU governments should no longer sell weapons to a country accused of targeting civilians in Yemen.
EU lawmakers, who voted overwhelmingly in favor of an embargo, said Britain had licensed more than $3 billion of arms sales to Saudi Arabia since Saudi-led forces began military operations in Yemen in March last year.

Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since the coalition entered the conflict, almost half of them civilians, according to the United Nations, and the European Parliament said it was acting on humanitarian grounds.

"This is about Yemen. The human rights violations have reached a level
that means Europe is obliged to act and to end arms sales to Saudi Arabia," said Richard Howitt, a British center-left lawmaker who led efforts to hold the vote.

source: Reuters

#IslamicSocietiesReview : Turkey blames Kurdish militants for Ankara bombing

#IslamicSocietiesReview : Turkey blames Kurdish militants for Ankara bombing

    Thursday, February 18, 2016   No comments

As it has done in the past, whenever terrorists attack civilians inside Turkey, the Turkish government used the Ankara bombing to launch fresh strikes against Kurds. It has done so in the past even after instances when ISIL (Daesh) has carried out (and took credit for) the attacks. This time, too, AKP leaders were quick to blame the Kurds of Syria. Even before the investigation concluded, the Turkish government accused "Syrians" to justify its campaign against Kurds in Iraq and Syria. This practice could undercut support for their cause since the Turkish government could be perceived as leveraging terrorism for geopolitical aims. Turkey's reluctance to fight ISIL and shut down the flow of fighters and weapons into Syria adds to the volatility of the region and will add risks to Turkey's security.
...
Turkey blames Kurdish militants for Ankara bomb, vows response in Syria and Iraq

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed a Syrian Kurdish militia fighter working with Kurdish militants inside Turkey for a suicide car bombing that killed 28 people in the capital Ankara, and he vowed retaliation in both Syria and Iraq.

A car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses as they waited at traffic lights near Turkey's armed forces' headquarters, parliament and government buildings in the administrative heart of Ankara late on Wednesday.

Davutoglu said the attack was clear evidence that the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia that has been supported by the United States in the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria, was a terrorist organization and that Turkey, a NATO member, expected cooperation from its allies in combating the group.  Source

Turkey at odds with Russia and now the US on Syria: Turkey strikes Syrian airport when it fell under the control of US supported rebels, but did not bomb it when it was under the control of al-Nusra

Turkey at odds with Russia and now the US on Syria: Turkey strikes Syrian airport when it fell under the control of US supported rebels, but did not bomb it when it was under the control of al-Nusra

    Sunday, February 14, 2016   No comments

Kurdish leader: Turkey strikes Syrian airport when it fell under the control of US supported rebels, but did not bomb it when it was under the control of al-Nusra. Do they want the Nusra Front to stay there, or for the regime to come and occupy it?

Turkey's faulty foreign policy choices in Syria since the beginning of the conflict, including supporting Sunnis in the sectarian strife, working for the removal of the Syrian regime from power, undermining the Syrian Kurds and downing a Russian jet, have dragged the country to such a point that today, it is at odds with not only Russia but its close ally the US as well.

After trying to impose its policies on other actors in the region for some time, it seems that Ankara will have no word in the future of Syria ahead of the Geneva peace talks, which have been postponed to Feb. 25.

After downing a Russian jet at the Syrian border over an airspace violation on Nov. 24 of last year, a first for NATO in 50 years, Turkish-Russian relations have been significantly derailed. Russia has demanded an apology and compensation for the damages, but Turkey has refused, saying that it will not apologize for defending its airspace.

Following Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's remarks calling on the US to choose between its ally Turkey and “the terrorists in Kobani,” a reference to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Turkey strongly opposes due to its links to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Ankara is now not on good terms with the US.

Sunday's Zaman has learned that US Ambassador to Turkey John Bass has asked Turkish officials not to publicly bring up the differences between the US and Turkey concerning the PYD. Bass said the US position on the PYD is clear and will not change. The US sees the PYD as one of the leading forces on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and despite the fact that the PKK is classified as a terrorist organization under US law, the PYD is not considered terrorist. In spite of their differences on Syria, the US and Turkey had previously mostly managed to maintain a balance in their relationship.

Ignoring the remarks of Ambassador Bass, Erdoğan has challenged the US position on the PYD, and following Erdoğan's remarks US officials in Washington have expressed their position in a stronger tone, underscoring that their support for the PYD will continue. US Department State Spokesperson John Kirby said last week that even close friends do not have to agree on everything, while stressing that Turkey and the US are still close allies.

full article...

Erdogan traded Syrian refugees for money, visa-free travel to Europe, the inclusion of Turkish officials in EU summits, and a re-invigoration of Turkey's EU accession process

Erdogan traded Syrian refugees for money, visa-free travel to Europe, the inclusion of Turkish officials in EU summits, and a re-invigoration of Turkey's EU accession process

    Monday, February 08, 2016   No comments

Erdoğan used Syrians for economic and political gains: Report reveals that Erdogan, essentially, traded Syrian refugees for money, visa-free travel to Europe, the inclusion of Turkish officials in EU summits, and a re-invigoration of Turkey's EU accession process

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan threatened to send buses full of refugees to Greece if the EU did not finalize an agreement with Turkey over the action plan to stem the flow of refugees to Europe, according to the leaked transcript of a meeting between Erdoğan and leaders of the EU.

The transcript, published by the Greek-based euro2day.gr online news portal, claims to be the minutes of a meeting of Erdoğan, President of the European Council Donald Tusk and President of the European Commission (EC) Jean-Claude Juncker.

According to the transcript Erdoğan pushes the EU leaders for 3 billion euros per year, for two years, instead of 3 billion euros over two years, which the EU proposed. According to the leak, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who was present at the meeting, showed Juncker an internal document belonging to the EC, which stated 3 billion euros per year.

Erdoğan also asks whether the proposal would be for 3 billion or 6 billion euros. When Juncker confirmed 3 billion, Erdoğan said Turkey did not need the EU's money.

“We [Turkey] can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria any time, and we can put the refugees on buses,” Erdoğan was quoted as saying.

The meeting was held in Antalya in the run-up to the EU-Turkey summit on Nov. 29, 2015, in which the action plan that envisages Turkey stemming the flow of Syrian refugees to Europe was signed.

In return for keeping the refugees, the EU promised Turkey 3 billion euros, visa-free travel to Europe, the inclusion of Turkish officials in EU summits and a re-invigoration of Turkey's EU accession process -- starting with the opening of the 15th chapter of the negotiation acquis.

All 28 EU countries recently signed off on the proposal to allocate the funds to Turkey at a meeting in Brussels. The funds will be given to Ankara in return for Turkey culling the flow of immigrants to Europe. source

#ISR , #HumanRights; Department of Defense released 198 photos relating to prisoner abuse by U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan

#ISR , #HumanRights; Department of Defense released 198 photos relating to prisoner abuse by U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan

    Sunday, February 07, 2016   No comments

The photos were released in response to an ACLU lawsuit that we have been litigating for almost 12 years. You can see a few of them in the slideshow to the right. The photos mostly show close-ups of body parts, including arms, legs, and heads, many with injuries. There are also wider shots of prisoners, most of them bound or blindfolded. But what they don’t show is a much bigger story, and the government’s selective release of these photos could mislead the public about the true scope of what happened.

Six months before media organizations published the notorious Abu Ghraib photos, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records, including photos, relating to the abuse and torture of prisoners in U.S. detention centers overseas. Since we sued to enforce our request in 2004, the legal battle has focused in part on a set of some 2,000 pictures relating to detainee maltreatment. The photos released today are part of that set, and they are the first photos the government has released to us in all these years of litigation. (The court hearing our lawsuit ordered the government to release the Abu Ghraib photos in 2004, but the photos were leaked, and posted online by Salon, while the government was appealing the decision.)

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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is furious over a senior U.S. official’s visit to northern Syria

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is furious over a senior U.S. official’s visit to northern Syria

    Sunday, February 07, 2016   No comments

Erdoğan protested in Ecuador: Erdoğan loves ISIS

ISR comment: The Turkish president, who has resisted pressure to take actual actions against ISIL, is now furious that the U.S. has made contact with a Syrian group that has fought and defeated ISIL. Erdoğan, instead, insists that Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party is a terrorist organization, but his government still refuses to legally classify ISIL (also known as ISIS, Daesh) as a terrorist organization. His insistence on denying the Syrian Kurdish people any level of autonomy within their country is unrealistic and is a direct interference in the affairs of other countries. 

It is likely that the new Syria will be decentralized and that the Kurdish people will have autonomy there with or without the consent of the post-civil war Syrian government. The only thing Erdoğan can do to stop that from happening is to invade northern Syria. He may do that with the help of his sectarian backers like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and local allies such as Daesh, al-Nusra, Jaysh al-Fath, and Jaysh al-Islam. If the U.S. allows that to happen, the Middle East will be further destabilized and more states will fail, creating the perfect environment for ISIL and al-Qaeda.

Erdoğan has said Turkey would not “make the same mistake it did in Iraq in 2003 vis-à-vis the creation of a de facto situation” in neighboring Syria, voicing his country’s readiness in order to protect its national interests in case of all kinds of developing scenarios in Syria.

Meanwhile, he also reiterated Turkey’s stance on the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military wing, the People’s Defense Units (YPG). Turkey considers the party and its affiliates in the same category as the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

“We will take this issue to all international organizations. Each moment that we haven’t taken it there is a loss for us. If steps are not taken for their [classification] as a terrorist organization, we would be delayed. Look, [U.S. Vice President Joe] Biden arrived with an assistant. He is a national security official whose name has earlier ben cited with Mr. Obama too. Just during the meetings in Geneva, he travels to Kobane. He receives a plaque from a so-called general in Kobane. How will we trust? Am I your partner or are the terrorists in Kobane?” Erdoğan asked, while speaking with reporters en route from Dakar to Istanbul as he wrapped up a Latin America tour that covered Chile, Peru and Ecuador.

The U.S. envoy to the coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Brett McGurk, confirmed on Feb. 1 that he visited Kurdish-controlled northern Syria the previous weekend. McGurk said his trip aimed to review the fight against the jihadist group that controls swathes of Syria and Iraq.

He also said that it was long-planned and not “in any way” related to Syria peace talks in Geneva. source