Antisemitism, Antizionism, Jihadism and the Reunited Germany. News by Fred Alan Medforth
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.
Since the 1950s, Turkey’s soul-searching has never ceased. Hence the shocking news of July 9 that an all-smiles NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that Erdoğan, after several months of unilateral blockade, has agreed to send Sweden’s accession protocol for joining NATO to the Turkish Parliament “as soon as possible” and to help ensure that the assembly approves it. As often happens in journalism, the “news” here is not in the headline — even though “Turkey approves Sweden’s NATO accession protocol” was the only breaking news a journalist could pick up.
Erdoğan’s Islamist, anti-Western ideology is no secret to anyone. Shortly before the most recent presidential and parliamentary elections (May 14 and 28) Erdoğan accused Turkish opposition parties of having surrendered Turkey to a supposedly hostile West. In 2022, Erdoğan said that the West invaded the world with its soft power, including slavery, massacres and colonialism. In 2021, he declared the end of Western hegemony and of an understanding that accepts Western superiority. He has accused the U.S. administration numerous times of arming Kurdish militants in northern Syria while abstaining from selling weapons system to Turkey.
In 2017, he threatened the West: “If this [Islamophobia] persists no street in the world will be safe for Westerners.” Erdoğan also claimed in 2017 that the “crusaders’ mentality was attacking Turkey.” And in 2018: “We are facing a new crusaders’ alliance.” Unsurprisingly, Erdoğan has described Germany and the Netherlands as “the remnants of Nazism.”
Why does the man who so passionately hates the Western civilization not feel politically comfortable without the institutional links bonding his country to the West? The EU that Erdoğan verbally attacks, has a population of 450 million and is four times richer than Turkey. With 40% of Turkey’s overall exports, the EU is Turkey’s top foreign market. With a poor foreign direct investment of $5.5 billion in the first half of 2023, Turkey is looking at the countries it deems as “remnants of Nazis.” In that period, the top three foreign investors in Turkey were the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany.
According to the World Bank, in an April 2023 report:
“… productivity growth has slowed as reform momentum has waned over the past decade, and efforts have turned to supporting growth with credit booms and demand stimulus, intensifying internal and external vulnerabilities. High private sector debt, persistent current account deficits, high inflation, and high unemployment have been exacerbated by macro-financial instability since August 2018.”
“Turkey is heading very rapidly to a currency crisis or, more formally speaking, balance of payments crisis,” said Atilla Yeşilada, a Turkish analyst for GlobalSource Partners.
Erdoğan needs money. He needs it now, and preferably from Western markets instead of one-off cash injections from Russia and friendly Gulf states. “Linking Turkey’s EU membership to Sweden’s NATO accession protocol is as absurd as finding a linkage between Turkey in NAFTA in exchange for Mexico in the EU,” one EU ambassador in Ankara told me on July 10.
Erdoğan is opening a new negotiation table. He will demand a revision of Turkey’s 1995 customs union agreement with the EU and visa liberalization (looser visa rules for Turkish citizens), both of which were part of a 2016 deal between Ankara and Brussels but since then, have not progressed.
By demanding these, Erdoğan aims to:
Erdoğan is clearly trying to signal to the U.S. Congress by flashing a more pro-Western, less pro-Russian, foreign policy calculus in the next couple of years. Could he be hoping that Congress will endorse the sale of F-16 Block 70 fighter jets to Turkey? There will be many horse-trading moments during the process, but this is the beginning of a new tactical warfare between Erdogan’s Turkey and the West.
“The Swedes were too eager to receive Erdoğan’s blessing,” Eugene Kogan, a defense expert based in Tbilisi, Georgia, told the author on July 10, “and Erdoğan used that yearning to tie them down. Remember Gulliver in the Land of Lilliput?”
Poland´s Internal Security Agency said Friday it arrested an 18-year-old Polish citizen planning a suicide attack, on a government office, using an explosive belt.
The agency, ABW, said in a communique the arrest took place on June 16 in southwestern Poland. It said the man converted to Islam last year and with a group of other people, inspired by the Islamic State extremist group, they were planning attacks on government administration offices.
He was charged with participating in a crime ring, having terrorist goals, and planning actions that would have endangered the well-being of a large number of people as well as their lives.
If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 10 years in jail.
They are fanatical, but they are here legally: You can’t tell them the rules!
They come supposedly to “do the jobs that the citizens don’t want to do”.
Then their children, who came with the family reunion, have other children who become citizens with the right to stay in France at the age of eighteen.
And then they start to become policemen, politicians, aeroplane pilots.
And they can’t stop Mohammed, an Islamic fanatic, from becoming a pilot because our nonsensical anti-discrimination laws forbid it.
And then you find them piloting Air France planes.
A French-Algerian pilot of Air France Hop was reinstated by the judiciary.
Notes from the intelligence service reported “particularly radical religious beliefs that contradict the values of the Republic and resemble Sharia law”.
This is a serious setback for the Paris police prefecture and the Loire-Atlantique prefecture. And a success with serious symbolic meaning for Kader (the first name has been changed). In a judgment handed down on Thursday June 29, the Montreuil Administrative Court (Seine-Saint-Denis) rehabilitated the airline pilot of Hop (a subsidiary of Air France based in Loire-Atlantique).
Le Parisien
Fanatics can certainly occupy sensitive posts in the name of non-discrimination:
Michaël Harpon, for example, a 45-year-old computer scientist and father of two, who had been employed in the technical department of the Directorate of Intelligence of the Prefecture of Police (DRPP) since 2003, “had embraced a radical view of Islam”.
Michaël Harpon, who had converted to Islam “about ten years ago”, had been in contact “with several people who may belong to the Salafist-Islamist movement”.
In October 2019, although he had been reported to the police since 2015, Mickaël H killed four officers (”infidels”) and, according to the Qur’an, cut the throat of one of his victims in the police prefecture where he worked.
The unbelievers, strike them by the neck! ( Qur’an )
The lying media take on the task of defending the fanatics.
France info on Mickaël H headlined after the attack:
“He was just a role model civil servant who didn’t cause any problems.”
Kamel, his flat neighbour, describes him as “very discreet”. ” But when I needed him for the computer, I contacted him and he made settings for me,” he recalls. He was very nice, helpful and polite”.
There are thousands of fanatics still on the job…
Monaco’s France striker Wissam Ben Yedder is under investigation after being accused of rape, Nice’s public prosecutor told AFP on Thursday. The alleged incident took place on Monday in the town of Beausoleil just to the north of Monaco on the Cote d’Azur. Public prosecutor Xavier Bonhomme confirmed “the existence of two allegations of rape, from two victims, targeting two people. “We don’t know who the second person concerned is,” he added.
According to radio station France Info, two women, aged 19 and 20, accuse Ben Yedder and his younger brother, of having “forced them into sexual acts” after a night out.
Ben Yedder, 32, made the last of his 19 France appearances in June 2022 and was present earlier this month as Monaco started pre-season training.
His club issued a statement declaring: “Monaco became aware of the information published today involving Wissam Ben Yedder.
“As the affair is subject to a judicial process the club is not in a position to make any comment.”
In April, Ben Yedder was convicted of tax fraud by a Spanish court during his time at Sevilla and was handed a six-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 133,798 euros ($149,753).
https://sports.ndtv.com/football/monaco-striker-wissam-ben-yedder-faces-rape-allegation-4205957
Several hours of flights were cancelled at two German airports on 13 July as a result of a protest by climate activists, who glued themselves to the runways and taxiways of the airports, demanding more aggressive government action to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The activists were linked to the German group “Last Generation”, causing major disruptions at Hamburg and Düsseldorf airports.
The group posted visuals of their action on Twitter.
According to reports, on the first day of the city’s school break, when 50,000 travellers and 330 flights were scheduled to depart from Hamburg airport, several members of “Last Generation” invaded the grounds of the airport at 6 a.m. (0400 GMT) and glued themselves to the runways and taxiways. As a result, ten arrivals reportedly had to be diverted to other airports while 17 arrivals and 19 departures were cancelled.
An airport security fence was breached by nine climate activists, who then glued themselves to the tarmac, as stated by the group. A police operation at the scene had grounded planes since 6:10 am, explained a representative for the airport. They claimed, “For safety reasons, air traffic had to be temporarily suspended.”
At 9:25 am, demonstrators were still impaled on the airport’s tarmac in a few different locations, and the security fence stayed destroyed in four separate areas. “In Hamburg, the closure of the airport will certainly continue for some time. Until just now, the jackhammers were still rattling here,” a reporter mentioned.
It seems the authorities used jackhammers to remove the activists along with the glued part of the tarmac. This is because climate activists generally use superglue, which makes it difficult to remove them physically.
In the morning, the main security checkpoint and the check-in desks were temporarily shuttered, as people waited in the jam-packed terminals to find out when flights would resume. The check-in desks and security gates have both been now accessible.
Members of Last Generation also broke through a security fence at the Duesseldorf Airport and obstructed a taxiway, the path to the runway, by glueing themselves to the tarmac. This delayed several planes before operations were able to restart. Seven people had made it onto the runway in the morning.
The outfit announced that they had broken through a fence to gain access to the runways, preventing aircraft movement at the airport all morning. Photos posted by the group showed that the activists used bolt cutters to cut metal fences to gain access to the runways.
There were significant restrictions on flight operations, and there were numerous emergency personnel on the scene. The activist group shared a video of police vehicles and two protestors still clinging to the tarmac at around 10 am. They wrote, “The disruptions at Hamburg and Düsseldorf airports continue.”
Landings in Düsseldorf had to be redirected to Cologne Bonn airport because of the security operation. However, on the airport’s north runway, partial service was restored.
The activists demanded rapid action to reduce emissions in the transportation industry, including abolishing tax concessions for aviation paraffin. They also accused the German government of lacking a plan to address the climate catastrophe.
The seven activists in Düsseldorf were detached from the ground using solvents, and they along with their 3 helpers were detained. The activists will face charges of disturbing the peace, coercive behaviour and dangerous interference with aviation, according to the police.
Transport Minister Volker Wissing, who has recently opposed various initiatives to reduce emissions from air and road travel, emphasised, “The Last Generation isn’t protecting the climate, they’re engaged in criminal activity.”
The activists, according to him and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann, both members of the Free Democratic Party, are dividing society by preventing people from flying for “well-earned holidays.”
A new draft curriculum proposed by the Irish education ministry’s advisory council has recommended the introduction of classes to educate children about white privilege, gender identity, and sexual diversity.
The plans put forward by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), which advises the Minister for Education and Skills, are expected to be included in the Senior Cycle SPHE curriculum for 15- to 18-year-olds.
Students will be asked to explore the topic of gender, which is defined in the draft consultation document as “socially and culturally constructed.” Classes will focus on the “socially constructed roles, responsibilities, characteristics, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men” and the “harmful attitudes around gender perpetuated in the media, online, and in society.”
Young people will be expected to consider “a person’s felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex registered at birth.”
Additionally, the draft curriculum will explore issues surrounding “sexual diversity” with students taught about LGBTQI+ issues. Sexual identities include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex, as well as “additional gender identities and sexual orientations that are not specifically covered by the five initials.” There are now actually six initials used in the increasingly elongated abbreviation of growing sexual identities.
Students will also be expected to focus on what the draft curriculum describes as “allyship skills,” which refers to the “actions, behaviors, and practices used to support, advocate, and collaborate with others, in support of justice and equity.”
One key component of this section related to “recognizing and using one’s privileged status,” and the draft consultation specifically identifies being White or male as two examples of privileged status.
This draft curriculum is now subject to a public consultation, which runs until Oct. 18, with people encouraged to submit their thoughts via an online survey.
As Irish news outlet Gript reported last year, the NCCA has been pushing for what it perceives to be a “white privilege” issue to be included in school education for some time, reiterating the importance of learning “from the history of whiteness and racism.”
Last year, the body endorsed an activity first suggested by U.S. social justice activist Paul Kivel where teachers have students stand in a line facing a wall and ask them questions about their ethnicity or race; children are also asked about sensitive issues such as their household’s income and whether or not they were sexually abused as young children.
The objective of the exercise was to ascertain which pupils were “privileged” and which weren’t.
Border tensions have flared up again between Pakistan and Iran, prompting Iran’s Interior Minister, Ahmad Vahidi to indirectly warn Pakistan about cross-border terrorism. Vahidi said that Iran expects Islamabad to control its borders otherwise Iranian security apparatus will pursue terror groups beyond its borders.
On July 8, Saturday, terrorists belonging to the Jaish-al-Adl group barged into a police station in Zahedan – the capital of the Sistan-Baluchistan province that lies to Iran’s south-east, on the common border with Pakistan. Two of the attackers blew themselves up killing two police officers and in the retaliatory fire all the four attackers were killed, according to the Iranian media.
Describing the attack on the police station, Vahidi said: “What happened (in Zahedan) yesterday was a terrorist incident and in fact these men entered [the police station] as ordinary people and then carried out a terrorist act.”
Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement on the same day condemning the attack. It said: “Pakistan strongly condemns the terrorist attack in Zahedan today, resulting in the loss of lives of two Iranian security personnel. We express our deepest condolences to the bereaved families and pray for the swift recovery of those injured. Pakistan stands in complete solidarity with the government and people of Iran in this common fight against the scourge of terrorism.”
In a statement, the Jaish ul-Adl group took responsibility for the attack. The group has been active against the Iranian security forces in its pursuance of a separate State for the Baloch community. With members from the Sunni sect, the group has been carrying out its operations for nearly a decade with alarming regularity in the Shia-majority Iran.
Even earlier, Iran has held Pakistan responsible for not controlling militants who carry out attacks in Iran and cross over to Pakistan.
As recently as May this year, five Iranian border guards were killed by an armed group that had reportedly crossed the Pakistan border and escaped back after the attack. The attack took place just two days after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated trade and electricity projects on their common border.
Earlier, on 14 February this year, Vahidi had visited Islamabad to discuss border management issues with Pakistan. These discussions took place around the time when Baloch fighters had launched a string of deadly attacks against the Pakistani military in Kech, Panjgur and Noshki in January and February. At that time, Pakistan had put the blame on Iran and Afghanistan for the terror attacks.
The Iran-Pakistan border, called the Goldsmith Line drawn by the British during colonial rule, has not been accepted by the Baloch community on both sides. The Baloch people have been waging a war of independence in Pakistan as well as Iran.
Since last year, Iran has been publicly hanging dozens of Baloch men and women in a bid to curb the nationalist sentiment. September and October of 2022 witnessed severe clashes between the Iranian forces and the Baloch protestors during which several dozens of people were killed on both sides.
All the three countries – Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan have porous and unsettled borders, with terror groups, arms smugglers as well as human smugglers criss-crossing the terrain with ease. The poverty-ridden Baloch community in Pakistan has also been smuggling fuel products from Iran for livelihoods. Pakistan’s border fencing has been repeatedly destroyed by armed groups who want an open border not just for illegal activities but also to pursue people-to-people contacts as well as trade.
