Police nab Daesh, al-Shabab terrorists in Ankara
The Gara terrorist attack is the latest incident proving that Turkey is the target of not only the PKK but also its sympathizers, both at home and abroad
POLICE in Turkey’s capital Ankara detained a senior Daesh terrorist and an alShabab terrorist in joint operations carried out in cooperation with the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), reports said yesterday.
Police acted on a tipoff that a Daesh terrorist, who was one of the senior figures in the Iraqi city of Mosul, had arrived in Ankara.
The terrorist, identified by the initials S.O., has actively been working for Daesh and had previously worked in the Iraqi military, the police said.
He had also brought a 7-year-old Yazidi child with him as so-called “war booty.”
Security forces carefully planned an operation to capture the terrorist without harming the child, Anadolu Agency (AA) reported, citing security sources.
The Yazidi child was placed in the custody of the local Family, Labor and Social Services Provincial Directorate following the operation, the report said.
Meanwhile, police also captured a dual German Italian national who had connections with the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab terrorist group in Kenya.
The terrorist, identified as A.B., was detained in the operation after Ankara’s Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued a detention warrant, AA reported.
The suspect was taken to the police station after routine medical checks.
Al-Shabab, a terrorist group active in East Africa and Yemen, has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people in terrorist attacks. The group also targets Turkish firms and individuals in war-torn Somalia.
Turkish security forces carry out countless anti-terror operations to capture terrorists on a daily basis and have been particularly targeting Daesh and the PKK, which pose a threat to the country’s national security.
Turkey was one of the first countries to declare Daesh a terrorist group in 2013. The country has since been attacked by the group’s terrorists multiple times.
In response, Turkey launched anti-terror operations at home and abroad to prevent further attacks.
THE UNITED Nations has failed many times to maintain international peace and order, as in the case of the illegal annexation of Crimea, which Turkey “has not and will not recognize,” a senior Turkish diplomat said Tuesday.
Addressing a special event on Crimea at the U.N. Human Rights Council’s 46th session, Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kıran stressed that Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity should be respected.
Kıran underlined that Turkey has repeatedly and vehemently denounced the “illegal annexation of Crimea.”
During a joint press conference last year with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the capital Ankara, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had also reiterated Turkey’s determination not to recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea, saying Turkey has and always will support Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, including over Crimea.
Referring to the Crimean Tatar population with whom Turkey has unique, historical relations and ties, Kıran said Russian annexation of the peninsula in 2014 worsened their plight significantly.
“Today, leaders of the Tatar community are not allowed to enter their historical homeland. Unjustified legal procedures and illegal detentions targeting Tatars of Crimea are intensifying,” he said.
Against this background, the international community should put in more effort to protect Crimean Tatar’s rights, Kıran added.
Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine after an independence referendum in 2014, following the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych as a result of the Euromaidan protests. It has supported separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine in a six-year war that has killed nearly 14,000 people. The U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) later voted to proclaim the Russian action illegal, as did an overwhelming majority of U.N. member states, including Turkey.
In December 2020, the U.N. approved a new resolution urging Russia to immediately withdraw all its military forces from Crimea “and end its temporary occupation of the territory of Ukraine without delay.” The measure, which is not legally binding but a reflection of world opinion, was supported by Western nations and their supporters and opposed by Russia and its supporters, including China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and Syria. The resolution condemned the occupation of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol by Russia and reaffirmed “the non-recognition of its annexation.” It affirmed that “the seizure of Crimea by force is illegal and a violation of international law,” and said it must be “immediately returned.”
Crimean Tatars are a Muslim Turkic community indigenous to the Black Sea peninsula. Most Crimean Tatars opposed Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and subsequently Russian authorities have cracked down on the community, banning their assembly and television channel as well as detaining and jailing dozens of activists.
On Feb. 19, the central German city of Hanau united once again in their commitment to condemn racism. The day marked the first anniversary of a brutal, heinous, xenophobic killing spree that left nine innocent citizens dead one year ago.
While first and foremost comforting and supporting the victim’s families in their grief was on everyone’s mind, it is a vital task for German society – or every society for that matter – to scrutinize what actually led to such a horrendous crime in otherwise peaceful, multicultural surroundings.
NOT JUST MIGRANTS
The overriding concern is that the murderer specifically targeted two hospitality establishments that were often frequented by guests with an international background. Writing “international” is intentional as we should refrain from referring to the particular visitors to a bar, cafe or restaurant as people with a migratory background.
Their families or they themselves may indeed have come from another country to this fine city close to Frankfurt am Main which they would soon call home, but the term migratory is often used with a typically negative connotation.
To make this point crystal clear and what appears at first sight as far-fetched is actually not at all in our globally connected world: think talking about Hong Kong and the British expat community.
A newspaper or television reporter would never label a public house mostly frequented by British nationals as a place for migrants.
Yet all those expats would indeed have “migrated” at one stage of their lives but are by now fully integrated into Chinese society. They simply enjoy meeting fellow expats and homemade food.
Exactly this is what brought the guests of the two locales in Hanau together: not living a life as an outsider but enjoying a talk or drink or meal in the company of people who would speak their native language.
Then it is back home, back to work, back to school, back to being part and parcel of the social fabric of the city of Hanau.
Labeling the victims as having migratory background belittles their contribution to German society; they were part of the international community of Hanau which in itself is an international city close to an even bigger multicultural city, Frankfurt.
The Hanau atrocity was thus an attack on our international community of which each and every German citizen is a part as is each and every new arrival, and so it should be analyzed.
Media members must be careful how they report about events to avoid widening the ill-fated theoretical gap between “us” and “the other” even further.
WAS THE INTERNET COMPLICIT?
Investigations soon focused on the political views of the killer and found shocking examples of hate speech paired with a number of conspiracy theories on his social media profiles.
This brings us to the second point of this short analysis: why is it always the case that only after a crime is committed, law enforcement comes to the conclusion that an individual may have had something more sinister in mind instead of simply ramping up her or his number of followers or the number of “likes”?
The interior minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg, Thomas Strobl, told the Rheinische Zeitung newspaper a day before the population of Hanau remembered the victims that digitalization might just as well lead to better virtual connectivity among extremists.
He continued by stating that today it is possible to become a far-right extremist without ever having met face-to-face with another far-right extremist.
Hence it is fair to assume that social media is monitored by terror and crime experts, at least to a certain extent.
But the tricky question is up until what point is a post on the internet still acceptable and from what wording onward should someone intervene? And the ensuing issue is: intervene by what means and how?
BLOCKING TRUMP MILESTONE
Let us be clear: of course, former U.S. President Donald Trump did not “incite hatred” among the population of the German city of Hanau.
Twitter’s decision to block his account 11 months later based on the fact that he used social media to mobilize his followers some of who might turn aggressive against other people and against federal property is primarily a domestic affair. Or is it?
This brings us to the internet itself: The term “domestic affair” has lost all but its original meaning describing a private dispute between a married couple; the world wide web erases borders by allowing for instant connections involving all four corners of our shared planet.
Strobl is thus absolutely right to argue that the sheer fact that the internet exists enables hate speech promoters to source audiences in many countries and not just a few blocks in the neighborhood.
Drumming up support for people with racist views may not facilitate physical support in planning a heinous crime, but it may lend emotional support. The more “likes” on a racist comment verbally targeting the “non-white” population of your hometown may one day result in catastrophe when words turn into weapons.
In this same context, and what the blocking of Trump underlines, is that a single individual with or without public duty could have more (verbal and practical) impact on others than a U.S. president; what we say matters indeed.
The more social media profiles that promote racism, xenophobia and violence that one stumbles across while surfing late at night, the more interested a twisted mind might become.
Even someone who never dreamt of radicalizing himself might find a president appealing when he argues the case for “take back control” to use a milder version of potential posts’ contents.
Take back control could equal turning against people with a different personal or national background and could thus misguide in particular a young and inexperienced person to take matters into his or her own hands.
Monitoring or censoring the internet is an issue that will be with us for years and perhaps even decades to come. Criminals should not be allowed to take away our citizens’ right to freedom of expression including via the internet.
It should, however, not turn into a gray zone either, where hatred can be openly promoted and in a worst-case scenario lead to the loss of innocent lives.
Last Friday, Hanau remembered the victims of a sad night and so should we, united in hoping it will never happen again.
On Feb. 10, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) launched an operation in Gara, northern Iraq, designed to rescue 13 Turkish citizens held hostage by the PKK and its Syrian offshoot, the YPG, for six years. However, once the operation was over, it was revealed that the PKK had executed the hostages one by one in a cave.
The act does not come as a surprise given the track record of the PKK and the YPG, who over the last four decades have been responsible for the deaths of over 50,000 people in Turkey alone.
The PKK is a terrorist organization that blew up a student dormitory, killed babies, targeted ambulances and is notoriously known to place bombs in parks at the heart of cities.
Many states officially recognize the PKK as a terrorist organization.
However, while trying to establish new relationships with the United States and European countries through the YPG, the PKK tried to make this latest massacre, reminiscent of something Daesh would do, look like an accident.
Since the Turkish state had strong evidence that the PKK carried out the executions using weapons, the terrorist group was unable to manipulate the situation by simply turning the tables back on Turkey and blaming the country; instead, it had to create doubt in people’s minds. The HDP, the organization’s legal wing, systematically spread rumors using politicians and their allied media channels, purporting that the 13 citizens may have died during the TSK’s air bombardment of the area.
We want to believe that this confusion is the reason why our Western allies and the public are sticking their heads in the sand like ostriches in the wake of the Gara massacre. After all, there can be no possible explanation for the deafening silence that met the news of the massacre of 13 victims in the “cradle of civilization.”
Now our “friends,” whom we watch out for around NATO and the EU’s southeastern border, lend credence to the statements of the PKK and the YPG. Now they doubt the statements of their ally, Turkey, the only democratic and secular state in its region capable of determining its government through elections.
I think the statements of the terrorists who were captured alive in the Gara operation in response to the massacre will likely eliminate any questions on people’s minds.
HORRIBLE MOMENTS
Here is the statement by Doğan Geçgel, code-named Merkaz Botan, who joined the PKK in March 2014:
“We were with the detainees in the Şehit Brüsk cave in Siyane, Gara. We were eight. Because the tunnel was long and zigzagged, it was not visible outside. We waited there until 7 a.m. to get to the camellia (gazebo), and we got there. We saw the captives on the ground, dead, shot in their heads. I heard the soldiers’ call ‘surrender’ before I went outside, unable to withstand. I went out to give myself over to the soldiers. And the soldiers took me with them. I heard that the Gara field commander, Cuma Biliki, instructed the officer, code-named ‘Sorej,’ that ‘if an operation or anything happens here, none of the prisoners should survive, nor should they surrender to their families.’ I mean, I heard him saying, ‘Kill them.’ Sorej told me. I heard it myself, and then I gave myself over to the soldiers.” Here is part of the statement by Osman Acer, code-named Şervan Korkmaz, who joined the PKK in 2012: “If an operation begins, if anything happens, if the backup force fails to come, execute the hostages, kill them. He instructed to kill Turkish hostages, police officers, military officers and soldiers. This is what he said. And on Feb. 10, 2021, operation Roj Başa began. Then he turned and took a few people with him, and went to the captives who were under arrest ... and destroyed them all. The conflict continued, it lasted like this for a few days, and then Merkaz Botan, that is, Doğan Geçgel, surrendered, and then I surrendered.”
WE ARE LISTENING TO YOU GUYS!
Now that even the PKK members have admitted their crimes, I think you should stop resisting the truth. I hope what actually happened in the Gara massacre is more clear to you now.
How embarrassing to be of that opinion in the face of this latest disgrace to humanity.