Turkey's Fake War on Jihadis: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Apr. 28, 2016— In theory, Turkey is part of the international coalition that fights the Islamic State (IS).
Turkey Trying to Balance Relations Between Iran, Saudis: Ariel Ben Solomon, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 20, 2016— The Turkish government is carefully walking a tightrope in building relations with both Iran and its regional archrival Saudi Arabia…
Never Mind the Missile Tests. Iran Just Wants to Get Along.: Eli Lake, Bloomberg, Apr. 20, 2016— Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, is angry.
Hezbollah: Iran's Henchmen in Brazil: Emanuele Ottolenghi, National Interest, Apr. 27, 2016— Across Latin America, Iran’s public face appears innocuous: mosques, cultural centers, schools, halal meat inspectors, religious literature, social work…
Reza Moridi: The Changing Faces of an Iranian-Canadian MPP: Majid Rafizadeh, Gatestone Institute, May 2, 2016
Iran Unleashes the Morality Police: Michael J. Totten, World Affairs, Apr. 25, 2016
Erdogan Expands His Assault on Journalists Beyond Turkish Borders: IPT News, May 3, 2016
Does Erdogan Want His Own Islamic State?: Mustafa Akyol, Al-Monitor, Apr, 29, 2016
Burak Bekdil
Gatestone Institute, Apr. 28, 2016
In theory, Turkey is part of the international coalition that fights the Islamic State (IS). Since it joined the fight last year, it has arrested scores of IS militants, made some efforts to seal its porous border with Syria and tagged IS as a terrorist organization. Turkish police have raided homes of suspected IS operatives. More recently, Turkey's Interior Ministry updated its list of "wanted terrorists" to include 23 IS militants, and offered rewards of more than 42 million Turkish liras (more than $14 million) for any information leading to the suspects' capture. But this is only part of the story.
On March 24, a Turkish court released seven members of IS, including the commander of the jihadists' operations on Turkish soil. A total of 96 suspects are on trial, including the seven men who were detained but released. All are free now, although the indictment against them claims that they "engaged in the activities of the terrorist organization called DAESH [Arabic acronym of IS]. The suspects had sent persons to the conflict zones; they applied pressure, force, violence and threats by using the name of the terrorist organization, and they had provided members and logistic support for the group."
The release of terror suspects came in sharp contrast with another court decision that ruled for a trial, but while under detention, for four academics who had signed a petition calling for peace in Turkey's Kurdish dispute. Unlike the IS militants, the academics remain behind bars. The Turkish government, which controls the judiciary almost in its entirety, relies on Islamist grassroots supporters of various flavors — from Islamists and 'lite jihadists' to radicals.
Last year the Turkish pollster MetroPOLL found that one in every five Turks thought that the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris was the natural response to people who insulted Prophet Mohammed [only 16.4% of Turks thought of the incident as an attack on freedom of expression]. Among the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) voters, the rate of approval of the attack was 26.4%; and only 6.2% viewed it as an attack on free speech. Only 17.8% of AKP voters thought the attack was the work of radical Islamists. Three-quarters of AKP voters thought Muslims were aggrieved by the attack; while as few as 15.4% thought the victims were the cartoonists who were murdered. Two-thirds of AKP voters thought attacks on Islam by Christian Crusaders were continuing.
The fact that key IS suspects are now free because the government may fear looking mean to its Islamist supporters only partly explains the appalling judicial rulings on jihadists and academics. "The suspects may be holding the Turkish government hostage … What if they threatened the authorities that they would reveal the government support for their organization in the past? You normally don't walk free over such serious legal allegations," observes one western diplomat in Ankara.
Russia has been claiming that Turkey keeps supporting the Islamic State through trading the jihadists' oil, their main source of income. A new report claims that total supplies to terrorists in Syria last year was 2,500 tons of ammonium nitrate; 456 tons of potassium nitrate; 75 tons of aluminum powder; sodium nitrate; glycerine; and nitric acid. The report stated: "In order to pass through the border controls unimpeded, effectively with the complicity of the Turkish authorities, products are processed for companies that are purportedly registered in Jordan and Iraq … Registration and processing of the cargo are organized at customs posts in the [Turkish] cities of Antalya, Gaziantep and Mersin. Once the necessary procedures have been carried out, the goods pass unhindered through the border crossings at Cilvegozu and Oncupinar."
Turkey keeps playing a fake war on jihadist terrorists. At a March meeting with top U.S. officials, King Abdullah of Jordan accused Turkey of exporting terrorists to Europe. He said: "The fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy and Turkey keeps on getting a slap on the hand, but they are let off the hook."
In fact, the Turkish government's secret love affair with various Islamist groups is not always so secret. In March, thousands of supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global Islamist group, gathered at a public sports hall in Ankara — courtesy of the Turkish government — to discuss the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate. In his speech, Mahmut Kar, the media bureau chief of Hizb-ut Tahrir Turkey said: "Infidels who were enemies of Islam thought they buried Islam in the depths of history when they abolished the caliphate on March 3, 1924 … We are hopeful, enthusiastic and happy. Some 92 years after … we are shouting out that we will re-establish the caliphate, here, right next to the parliament." (Hizb ut-Tahrir, viewed by Russia and Kazakhstan as a terrorist group, defines itself as a political organization aiming to "lead the ummah" to the re-establishment of the caliphate and rule with sharia law.)
Guess what else Turkey is doing while pretending to be fighting jihadists? Apparently, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's declared political ambition to "raise devout generations" seems to have geared up. Turkey's Religious Affairs General Directorate (Diyanet), the ultimate official religious authority in the country, recently issued comic books to the nation's children telling them how marvelous it is to become an Islamic martyr. One comic strip is a dialogue between a father and his son. "How marvelous it is to become a martyr," the father says. Unconvinced, the son asks: "Would anyone want to become a martyr?" And the father replies: "Yes, one would. Who doesn't want to win heaven?" And this is the country its Western allies believe will help them fight jihadists? Lots of luck!
TURKEY TRYING TO BALANCE RELATIONS BETWEEN IRAN, SAUDIS
Ariel Ben Solomon
Jerusalem Post, Apr. 20, 2016
The Turkish government is carefully walking a tightrope in building relations with both Iran and its regional archrival Saudi Arabia, in addition to Israel. Because of a crisis of relations with Russia and its ongoing war with the Kurds and its support for the Sunni rebels in Syria, it would seem that Turkey and Iran would be at odds, especially considering the latter’s cooperation with Russia. However, despite the fact that the Turks and Saudis are aligned with the Syrian rebels who are at war with the Syrian regime and its allies Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, Turkey has strong economic connections with Iran. In order for Turkey to project its power in the region it requires cordial relations with Iran in order to promote its business and political influences in places like Iraq.
Furthermore, both Turkey and Iran oppose an independent Kurdistan and seek to keep the rising Kurd power in check. “Turkey is increasingly dependent upon energy from Iran, particularly since its relations with its other energy supplier Russia are very tense after shooting down a Russian plane,” Prof. Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, told The Jerusalem Post.
Turkey certainly is concerned with the rise of Iran in the region and this is why it enhances its relationship with Saudi Arabia, said Inbar. “Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the Sunni powers are displaying weakness after failing to depose [President] Bashar Assad’s regime despite their common efforts,” he said. And regarding relations with Israel, Inbar argues it is “needed to counter Iran’s growing clout.” The AKP government’s Islamic coloration is preventing Ankara from becoming too close to Jerusalem, he added.
Michael Stephens, a research fellow for Middle East Studies and head of the Qatar branch of the Royal United Services Institute think tank told the Post, "It appears the Turks have concluded that the best position for them is to balance between the Gulf States and Tehran, not fully committing to either side, yet seeking economic benefit from both…It is a delicate balancing act, that will require a lot of work to maintain given current regional tensions," he said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a joint news conference with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, in Ankara on Saturday that his country and neighboring Iran must work together to narrow their differences in order to tackle terrorism and sectarianism in the region. Erdogan’s comments came a day after the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, meeting in Istanbul, accused Iran of supporting terrorism and interfering in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries including Syria and Yemen.
Turkey imports large amounts of natural gas from Iran and the two countries are looking to boost banking and trade ties, with the goal of tripling bilateral trade to $30b. annually in the coming years. “The situation is ripe for cooperation between Turkey and Iran in the post-sanctions era,” Rouhani said.
How long Turkey can keep this balancing act going is a question since the Islamist AKP’s natural allies are non-status quo Sunni revolutionary forces in the region such as the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in Syria and elsewhere. Saudi Arabia, a status-quo power, has major issues with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups that want to topple the Saud monarchy. Partly for this reason, the Saudis have strongly allied themselves with Egypt’s regime that toppled a Muslim Brotherhood president from power. Therefore, Turkey is balancing its relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia, but does not feel fully at home with either.
NEVER MIND THE MISSILE TESTS. IRAN JUST WANTS TO GET ALONG.
Eli Lake
Bloomberg, Apr. 20, 2016
Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, is angry. For some reason Iran's Arab neighbors, not to mention many U.S. politicians and journalists, think his country is an aggressor, unworthy of international investment and entry into the global community of nations. It's enough to make you want to arrest an American businessman on phony espionage charges. But Zarif is a man of reason. So he has taken to the pages of the Washington Post to make his case that despite Iran's ballistic missile tests, and its supreme leader's threatening speeches, and its support for Syria's dictator … his country really just wants peace and harmony.
It all comes down to a simple misunderstanding, according to Zarif. During the nuclear negotiations, he writes, "my country insisted at every turn our defenses were not on the table." Zarif says this goes back to the Iran-Iraq war and Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons. Zarif writes that the West was "actively preventing Iran from getting access to the most rudimentary defensive necessities." This sentence is mainly false. While the U.S. imposed an arms embargo on Iran following the Iranian revolution in 1979 after the revolutionaries took U.S. diplomats hostage, the Reagan administration also secretly armed Iran with anti-tank missiles that it provided to the regime through the Israelis. Those arms were traded for the release of hostages taken in Lebanon by Iran's proxies, Hezbollah.
Zarif was a student in the U.S. when this story broke. It was known as the Iran-Contra scandal because the profits of the arms sale to Iran went to fund the Nicaraguan rebels known as the Contras. Zarif in his op-ed uses the history of the Iran-Iraq war to justify what he calls the development of his country's "indigenous defense capabilities." But this is misleading, because Iran keeps testing ballistic missiles, which can deliver a nuclear warhead. They are not a defensive weapon like the missiles the U.S. sold Iran through the Israelis.
Speaking of Israel, the Jewish state is particularly concerned about Iran's ballistic missiles because some of them were inscribed with Hebrew words promising to wipe Israel off the earth. That doesn't sound very defensive, does it? But this is not even the most galling element of Zarif's op-ed. After rehashing the history of the Iran-Iraq war and complaining about how U.S. presidents for 37 years have stated that "all options are on the table" when it comes to countering Iranian aggression, Zarif writes, "The words 'never again' resonate with Iranians, too."
"Never again" is of course most associated with preventing another Holocaust against the Jews. It is the title of Martin Gilbert's history of that crime. Zarif is the front man of a regime that not only threatens to wipe out the world's only Jewish state, but also actively denies the Holocaust. In June, Iran will host a competition where it will give a $50,000 award to the cartoonist who best mocks the Nazi genocide. An earlier winner of the contest was a cartoon that depicted Hitler and Anne Frank in bed with the fuhrer saying, "Put that in your diary." This is the Iran that Zarif complains is unfairly demonized in the West. It's enough to make one appreciate the bluntness of Iran's fanatical leaders at home. At least there they say what they actually mean.
HEZBOLLAH: IRAN'S HENCHMEN IN BRAZIL
Emanuele Ottolenghi
National Interest, Apr. 27, 2016
Across Latin America, Iran’s public face appears innocuous: mosques, cultural centers, schools, halal meat inspectors, religious literature, social work and even Boy Scout groups. Yet beneath the veneer of piety, outreach and interfaith dialogue, Tehran leverages connections with anti-American regimes and movements to gain a foothold in the region, and to indoctrinate local Muslims in its brand of revolutionary Islam. Rather than relying on the traditional tools of statecraft, Iran advances its agenda with mosques and missionaries.
Tehran’s use of Iranian and Lebanese Shia clerics as unofficial agents of the Iranian revolution is not new. The first such cleric to reach Latin America was Mohsen Rabbani, who in 1983 came to Argentina to lead the Al-Tawhid mosque and serve as a halal meat inspector in Buenos Aires. Both tasks appeared innocuous enough, but Rabbani was intimately involved in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in the Argentine capital that killed eighty-five people and injured over three hundred.
Rabbani was not alone. Shortly after his arrival to Buenos Aires, another cleric, Sheikh Taleb Hussein al-Khazraji, made his way to Brazil. Both Rabbani and Khazraji were cited by the slain Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman in his 2013 report on Iran’s Latin American networks. According to Nisman, “Interpol [Brasília] informed that Khazraji was an employee of the Iranian government and. . . was engaged in recruiting highly politicized believers to get them close to Teheran.” An integral part of their task was to dramatically expand Iran’s support base both among local Shia immigrants and through missionary work.
They succeeded. Though Rabbani left Latin America due to mounting suspicions over his involvement in the Jewish center bombing, he continues to run his recruitment program from Iran’s center of religious learning in Qom. Khazraji remains entrenched in the Shia community of São Paulo, Brazil, where he pursues his clerical tasks and the production of promotional literature in Portuguese.
The dual role of Shia clerics as religious and political emissaries of the Islamic revolution was underscored in 2010, when the U.S. Treasury identified another religious minister as Hezbollah’s representative in Latin America. According to the Treasury, Bilal Mohsen Wehbe “relayed information and direction between Hizballah leaders in Lebanon and Hizballah elements in South America,” and oversaw its counterintelligence activity in the “triple frontier” of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Wehbe continues his missionary activity in Brazil undisturbed. Another cleric reportedly linked to Hezbollah is Sheikh Ghassan Youssef Abdallah. Abdallah is active in Chile, in Brazil (frequently visiting the tri-border area, where his U.S.-sanctioned brother Mohammed Youssef Abdallah resides), and in Paraguay (where he once ran the Iranian mosque in Ciudad Del Este).
They are not alone. Alongside dozens of Iranian and Lebanese Shia clerics, there is also a new generation of locally born clerics who have joined their ranks. Converts are routinely sent to Qom, all expenses paid, to attend Iranian seminaries specially tailored to Spanish and Portuguese speakers, before they return home to act as Iran’s unofficial emissaries in their countries of birth. The State Department recently pronounced that Iran’s influence in Latin America and the Caribbean basin is “waning” due to sluggish trade, and a noticeable downturn in high-profile official visits from Iran since President Hassan Rouhani succeeded his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Iranian influence, however, should not be measured in the number of presidential visits to regional capitals. It is the day-to-day missionary work performed by religious envoys that is steadily buying influence, conveying messages of anti-Americanism and hatred for Israel. While the outward posture of Shia leaders broadcasts an ecumenical message of tolerance and dialogue with Catholicism, Latin America’s dominant faith, the modus operandi behind closed doors is militant indoctrination.
One such example is the Boy Scouts attached to Shia mosques. These groups have the outward appearances of innocent youth movements, imparting a social conscience to new generations. In fact, they are a mirror image of Hezbollah’s Mahdi Scouts, are led by Lebanese instructors who do not hide their sympathy for Hezbollah, and are supervised by Wehbe, the U.S.-sanctioned Hezbollah cleric.
Images of the Scout groups show members enacting military drills during May 25 celebrations—Resistance Day in Lebanon’s calendar, marking the date of Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from South Lebanon. During Ashura ceremonies last October, Scouts and their instructors at the Mesquita do Brás in São Paulo were wearing Hezbollah T-shirts showing its logo and the Ashura 2015 logo designed by Hezbollah’s media relations department.
The cult of martyrdom is also prevalent. In June 2014, the Imam Ali mosque in Curitiba hosted a well-attended memorial service for a young Hezbollah fighter killed in Syria in March 2014. His Brazilian uncle, clad in a Hezbollah scarf, led the memorial, exalting the fallen youth as a role model.
Community members routinely post photographs of the Brazilian flag juxtaposed with the Hezbollah logo, and photos of young Hezbollah men in South Lebanon proudly holding the same flag. Hezbollah T-shirts can even be purchased online for thirty Brazilian reais, or less than $10.
What can the U.S. government do to counter these activities? Ultimately, it is up to regional governments to recognize the threat posed by a foreign power radicalizing local populations. But it would be an important step if the U.S. administration were to acknowledge that Iran’s religious outreach is intoxicating thousands of captive minds. After all, the Latin American targets of Iran’s anti-American indoctrination could one day draw the logical conclusion from their education that striking the “Great Satan” itself is no less than God’s will.
Reza Moridi: The Changing Faces of an Iranian-Canadian MPP: Majid Rafizadeh, Gatestone Institute, May 2, 2016—In Iran's political establishment, as in others, there are often opportunistic figures who change their colors and views, apparently based on what they might gain politically and economically. A current example is Reza Moridi, a Canadian citizen originally from Iran, who is currently a Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) in Ontario and the provincial government's Minister of Research and Innovation.
Iran Unleashes the Morality Police: Michael J. Totten, World Affairs, Apr. 25, 2016—Just at the moment sanctions are being lifted on Iran, and even Saudi Arabia’s medieval government is easing up on internal repression, Iran’s “morality police” are back in force. This time they’re going undercover.
Erdogan Expands His Assault on Journalists Beyond Turkish Borders: IPT News, May 3, 2016—Ebru Umar was angry. A Dutch journalist of Turkish heritage, she has been known to take that anger to the page. On the night of April 24, from her summer home in Kusadasi, Turkey, she took it instead to Twitter, raging against a letter the Turkish Embassy in the Netherlands sent to Turkish organizations throughout the country.
Does Erdogan Want His Own Islamic State?: Mustafa Akyol, Al-Monitor, Apr, 29, 2016 —Parliament Speaker Ismail Kahraman unexpectedly sparked controversy in Turkey when on April 25 he declared that Turkey’s new constitution should forgo mention of “secularism” and instead be a “religious constitution” referencing God. His words reignited Turkey’s always tense “secularism debate,” which has been amplified since 2002 when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power.
