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De fundamentalistische achtergrond van Erdogan

De huidige dramatische situatie in Syrisch Koerdistan ontstond ogenschijnlijk volledig onverwacht na één nachtelijk telefoontje tussen twee mannen: Trump en Erdogan. Wie Trump is weten we intussen wel, al blijft het een raadsel wat zijn werkelijke  drijfveren zijn.

Maar wie is Erdogan? Wat is zijn achtergrond en wat wil hij bereiken?

Huseyin Baybasin beschrijft op zijn website de fundamentalistisch-islamitische achtergronden van Erdogan en diens medeplichtigheid aan het jihadistisch terrorisme.

Baybasin wordt in Nederland gevangen gehouden. Desondanks onderhoudt hij contacten op hoog niveau met Koerden over de hele wereld. Hij is een felle tegenstander van Erdogan.

We plaatsen Baybasin’s Engelse tekst hieronder integraal op onze website. Meer foto’s en verwijzingen zijn te vinden in het originele goed gedocumenteerde artikel. Klik hier.

 

 

Huseyin Baybasin, 16/10/2019

 Erdogan’s fundamentalist Islamic terrorist links are nothing new. He was formerly in Afghanistan amongst al-Qaeda and with Gulbeddin Hikmetyar^[1]: pictures available these days on social media show him on his knees in front of him with Osama Bin Laden and other Islamic leaders long before he became Mayor of Istanbul. He took this office as a member of the Milli Selamet Partisi. He was also part of the Milli Görüş Organisation (literally, the vision of the religious community), operating across Europe. Its militants were involved in the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981.[2]

 

Spread islam throughout the world

When involved in the creation of the AK Party, he publicly announced, “I am a changed. I am changed now,” because he was questioned about having been down on his knees before Hekmatayar and in relations with Osama Bin Laden. He claimed, ‘What was my belief before, is not my view now.’  Many people were sceptical when they heard this but many others believed it and naturally human beings can change.

After Erdogan became Turkey’s Prime Minister in 2002 he was successful in the first five to six years and did some useful work but from 2008 he began to show his real face and to talk about Islamic beliefs, the Muslim Brotherhood and how Islam must rule the world for peace and stability and that Islam was a religion of peace.

After 2012, he began to act in the name of Islam and stated that Islam’s greatness must be restored in the world and the world must respect Islam. He would raise his arm with the forefinger in the air saying in public we are the Rabia – which means to spread Islam throughout the world. Now, we know that since 2008 he was in fact personally organising the Islamic fundamentalist movement.

 

Mosul, 2014

A week before ISIS attacked Mosul in 2014, Erdogan announced in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir that ‘very soon we are going to start jihad to discard the borders drawn in Islamic lands by the Imperialists and this is what our jihad is going to launch. A week later, ISIS took control of Mosul and all the world condemned it except Erdogan and his government. Erdogan’s government publicly announced that ‘ISIS are not terrorists, they are just angry Muslim youth’ and made many similar utterances.

Different sources soon showed that Erdogan was supporting ISIS and collaborating in the sale and transport of ISIS oil. The Al Nusra Front was created on Erdogan’s orders and trained and armed by him, as well as their fighters receiving medical treat from the government on his orders. When the Russian fighter jet was shot down, Putin went public and showed how Erdogan was organising Islamic militants and his involvement in selling and transporting ISIS oil with members of his family. It seems now that president Putin has forgotten about these murdered Russian pilots and Erdogans identity.

 

Shipments of weapons into ISIS territory

We heard the news in Turkey how the military and intelligence were also sending shipments of weapons into ISIS territory and videos clips and photographs became public. Eventually, some decent Turkish police officers and prosecutors stopped some trucks full of weapons in the city of Adana that were on their way from Turkey to ISIS territory. They documented the issue and put the truck drivers and those accompanying them on trial. Some decent Turkish journalists also published details of this that went viral.  Erdogan then turned it all upside down and accused those involved in this exposure of acting as traitors: they were arrested and convicted of treason and are still in prison. He claimed these were state secrets and those that exposed them were not allowed to do what they had done. In fact, it was not a state secret but Erdogan’s personal secret. We also know there was a large amount of money found in houses linked to Erdogan and the movement of money and gold trade between him and Iran. Again, when revealed, Erdogan turned it all upside down and ordered everyone’s arrest accusing them of being Gulenist conspirators.  

 

Halk Bank

Yet it came out that some $ 4-5 million was stashed inside a shoe box in the house of a manager of the Halk Bank. This bank manager was not allowed to have that money in his house, but he was acquitted and instead of him the ones who prosecuted him were convicted of bringing out state secrets.

We know also that the general director of the same Halk Bank was arrested and convicted in New York in relation to this matter. The same happened to an Iranian citizen of Turkish origin, Reza Reza Zarrab, who was arrested in Florida and tried in New York. He was the one who went on to explain everything in detail that we are referring to here[3].

We also now know that Donald Trump was pressuring Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to let the Turkish Halkbank manager and Reza Zarrab be freed and sent back to Turkey. Tillerson refused and this was the start of his conflict with Trump.[4]

Turkish recycling of ISIS fighters under its own flag and the FSA

It has now become common knowledge that after the Islamist terror organisations, which were defeated by the Kurdish YPG fighters in NE Syria with the help of the American forces were dissolved, Erdogan ordered for them to be protected to be able to recycle them under the name of the Free Syrian Army. Turkish opposition leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu had strongly criticised this move asking if it were right for jihadist terrorists to be recycled through the Turkish army. Erdogan rebuffed him in his usual fashion.^[5]

We have hundreds of pictures with the specific fighters identified and circled in red shown on social media that had been members of ISIS or Al Nusra and are now the leaders of the so called FSA and the Hamza Brigade, a part of the Turkish military acting in Syria and Iraq.

In recent days, as broadcasted clearly on CNN Turk, the Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soyluhas been saying that ISIS represents no threat and is nothing to be afraid of and will be Turkey’s allies and partners and that Turkey will replace them in North Syria after winning the war.[6] [7] We know that in Afrin and in the area of Al Bab (North of Syria) this already happened.

Erdogan managed to convince Putin and Russia to take all of the Islamist terrorists out of the war zone and bring them together in the Syrian city of Idlib. He managed to reach an agreement with Putin and Iran to protect them inside Idlib and again to convince them to enter Syria’s Afrin area and elsewhere in the west of Rojava, to massacre innocent and helpless Kurdish people to seize control of these areas and to insert by the Turkish military trained, recycled Islamist terrorists there. . We also know that the leader of ISIS, El Bagdadi, lives in that same by Erdogan controlled area under his protection.

What does Trump expect Kurdish people to do – lie down and die in front of the Turkish military onslaught?

Erdogan has concentrated all his efforts and the Turkish state’s possibilities and power to enter Syria and create a so-called ‘safe zone’ and move all of those terrorist militants from Idlib into this area along with those trained inside Turkey and even inside the refugee camps, giving them status under the FSA, Hamza Brigade etc. and place them inside northern Syria. He is protecting them and is convincing Putin to make these Islamist terrorists the partners of a future Syrian government.

Erdogan’s aim is to create an Islamic empire and for himself to be the Caliph of it. Recep Tayyib Erdogan himself is a militant of Rabia and repeatedly says this of himself!  So now he is thus just doing his job, as simple as that.

We know that he made an agreement with Donald Trump in which Trump fooled all the US administration and other government entities, handing over all the gains of civilisation to Erdogan and his Islamist ideology. Rojava was liberated from Islamist terrorists with the blood of tens of thousands of Kurdish people and American resources with lesser contributions from France and the UK. (The contributions of the latters were not even close to that of Saudi Arabia.  And than we even don’t speak about the Kingdom of the Netherlands who also contributed with second-hand helmets, discarded by their own military, that had to be kicked away by the Kurdish fighters).

Trump ordered the US forces to withdraw from the Kurdistan region of Syria and now others are making cowardly numerous excuses for it, claiming Erdogan was not given a ‘green light’ to invade and had been told to be ‘nice to our allies’. It has become an embarrassment. Erdogan was given a green light by Trump. The Kurdish forces had been told beforehand to withdraw from the border, which they did. But they were not told that Erdogan was immediately to launch an operation against them before they could even find other partners after the sudden US withdrawal. This immediately exposed Kurdish civilians and the Kurdish forces themselves to be harmed severely as they had pulled back their defences on American demands.

The fact is that Donald Trump is following the orders of Putin and Erdogan whatever the reason behind it is.  We only can say that  that reason is not in American interests nor reflects American values and of course is a deep stab in the back of the Kurdish heroic fighters just as it is a stab in the back of civilisation by Donald Trump directly. Surely his reason is one of corrupt personal interests and we are sure that US institutions are sufficiently capable of bringing out the truth. Of course, the American people and their values do not deserve this dirty trick on their watch.

For the European Union to keep paying deaf and dumb in this matter also seems to suit them very well. If any world power cares to ignore the truth about Recep Tayyib Erdogan of Turkey, leader of the Islamic fundamentalist movement and if that suits their purpose, they should not fool themselves,  nor anyone else, about the fact that he is the legitimate president of a country which is a member of NATO. Erdogan is an Islamic terrorist whether you like it or not and he is working very effectively for it, whether you care to see it or not. The most disturbing fact here is that the Turkish military right now is working under the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism and that it is doing this as a member of the same NATO. They are using for this purpose all the privileges and equipment that NATO membership confers.

Some principled journalists with an independent outlook like Jeremy Bowen of the BBC and a Canadian of Kurdish origin and many other internationally respected publications emphasised these truths long before things reached this stage  They were ignored however by the international community, especially by the US and EU. But in the past few days, since the bloody Turkish onslaught began, CCN, BBC, Euro News and manu other American news organisations have all been making the picture clear that Erdogan’s proxies are formerly from ISIS, al-Nusra, the former Al Qaeda etc. and that all are acting now under the Turkish military’s command against the Kurdish forces in Rojava of Kurdistan.

The question here is why the international community has so long ignored Erdogan’s deeds and why they did not want to accept who Erdogan really is and ask themselves who can derive any benefit from him being an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist and leader of a country that is a member of NATO. Surely civilisation is not going to benefit from this any more than it did from Hitler and the Nazi movement. We all have to be sure Recep Tayyib Erdogan is even more dangerous in the long term than the Nazis. Everyone has to ask themselves this and then seek answers as to what to do about it now. The best thing for civilised society would be to form the United States of Kurdistan for the sake of peace and stability in the Middle East and around the world instead of wanting the Kurdish people to lie down and be slaughtered.

What Erdogan is doing is not helpful to the Turkish people and the state of Turkey either. What he is doing with his blind ego and fundamentalist mentality will destroy Turkey and place Turkish people in very serious difficulty just as with the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria. Nobody should fool themselves and ignore this fact. It will also destroy peace and stability in Western Europe, which is my most feared prediction.

Erdogan is using everything as an excuse to justify his terrorism – the Kurdish people are civilised and decent and are the real heroes here. The Kurdish people are not “terrorists” as Erdogan is ranting as his pretext – even the PKK is a million times more civilised than Erdogan’s brand of Islamic fundamentalism.

What Russia’s Putin is doing may be to his own benefit in the short term but in the long term will contribute to the destruction of civilisation and Russia’s interest as well. Helping Erdogan and the Mullah’s regime in Tehran is helping Islamic fundamentalism. Mr Putin, whether you like it or not. This is the fact of the matter.

What Donald Trump has done is to break the backbone of American values and trustworthiness. How this is going to be corrected by the other USA’s leaders and people is their responsibility. But the USA’s institutions and leaders till now keep bowing to the destructive behaviour of this corrupt coward, the idiot Donald Trump.

“Sanctions“

The United States of America announced the sanction of tariffing Turkish steel, but there is not going any Turkish steel going to America. The Turkish steel production is not even enough for 10 % of Turkish internal needs. And the sanctions imposed by some European countries of a halt on sending military equipment that will be used in Syria, has to be defined as a kind of joke, because the Turks are already using their delivered weaponry. You all have a serious problem, please, deal seriously with it.

The Kurdish people have been suffering throughout the past one hundred years because the French and British victors after WW1 divided the Kurdish lands and left Kurdish people without any legal protection. How could Kurd therefore be anyone’s allies in WW2 as Trump rewrites of history? They were not a state even then. However what is probably not known to Trump ‘in all his wisdom’, Kurds were part of the Russian military forces, freeing Europe from the Nazi’s and fascists. More importantly for Mr Trump to know is that Kurdish fighters in Rojava gave 12.000 lives fighting alongside American soldiers to defeat the Islamic terrorists who beheaded American citizens. And Donald Trump betrayed them.

Independent United States of Kurdistan

We, as the Kurdish people, have to step up to form the independent United States of Kurdistan, and I expect the international civilised community’s support as a matter of duty. The USK must be ruled by sincere values of democracy and the civilised rule of law and ally with Israel and a truly democratic America. Kurdish people need to heed the reality around them and that the American people are not the Kurdish people’s enemy. I strongly believe that the USK and the state of Israel must be allied in partnership with the USA.

The USA’s leaders need to learn the lesson not to allow an idiot like Donald Trump to destroy hundreds of years of greatness that they have achieved. If this kind of behaviour destroys America’s position, the civilised world will become destabilised. A man like Donald Trump cannot understand this, but good people and American leaders know better than anyone else what this means. If you destroy American world leadership, as a first American and EU citizens will be in real danger. So everyone needs to pull their heads out of the sand now.

 

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[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-election/former-afghan-warlord-hekmatyar-enters-presidential-race-idUSKCN1PD0DU

[2] https://stockholmcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Hate-Speech-Against-Christians-in-Erdog%CC%86an%E2%80%99s-Turkey_21.08.2017.pdf

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/iran-turkey-gold-sanctions-nuclear-zarrab-atilla/549665/

[4] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7557377/Trump-allegedly-pressed-Secretary-State-Rex-Tillerson-interfere-Reza-Zarrab-case.html

[5] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/president-erdogan-slams-chp-over-syria-operation-comments-126531

[6] https://www.aei.org/op-eds/trumps-flawed-turkey-first-strategy-betrays-christians-and-yazidis/

[7] https://twitter.com/kurdistannews24/status/1182221788341686272

Kees van der Plas (*) Klik hier voor de PDF-versie Peter W. Galbraith was als Amerikaans diplomaat na de Golfoorlog nauw betrokken bij de politieke ontwikkelingen in Irak. Hij bespreekt deze week in  New York Review of Books de recente overname door Baghdad van Kirkuk. Evenals Hüseyin Baybasin in het vorige week geplaatste interview, laakt […]

Hüseyin Baybaşin, a Kurdish activist from Turkey, resumed by the Public Prosecutor in captivity, has evolved to one of the fiercest opponents of Turkish President Erdogan.

He initially conceived of the viability of an ‘independent Kurdish region’ – now Baybaşin is convinced that only an ‘independent Kurdish state’ can provide a workable solution to the problems faced by the Kurdish people. Each discussion with other Kurdish leaders with whom he is in close contact, pursues that idea.  Continue to read: PDF-version