Turkish police recently raided the homes of, and detained, more than a dozen nationals suspected of “joining conflicts in Syria, providing logistics and money, and recruiting for [terrorist] organizations.”
Britain, in recent days, has had a rare distraction from its seemingly endless Brexit debate. The distraction, however, has not been an altogether welcome one. It involves the case of Shamima Begum, one of a number of girls who left their school in Bethnal Green in London in 2015 to go and join ISIS.
The following is an op-ed by MEMRI Executive Director Steven Stalinsky that was originally published in USA Today on February 20, 2019.
Terrorist groups usually find ways to exploit the ever expanding services offered by major online platforms and tech companies, and Amazon Drive is no exception. Designed for storing and sharing photos, videos, PDFs and other forms of content, it has been adopted by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other organizations as a stable and reliable platform for disseminating their content. They upload it and then share the links to it with followers and sympathizers, primarily using the encrypted messaging app Telegram — terrorists’ “app of choice.”
Dr. Mohammad Bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, Secretary General of Muslim World League, has been one of the most outstanding Muslim leaders; he has recognized the brutality of the Holocaust and criticized any denial of it.
„Mossad-ul este ca gâdele oficial sau ca medicul din Camera Morţii care administrează injecţia letală. Acţiunile voastre sunt toate aprobate de Statul Israel. Când ucideţi, voi nu violaţi legea. Voi executaţi o sentinţă aprobată de primul ministru în exerciţiu.” Meir Amit (Director General al Mossad 1963-1968)
U.S. President Donald Trump’s unexpected decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria (and Afghanistan) was music to Turkish ears. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called it “the clearest and most encouraging statement” from Washington.
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavuşoğlu welcomed Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw all 2,000 U.S. troops from northern Syria. Defense Minister Hulusi Akar vowed that that Syrian Kurdish fighters whom Turkey considers as top regional security threat, would soon be “buried in the trenches that they dig.”
When Turkey first applied for full membership in the European Union in 1987, the world was an entirely different place — even the rich club had a different name: the European Economic Community. U.S. President Ronald Reagan had undergone minor surgery; British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been re-elected for a third term; Macau and Hong Kong were, respectively, Portuguese and British territory; the Berlin Wall was up and running; the demonstrations at the Tiananmen Square were a couple of years away; the Iran-Contra affair was in the headlines; the First Intifada had just begun; and what are today Czech Republic and Slovakia were Czechoslovakia.
The Palestinians’ major ruling groups, Fatah and Hamas, are now saying they are done with each other: that the divorce is final.
Recent days and weeks have witnessed the two groups maligning each other beyond anything previously seen. Fatah and Hamas have reached a new level of mutual loathing. At times, it even seems as if Fatah and Hamas hate each other more than they hate Israel.
At a recent conference in Cologne on the future of Europe’s Muslims, Ali Erbaş, the head of Turkey’s state religious authority, the Diyanet, railed against what he called the “increase in anti-Islamic discourse and actions… [that] threaten European multiculturalism.”
In his keynote address to the conference, hosted by Turkey’s main Islamic body in Germany, DITIB — based in the Cologne Central Mosque, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inaugurated during a visit to Germany in September — Erbaş declared:
