Bulent Yildirim (president of the I.H.H.) meeting with Ismail Haniyeh
At the heart of Israel's deadly raid of the Mavi Marmara on May 31 is the Turkish charity Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (I.H.H.), the "Free Gaza" flotilla's lead organiser. But the extent to which I.H.H. has been enabled and underwritten by the Turkish government has been increasingly scrutinized by international observers over the past several months and for good reason. In the aftermath of the violent showdown on the high seas, which left nine Turkish passengers dead and a number of Israeli commandos critically injured, Turkey's parliament passed a resolution to "reconsider economic and military relations" with the Jewish state, a decades-long ally. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, returning to Istanbul after an emergency meeting with Hillary Clinton, blamed Israel alone for the confrontation and accused it of committing a "crime against humanity." But the most incendiery rhetoric came from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself.
Recent months have seen a weakening of the once assured Israeli-Turkish relationship almost to the point of dissolution and in the aftermath of the Mavi Marmara clash, Erdogan has not only depicted Israel as an anathema, worse than "bullies and pirates," but also full-throatedly endorsed its main clerical enemy in the Levant. "Hamas are resistance fighters who are struggling to defend their land," he told an ecstatic anti-Israel rally a few weeks ago in the Turkish city of Konya. "They have won an election. I have told this to US officials... I do not accept Hamas as a terrorist organization. I think the same today. They are defending their land."
Most of Turkey's independent political class see domestic and international calculation behind this bluster, a way for Erdogan to shore up Islamist credibility in advance of an upcoming election and reposition Ankara as a renascent power broker in the Middle East - Iran's chief competiton for that role. One writer for the Turkish daily newspaper Hurriyet observed that, it's "almost as if [Erodgan] was waiting for a new crisis with Israel to be able to work the streets in order to regain some of the political ground his ruling Justice and Development Party has been loosing over bread and butter issues at home."
But this raises the fundamental question of why a country that is both an ally of the United States and Nato as well as an aspiring member of the European Union would brazenly declare its solidarity with a terrorist group outlawed by both. The answer lies in the increasingly Islamist nature of Erodgan's regime as well as the complicated relationship his party AKP has enjoyed with I.H.H., a suddenly infamous non-governmental organisation that acts more like a governmental one. Its evolution has been from a rogue and highly suspect charity into the advance guard of a new Turkish foreign policy.
I.H.H. was established in 1992 and registered as a charity in Istanbul in 1995. Its declared purpose was performing Muslim social services (helping orphans, building mosques, monitoring human rights abuses) but it swiftly came under the suspicion of the Turkish authorities for the alleged involvement of its senior leadership in global terrorism. In 1997, Turkish police raided its headquarters in Istanbul and arrested a number of its top men after they uncovered weapons, explosives, and bomb-making instructions as well as a "jihadist flag." According to the investigating authorities, "detained members of I.H.H. were going to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya." At this time I.H.H. was labelled a "fundamentalist organisation" by Ankara and even banned as a registered charity from contributing to the relief effort of an devastating earthquake that struck the city of Izmit in August 1999. The governor of Istanbul froze the NGO's bank accounts, telling the Washington Post: "All legal institutions may have some illegal connections. This might be the case here. If they don't like it, they can appeal in court."
However, the most comprehensive indictment of I.H.H. has come from the former French counterterrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière, who now oversees the U.S. Treasury Department's Terrorist Finance Tracking Program. In a report he co-authored with Jean-Francois Ricard, Bruguière observed that: "The essential goal of this Association was to illegally arm its membership for overthrowing democratic, secular, and constitutional order present in Turkey and replacing it with an Islamic state founded on the Shariah. Under the cover of this organization known under the name of I.H.H., [its leaders] acted to recruit veteran soldiers in anticipation of the coming holy war."
Post your comment
- Beirut: Hariri — An Assassination Too Far
- New York: A ‘Post-racial’ American vs an Old Coot
- Pristina: Kosovo's Liberal Islam
- Oslo: Courage and Cowardice in Scandinavia
- ONLINE ONLY: Washington, D.C.: It's Not Rocket Science!
- La Hague: Recycling the French Model
- Jerusalem: No Via Media for Anglicans
- ONLINE ONLY: Beirut: Blood Holiday
- Rome: Arrivederci Roma
- Darfur: Panic at the Palace
- ONLINE ONLY: Letter from Bamian
- Caucasus: Diary, August-September, 2008
- ONLINE ONLY: South-East Asia: The Demons of Ignorance
- New York: Diary
- Ypres: Never Say Never Again
- New York: A Cousin in the White House
- Caracas: Chávez's Secret Fan Club
- Prague: Diary
- Park City, Utah: Movie that Pulls Aside the Veil
- Beirut: Blood on the Streets
- India: Tariq Ali's Plan for Pakistan
- Berlin and Cologne: A Tale of Two German Cities
- Mumbai: On the 'Slumdog' Trail
- Budapest: Screwed Left, Right and Centre
- Paris: Mayhem in the Marais
- Stanford, CA: Intellectual Life Under Obama
- Colombia: A Nation Reborn
- Paris: Prisoner of the Barbarians
- United States: The Path to Rome via San Francisco
- ONLINE ONLY: Black Russian
- South Africa: The ANC'S Health Lesson for Obama
- Lisieux, France: Relics of Thérèse
- Germany: Heidegger - Being, Time and Place
- Moscow: Putin's Empire Strikes Out
- Connecticut: My Battle Against Google
- Montana: Home From Home on the Range
- Siberia: In Search of the Gulag
- Rio's Heart of Darkness
- Mogadishu: Armageddon on Steroids
- Havana: The Castros Will Not Be Absolved
- Kaliningrad: Russia's Outpost in Europe's Heart
- Bishkek: Bloodsoaked Revolution
- Bishkek: Downfall of a Dictator
- Oslo: Signing OFF on Human Rights
- Bajaur: A Talk with the Taliban
- Bahrain: Women Drivers Welcome Here
- Tajikistan: In Search of the Yeti
- ONLINE Only: Ankara's Proxy
- Johannesburg: Hard Pressed
- Istanbul: Press Freedom Alla Turca
- Xinjiang: Taming China's Wild West
- The Lesson of Oz
- The Surge is Working — So Far
- A Tale of Love, Bulls and Goats
- Old-order Collapse
- Egypt's New Dawn Chorus
- From Carthage to Kasserine
- After Gaddafi: A New Libya Emerges
- To the Polo Saddle Born
- The Settlements: Life Between the Lines
- Exposed: Carnita's Cover Story
- "At last, I feel proud to be Libyan"
- Books Do Furnish a Little Freedom
- Fat Chance for Christie—This Time
- Easy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown
- Putin's Chinese Whispers
- Cain Isn't Able and Newt Defies Gravity
- The Ten Years' War against the Taliban
- We The People Say: Get Out of The Way
- Wanted: A New Ronald Reagan
- Time to Crunch the Numbers
- Who's Really Supreme?
- From Art as Life to Blood and Soil
- Talking Tactics
- The Wagner Family Soap Opera Rolls On
- Winning the Veepstakes
- Romney Takes a Risk with Ryan
- Window Brothels Get the Red Light
- Can Romney Spring an October surprise?
- Canada's Crusader for Conservatism
- No-Go Areas on the Campaign Trail
- Republicans Must Avoid Civil War
- Norway's Problem with Anti-Semitism
- Turks, Arabs and Jews: The Middle East in Crisis
- Nations United in Hypocrisy
- Siberia: Shamans, Spies and the Secret Police
- Barracked by Obama's Oratory
- Women Come Last in Syrian Refugee Camps
- The Dawn of Obamageddon
- Americans Know Her True Worth. Do We?
- Hapless Hollande’s French Farce Flops
- Save the NYPD So It Can Save the City
- Obama's Secrets Start Unravelling
- Syria Isn't Bosnia: Don't Arm the Rebels
- Who Can Stop Hilary in 2016?
- Teaching China's Anglophiles
- On Pilgrimage with the Hasids
- From Eastern Europe to the East End
- True Grits
- The Rise and Rise of Marine Le Pen
- Cold Comfort On Global Warming
- Hunting the Lynx with the Old Believers
- High-tech Israelis Aim For The Moon
- The Russians Are Coming
- The Turbulent Minister is Right
- Bad Times for Good Samaritans
- This Expat Paradise is a Woman’s Nightmare
- Two Generations Lost to Communism
- Strangers in their own Holy Land
- The Isles are Full of Big Noises
- The Kurds: Israel's not so Improbable Allies
- Islam and Innocence: Canada’s Predicament
- The Fifth Republic’s Darkest Days?
- Let's Make Putin's London Cronies Sweat
- The Global Politics Of Netanyahu's Victory
- A Grim Prospect For South Africa's Jews
- No End In Sight To The Exodus From Libya
- Undeterred, Erdogan Usurps Ataturk's Legacy
- Gaza Withdrawal Symptoms
- Red Flags Flying Over Parliament Square
- Mutinous Talk In The Highlands
- Our Principles Are All We Have
- Why The Swedes Have Had Enough
- Canada's First Nations Come Last
- Islam and the French Republic
- Unconventional Convention
- The Dying Days Of Zuma's South Africa
- Capitalist rebirth of Hoxha's hellhole
- Cyril Ramaphosa's poisoned chalice
- Trump's big gamble on North Korea
- I'm Not Antisemitic, But...
- The ELM, Dispatches and Awlaki
- A Larger Than Life Predator