"The craftiest trickery are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart."
~ Johann Kaspar Lavater.
~ Johann Kaspar Lavater.
More news has come out on the Turkish Red Crescent Society's transporting of weapons and munitions to Hezbollah, from DozaMe:
NEWSDESK, Aug 18 (DozaMe.org) - The Turkish Red Crescent was used twice to arm Hezbollah, a Syrian Red Crescent official told the Kurdish news agency ANF yesterday. The Turkish humanitarian organization’s vehicles were loaded with small arms, unidentified electronic gadgets, and ammunition, the Syrian official said.
The supplies were sent during the 34-day conflict in Lebanon between Israeli Defense Forces and the Hezbollah. The vehicles were driven to Syrian territory before the weapons and logistic supplies swapped hands, the Syrian official said. In Syria, the supplies were loaded onto Syrian Red Crescent vehicles before being sent to Lebanon.
[. . . ]
The Turkish Red Crescent is widely known to be involved in Turkish intelligence operations around the world. In April 2003, Turkish Red Crescent vehicles which were stopped and searched by US forces at a checkpoint in southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq) turned out to be loaded with weapons and explosives believed by US troops to be used to arm Iraqi Turkmen Front militias. The supplies were marked as ‘humanitarian aid’. Turkish Special Forces posing as aid workers were taken into custody and interrogated before being escorted by US troops back to Turkey.
The Turkish Red Crescent headquarters in Iraq are used by the Turkish military intelligence and the Turkish MIT (National Intelligence Agency) as safe houses and operational headquarters, Iraqi Kurdish officials say.
Read the entire article at the link above. There is news in Turkish, as well, from Firat News Agency (ANF).
As the DozaMe article points out, it is widely known that the Turkish Red Crescent has been a cover for the Ankara regime's covert activities in South Kurdistan and Iraq. In fact, this is so widely known that I wondered about it on a post about a GIS/D& FA analysis of Turkey's current state of affairs and its links with the evil mullah regime:
Exactly what kind of aid did the Turkish Red Crescent take to Lebanon and Syria? Was it similar to the aid Turkey sent to their Turkmen brothers in Kerkuk, in April, 2003? How many rockets and missiles from Iran were in that aid? Is Turkey playing go-between for Hezbollah and Iran, as this article suggests, with an AKP MP cheerily chatting it up with Hezbollah? Hezbollah, like HAMAS, is widely regarded as a terrorist organization by the US and EU.
In what may be a move to try to hide this scandal, we have the pashas' ever pious-sounding ambassador to Hewlêr, Ilnur Cevik, making a propagandistic apologia pro Hezbollah and calling for the presence of the Turkish Red Crescent in Lebanon:
Israel wants Hezbollah disarmed at all costs but we feel that even the Lebanese people don't want this because, after all, it was Hezbollah's forces which really stood up for and managed to restore some dignity for the preservation of Lebanon's territorial integrity ... If it hadn't been not for them, there wouldn't have been the tough resistance that really hurt the invading Israeli forces.
[ . . . ]
But on the other side of the coin, Turks are also aware that the peacemaking effort could be full of traps that could potentially cause conflicts with our regional friends. Besides this, many Turks question the merits of joining such a peacemaking effort when Turkish troops can't even cope with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) within our borders.
Erdogan and Gul, as well as the military, have to find a balance between all these pros and cons and come up with a solution and show how much they're capable of handling such a tricky international situation. This is where you sort out the statesman from the ordinary politicians ...
Here is the friendly voice of the Turkish General Staff referring to Iranian-backed Hezballah as a resistance force. There is no mention of how Hezballah has aborted whatever miniscule democracy movement that used to exist in Lebanon, but, then, the Turkish General Staff has no respect whatsoever for democracy.
The pashas' ambassador does have a point about the TSK's inability to cope with the big, bad PKK. Here's NATO's second largest army, approximately 800,000-strong, and it has never been able to cope with the few thousand Kurdish resistance fighters and the few thousand more PKK political organizers that it's tried to kill off. Of course, the biggest trap the TSK would fall into would be the one of it's own making: It would be extremely embarrassing to have the mask torn off and the ugly face of the fascist Ankara regime exposed to the entire world to see all those Mehmetciks lining up behind a Turkish Red Crescent ambulance to pick up their daily allowance of ammunition.
As for concerns about sorting out statesmen from politicians, I don't think there's any danger of that happening. Not in Turkey, anyway.
Ilnur saves the best line for last:
If Turkey isn't prepared to send its military on such a crucial mission to Lebanon then we may as well send Red Crescent (Kizilay) teams there as they, too, aren't combatant.
The Turkish Red Crescent is not combatant; it's a logistician. It's the quartermaster corps. It's combat service support. They only transport and hand out weapons, ammunition, and unidentified electronic gadgets of a military nature. I mean, for crying out loud. . . they weren't handing out iPods--the TSK is way too cheap for that.
One of the most important targets in any conflict is logistics. It is always extremely important to target those who resupply the enemy, so that they run out of the bullets and food they need to survive. By doing so, the wise military commander not only strikes the enemy on a practical level, but also achieves a devastating blow to morale.
As we all know, morale is half the battle.
Clearly, the Turkish Red Crescent has turned itself into a legitimate military target, according to the Geneva Convention:
Art. 21. The protection to which fixed establishments and mobile medical units of the Medical Service are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after a due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded.
Bad hearts and impure hearts; trickery and deception--Colonel Mayville recognized the Turks for what they were back in April, 2003. It's time to give the Turkish Red Crescent its due warning.
2 comments:
Thanks heval Mizgin for this informative and well put post.
There is little doubt that Hezbollah is engaged in committing numerous categories of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The fascist leaders of Turkey by proffering logistical support, or facilitating it, to Hezbollah could also incur individual criminal liability under international criminal law. Israel should respond, and I hope its response is felt sooner rather than later.
Turkish crimes against humanity ranging from systematic and widespread torture to the destruction of over 3,500 Kurdistani villages and forcible transfer of their civilian population are well documented, not only by Turkish and international NGOs but even by US’s own Department of State.
A strong Israeli commitment to human rights in Turkey, under well recognised principle of universal jurisdiction, may redress to some degree lack of political will on part international community to prosecute the Kemalist leaders for committing international crimes.
It is a matter of history that Kemalism would join its ugly sisters Nazism and fascism; the question is how soon. I believe it is less than 5 years, pleas say amen.
I wish I were as optimistic for your five-year plan, Srusht. If the world community would get on board against the fascists (yes, the Iranians are fascists too, but religious ones), then I'd be more optimistic. You know, however, that there are always self-interest and under-the-table deals that go on, by which all the rest of us are screwed.
Yeah, Israel should do the things you say, but everyone else needs to join them, in my opinion. It can't be done by one state alone. Not even the US could do it alone.
Honestly, I'm too cynical, I guess. I really don't have a whole lot of hope. But we have to do what we have to do, right, and that's to keep the good fight going.
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