TERRORIST ATTACK AGAINST DTP

"In Sakarya they attempted to organize a massacre similar previous events in Sivas, Maraş and Çorum."
~ Ahmet Türk.

Over the weekend there was a terror attack against 1500 DTP members and supporters which resulted in the death of one person from a heart attack. Let's take a look at something from Zaman:

Democratic Society Party (DTP) parliamentary group chairman Ahmet Türk said on Tuesday his party will not take part in parliamentary sessions for an unspecified period of time to protest an attack on a DTP festival in Sakarya on Sunday. Members of Alperen Ocakları, the youth branch of the Grand Unity Party (BBP), allegedly perpetrated the attack.

According to Ahmet Türk's remarks as carried in Özgür Gündem, there is no mention of a DTP boycott of parliamentary sessions but Akşam mentions a two-day boycott on Wednesday and Thursday.

Notice that the ülkücüler who carried out this terrorist operation against DTP are associated with the BBP. The BBP is an ultranationalist party that broke with the MHP over religion. The BBP are ultranationalist but religious, and are the expression of Turkish-Islamic Synthesis. Even more interesting, all of those involved with Hrant Dink's murder (including Ogün Samast and Yasin Hayal) were also involved with Alperen Ocakları. According to Wikipedia, the Alperen Ocakları originally went by the name Nizam-ı Alem Ocakları. It would be very interesting to know if this particular ocak has any links to the Nizam-ı Alem group that Turkey was sending to Chechnya:

Today the most active group aiding the Chechens is a branch of the Gray Wolves movement called Nizami Alem, or "universal order." Nizami Alem is an ultra-nationalist group created from a split in the official Gray Wolves political party, known by its initials MHP.

Nizami Alem accuses the Gray Wolves of not being sensitive enough to Islamic thought. For its part, Nizami Alem maintains strong ties to the more radical Muslim groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

Well, of course we all know that Tayyip maintains strong ties to Hamas. More on Nizam-ı Alem and Chechnya here and then there's more on Nizam-ı Alem in relation to Hrant Dink's murder.

As a piece of trivia: BBP leader Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu has been invited to the UK by the British government and will address the House of Lords on Wednesday, on the subject of Turkey and Islam. It would be nice to know if the hevals in the UK could round up a protest against terrorist Yazıcıoğlu at the last minute.

The Zaman article did manage to distill the essence of Ahmet Türk's remarks, which was that this was a provocation by ülkücüler on the order of the Maraş, Çorum, and Sivas Massacres. The comparison with the Sivas Massacre is particularly chilling because the Alevi victims were trapped in the Madımak Hotel and surrounded by rabid Turkish-Islamists (not at all unlike the members of BBP's Alperen Ocakları/Nizam-ı Alem), who set fire to the building. This resulted in the deaths of 37 people.

Zaman quotes Ahmet Türk as saying that 500 DTP members were inside the wedding salon in Sakarya, but according to Yeni Özgür Politika, 1500 DTP members were present. Bianet confirms the number and has a fairly decent report of the terror attack in English.

It goes without saying that the Sakarya governor and the police stood to the side, wringing their hands and crying, "Alas!" during this act of terrorism against DTP. DTP parliamentarian from Urfa, İbrahim Binici, repeatedly called for an ambulance when it became apparent that Ebubekir Kalkan was suffering a heart attack. Repeatedly, Binici was told that there were too many people around the wedding salon so that it could not arrive in time to save Kalkan. This was willful murder on the part of both the Sakarya governor and the police because they refused to take control of the crowd of ülkücüler terrorists.

We know exactly what the governor and police officials do to clear crowds of Kurds celebrating Newroz in Van and Hakkari, so let no one tell me that they couldn't have applied the same violence against their associates in Alperen Ocakları. We also know exactly how the police treated Alperen Ocakları member Ogün Samast after he ". . . killed the Armenian."

Ufuk Uras, the ÖDP parliamentarian who has consistently stood in solidarity with DTP, had the best comment on the situation in the Akşam article:

"The Sakarya incident is a typical Ergenekon activity and I don't know whether nationalism is making people stupid or whether stupid people become nationalists."

Well said, Ufuk Beg.

LET THE COVER-UP BEGIN

"The 'deep state' is made up of elements from the military, security and judicial establishments wedded to a fiercely nationalist, statist ideology who, if need be, are ready to block or even oust a government that does not share their vision."
~ Gareth Jones, reporting for Reuters on TDN.

Trabzon . . . The shooter was from Trabzon; why am I not surprised? Trabzon, the spawning ground of the MHP and its assassins, the Gray Wolves.

IHT reports that Ogun Samast, the shooter, is seventeen and from Trabzon. "Described as a quiet but courageous boy by his uncle," yet he dropped out of high school and was kicked out of a soccer club due to "undisciplined behavior." Described as "totally open to manipulation," by one of the soccer officials.

They also say "he couldn't have done this alone," that "[s]ome people must have exploited him," and

Kazim Kolcuoglu, head of the Istanbul Bar Association, said that young people are sometimes used as assassins because they face lower penalties than adults convicted of the same crime.

Exactly. In addition, ordinary criminals are routinely granted a general amnesty, something that never applies to political prisoners. More from IHT on another suspect:

One of the suspects, Yasin Hayal, an alleged Islamic militant who learned to make bombs from Chechen militants at a camp in Azerbaijan and who served 11 months in jail for the bombing of a McDonalds restaurant in Trabzon in 2004, is suspected of masterminding the attacks on both Dink and Father Santaro.

Did you get it? A Turkish Islamist bombs a McDonalds in Turkey and only gets 11 months in jail. What happened to Turkey's noble war on terror? Ask yourself why an Islamist who bombs a McDonalds only gets 11 months in jail.

Does anyone remember that Alparslan Aslan, the shooter in the Council of State attack last May, was also an Islamist with ties to ultra-nationalists? From DozaMe:

The Atabeyler gang’s existence — believed to be an ‘open secret’ in the corridors of Ankara — was unearthed by the Turkish AKP administration after an attack on the Turkish Council of State on May 17, 2006. The Turkish judge Mustafa Yücel Özbilgin of the Second Chamber was killed and four other judges were wounded. The assailant, Alparslan Aslan, a lawyer with Islamic fundamentalist and Turkish ultra-nationalist sympathies, was arrested for the murder.

Alparslan Aslan’s interrogation led to the arrest of several retired and serving military service men and police officers. The operation was named as “Atabeyler Operation” but satisfying results could not be obtained due to interference by the higher Turkish military echelon who claimed most of the suspects as “their own.” A reference in Turkey enough to make anybody an ‘untouchable’.

Alparslan Aslan is an Islamist and an ultra-nationalist. He reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" before murdering a judge, and he claimed to have no connections to any organizations. Yasin Hayal is an Islamist, and since he's affiliated with Chechen militants, he's most likely a Turkish ultra-nationalist as well. Here's a history lesson on that, from CNN:

Today the most active group aiding the Chechens is a branch of the Gray Wolves movement called Nizami Alem, or "universal order." Nizami Alem is an ultra-nationalist group created from a split in the official Gray Wolves political party, known by its initials MHP.

Nizami Alem accuses the Gray Wolves of not being sensitive enough to Islamic thought. For its part, Nizami Alem maintains strong ties to the more radical Muslim groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

The Turkish allies of the Chechens have a party known as the BBP (or Party of Great Unity). Positioned on the extreme right of the Turkish political spectrum, the party is enjoying considerable success.

You can get an idea of some of BBP's stupidity and one of the axes they have to grind with AKP, here. They also didn't like the idea of the Pope's visit, from Genocide Watch:

A group of Turkish ultra-nationalists protested anew against Pope Benedict XVI's planned visit to the country next week. The group also occupied Hagia Sophia . . .

[ . . . ]

The group of protestors belonged to the Great Unity Party (BBP), an ultra-nationalist political formation in current Turkey, a mixture of extreme nationalist thought intermingled with Islam. It was led by Kemal Kerincsiz, an ultra-nationalist lawyer who has won notoriety for launching multiple court cases against Turkish intellectuals, contesting the official line on the extermination of Turkey's Christian minorities of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians under Ottoman rule, which Ankara ostensibly rejects as genocide, or condemning human rights abuses against Kurdish nationals.

Maybe they should haul Kemal Kerincsiz in for questioning.

Nizam-i Alem is mentioned in the IHT article about Hrant Dink's murderer, Ogun Samast, but it is much more likely that Yasin Hayal is affiliated with Nizam-i Alem because he has the Chechen connections. CNN also conducted an interview with an Islamist who had been a former fighter in Chechnya. At the time of the interview, he was living in Istanbul:

Suddenly, after seeing those images of the war [in Chechnya], I decided to go to Chechnya as a volunteer. The next day I talked about it with a Turkish friend of mine, a former Gray Wolf. He belongs to the ultra-nationalist branch of that movement, known as Nizami Alem, or "Universal Order." I put myself in their hands.

Do you know about the myth of the gray wolf? It is the heroic wolf that shows the Turkish people the road out of Asia, leading them to their new homeland, Europe. In the same way we will lead the Caucasian people to freedom. A few days after my encounter with the Nizami Alem nationalists, they took me to a training camp here in Turkey, where they taught us to use weapons. Then I went to the front.

[ . . . ]

What I do know is that there were many ex-military men among them from the Turkish armed forces, who are close to the Nationalist movement, and maybe one or two agents from the Turkish secret service.

Yeah, "maybe one or two agents" from the Turkish government were involved with Nizam-i Alem, and their purpose was to keep the group's operations under control in Turkey, not to forbid it from operating. They thought they could keep Turkish Hezbollah under control, too, and where did that get them? Notice, in the complete interview, what the mujahedin said about who's running heroin and how well he digested the Turkish ultra-nationalist propaganda on the Kurdish struggle.

Nizam-i Alem, Atabeyler, MHP, Gray Wolves, ex-Turkish military . . . these are the threads of the Deep State. Whoever is pulling these threads is the one who ordered Hrant Dink's murder. Given the way political murders have always been handled in Turkey, we are not likely to learn who the puppet masters are. This is normal. Anyone remember Yesil?

In this case, for the murder of Hrant Dink, they have set the stage well. They have acquired a willing participant who is underage. He's a virgin, as far as his political affiliations go, meaning that he's clean; he isn't directly linked to the ultra-nationalist groups mentioned here. He had been taken by his handlers--Yasin Hayal?-- to Istanbul five times in the last fifteen days and was paid a sum of money by them. He does not change his clothes after committing the murder and confesses immediately. He knew he was meant to be the fall guy. I bet the police won't even bother to torture him.

He'll spend a couple of years in jail and then go free. Yasin Hayal and his other accomplices may do a few more years, and then they'll be free, too.

And so it always goes.