Free Republic

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announced his resignation on Thursday, paving the way for the country’s president to pursue a tighter grip on power. “I decided that for the unity of the (ruling party) a change of chairman would be more appropriate. I am not considering running at the May 22 congress,” Davutoğlu told the nation. Davutoglu, who had fallen out with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced he was stepping aside following a meeting with executives of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which has dominated Turkish politics since 2002. …

The European Union’s executive Commission is recommending that Turkish citizens be allowed to travel to Europe without visas on short vacations and business trips. […] The move is part of a package of incentives offered to Turkey — including up to €6 billion ($6.8 billion) in aid for Syrian refugees and fast-track EU membership talks — to persuade Ankara to stop migrants heading to Europe and take thousands back from Greece. …

Submitted by Mike "Mish" Shedlock of MishTalk “Nightmare” Mistake: Visa Free Travel For 80 Million Turks Coming Up Of all the inane, self-serving, deals German Chancellor Angela Merkel made with Turkey, visa-free travel for 80 million Islamic Turks tops the list. “This is all a nightmare,” said one diplomat charged with making the deal work. Nightmares aside, Brussels Prepares Legal Groundwork on Visa-Free Travel for Turks. Brussels will this week propose visa-free travel to Europe for 80m Turks but says Ankara still needs to meet several politically explosive reform conditions within weeks, including overhauling its terrorism laws and party funding...

“Palestinian” is a euphemism for Islamic Jew hatred. Previously I published the actual flag of Palestine before 1948. (above.) What follows is an “aha moment” in Muslims’ war on Israel. Now here is further proof of the lie (as if we needed any more) of the vicious historical revisionism by the Muslim world to erase the Jewish State and create a mythical Islamic narrative surrounding five thousand years of Jewish history. 9,000 Photos from 1800’s British Mandate of Palestine – with no trace of ‘Palestinians’ By Palestine/Israel Conflict, February 13, 2013 (thanks to Dan F): Where ARE all those Palestinians,...

Turkish writer Ergun Poyraz, who had earlier said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has no actual higher education and as president he recived this education illegally, is found dead. Poyraz organized an investigation that proved that Erdogan's diploma is a fake and he did not study at the university. Poyraz published the original version of Erdogan's diploma, which he allegedly wrote while studying at Marmara University. It turned out that the diploma is dated when the University of Marmara was not existent. It should be noted that the 4-year college education is mandatory for the election of the President...

Parliament Speaker Ismail Kahraman unexpectedly sparked controversy in Turkey when on April 25 he declared that Turkey’s new constitution should forgo mention of “secularism” and instead be a “religious constitution” referencing God. His words reignited Turkey’s always tense “secularism debate,” which has been amplified since 2002 when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power. Kahraman's remarks led to protests in a number of cities, a call by the main opposition leader for him to resign and allegations by secular pundits that the Speaker had shown the AKP’s “true face,” its “real intentions.” Because Kahraman is a known confidant...

The United States will soon surround the Islamic State on three sides with rocket artillery batteries. The plans follow months of aerial bombardment, but the ground-launched rockets represent an expanding and less-publicized element to the war. On April 26, the Pentagon announced it will send U.S. Army troops and the rocket launchers to southern Turkey. The ground combat branch already has similar units in Iraq and Jordan — and the use of the launchers are by no means exclusive to these three countries.

... If Syria’s largest city is surrounded by government troops, the strategic situation in Syria could change very rapidly for the worse, not only for Syrians, but also for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—and for the Obama Administration, which has banked heavily on the crumbling peace talks to end five years of civil war and an expanding presence for ISIS amid the chaos. The encirclement would also be a major strategic advance for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has drawn his forces in Syria, but has also been helping the Assad regime conduct more focused military operations under a two-month...

Saudi Arabia & Turkey are the reason why we have this war to begin with: Saudi Prince: We agreed with Turkey to put pressure on Europe using Isis. An England residing Saudi prince who wished to remain unknown said: Saudi and Turkey are upset by European governments' policy towards Syria and complain why Europeans cannot make a firm decision about Syrian developments. According to this report, referring to the issue of Syria he continued: We believe if European governments were seriously working in the field of Syria, Bashar al-Assad would have gone by now and recent events lie the Russian...

The overwhelming majority of young Palestinians believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be resolved through negotiations. A poll of Palestinian youth, defined as ages 16-30, published Monday by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center depicts a community that is socially conservative, supports violence against Israel, is skeptical about its leadership and opposes the Islamic State. It also shows significantly greater support for violence among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip than among those in Judea and Samaria While 47.4 percent of youths in Judea and Samaria oppose stabbing attacks, 78.6 percent of Gaza youths support them, according to the poll. In addition,...

A groundbreaking Israeli security system could have helped French authorities prevent the Paris massacre last November - but authorities balked at the deal under pressure from the anti-Israel boycott movement. Speaking to Fox News, an Israeli counter-terrorism source with intimate knowledge of both the software involved and the deal itself said that after the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attack the previous January an Israeli company offered to provide French authorities with special terrorist-tracking software, which could well have enabled them to flag the ISIS terrorist network operating under their noses. But although the French were initially very keen on...

Turkey should have a religious constitution, parliament speaker Ismail Kahraman said on Monday, in comments that will likely add to concerns of creeping Islamization under the ruling AKP party. “As a Muslim country, why should we be in a situation where we are in retreat from religion?” state-run news agency Anatolia quoted him as saying. “We are a Muslim country. As a consequence, we must have a religious constitution,” the AKP lawmaker told a conference in Istanbul. “Secularism cannot feature in the new constitution.” …

◾The West has capitulated on freedom of expression. Nobody in the West launched the motto “Je Suis Avijit Roy,” the name of the first of the several bloggers butchered, flogged or jailed last year for criticizing Islam. ◾Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, sided with the Turks. She condemned the German comedian’s poem, called it a “deliberate insult,” then approved the filing of criminal charges against him for insulting the Turkish president. ◾The West is veiling its freedom of speech in the confrontation with the Islamic world: this is the story of Salman Rushdie, of the Danish cartoons, of Theo van Gogh,...

The White House is reportedly planning to accept Israeli demands for increased military aid, following pressure by the US Senate to sign a new Memorandum of Understanding laying out US support to Israel for the next decade. With the current Memorandum of Understanding set to expire in 2018, Israel has been pressuring the White House to enlarge the annual aid package from $3.1 billion to between $4-4.5 billion. Israel has stated that it must increase its military spending to cope with growing threats from ISIS and the Iranian regime following last year’s nuclear deal. …

Turkey is refusing entry to foreign journalists without providing any explanation for its actions. In the past few days a Greek photojournalist on assignment from the German tabloid Bild and an American journalist have been sent home from Istanbul. Giorgos Moutafis, 38, was denied entry to Turkey after landing in Istanbul on Saturday and was sent back to Athens. He was kicked out of the country less than an hour after German Chancellor Angela Merkel had left, having visited a refugee camp in Gaziantep, the newspaper pointed out. He intended to go to Libya from Turkey. "I was told at...

POPE FRANCIS ABANDONS CHRISTIAN SYRIAN REFUGEES, TAKES ONLY MUSLIMS TO VATICAN INSTEAD Spokesman Massimiliano Signifredi called the incident 'regrettable' - adding: 'The problem here is the three Syrians arrived after the March 20 deadline. They arrived just after the agreement between the European Union and Turkey. Mr Signifredi said: 'Our staff went to Lesbos and spoke with the people who were selected. But everything was decided by the Vatican. CHRISTIAN BROTHER AND SISTER REFUGEES FROM SYRIA SAY THEY HAVE BEEN ‘LET DOWN’ BY POPE FRANCIS AFTER HE LEFT THEM BEHIND IN A LESBOS REFUGEE CAMP DESPITE PROMISES THEY WOULD BE...

A Dutch-Turkish journalist has been detained in Turkey after posting tweets critical of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, her newspaper said. Ebru Umar wrote a column for the Dutch Metro newspaper criticising President Erdogan's clampdown on dissent. Since 2014, prosecutors have launched cases against more than 1,800 journalists for insulting Mr Erdogan. Last week, Germany allowed the prosecution of a prominent TV satirist for insulting Mr Erdogan to proceed. Jan Boehmermann had read a crude poem on TV, aimed at testing German law. Germany and the Netherlands have old lese-majeste laws against insulting the head of a friendly state. Both...

Lebanese Armenians wave a giant flag during a rally outside the Turkish embassy in the capital Beirut on April 23, 2016, to commemorate the 101th anniversary of the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915. It is 101 years since Turkey’s Ottoman government began arresting minority community leaders and setting in motion a campaign of systematic slaughter that had left 1.5 million Christian Armenians dead by the early 1920s. Lebanon’s Armenians marked on Sunday the 101 anniversary of when some 250 Armenian intellectuals were rounded up by Ottoman Turks as the first step of the genocide against...

Armenian-American leaders have urged Obama each year to make good on a pledge he made as a candidate in 2008, when he said the U.S. government had a responsibility to recognize the attacks as genocide and vowed to do so if elected. Obama's failure to fulfill that pledge in his final annual statement on the massacre infuriated advocates and lawmakers who accused the president of outsourcing America's moral voice to Turkey ... It's a Turkish government veto over U.S. policy on the Armenian genocide," Aram Hamparian, head of the Armenian National Committee of America, said in an interview. "It's like...

Here’s a less than sunny story to start off your Sunday, but since it involves churches I suppose it’s appropriate. We only recently discussed the rather difficult position Barack Obama finds himself in when dealing with the provocative nature of our supposed ally Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. His track record as a positive force for change has been questionable at best, and this week he adds another negative mark to his tally. In the war torn city of Diyarbakir, the state has seized control of all the non-Muslim churches, including some iconic properties which date back more than...