Free Republic

Syrian President Bashar Assad's..visit was officially described as a goodwill trip to congratulate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his re-election as Iran's president. But what came out following Assad's meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was an idea for an unofficial quadripartite alliance between Syria and Iran, with Turkey and Iraq....Turkey has begun to accept the possibility that its European dreams are unlikely to materialize... Obama...appears determined to announce his Middle East peace plan next month in New York in the presence of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the chairman of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas

Protests rise as Turkish renovation work turns church into mosque Deutsche Presse-Agentur Aug 25, 2009, 10:22 GMT Istanbul - Restoration work that would result in an historic Greek Orthodox church being recognized as a mosque has caused uproar in Turkey, reported the daily Milliyet newspaper on Tuesday. At issue is the 178-year-old St Dimitrios church in the northern Turkish village of Silivri. The village was once a Greek settlement but, after the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, ethnic Greek residents had to leave in a forced resettlement that swapped 1.5 million ethnic Greeks from Turkey for 600,000 ethnic Turks living in...

Chile detected the H1N1 swine flu virus in turkeys, authorities said, the first time the virus has been found outside humans and pigs, but said there was no indication the disease had spread to other parts of Chile. The country's farming and livestock agency SAG said yesterday the flu outbreak had been controlled at the two farms 120 km west of the capital Santiago and notified the World Organization for Animal Health. "We call on the public to consume turkey products with confidence," a SAG statement said. It added that laboratory results ruled out the presence of H5N1 or bird...

Chile detected the H1N1 swine flu virus in turkeys, authorities said on Thursday, the first time the virus has been found outside humans or pigs. Chile's farming and livestock agency SAG said the flu outbreak had been controlled at the two farms 75 miles (120 km) west of the capital Santiago.

Review: How the Byzantines Saved Europe Posted by JOHN COURETAS on MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2009 The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. Edited by Elizabeth Jeffreys, John Haldon, Robin Cormack. Oxford University Press (2008)Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by Judith Herrin. Princeton University Press (2008) Ask the average college student to identify the 1,100 year old empire that was, at various points in its history, the political, commercial, artistic and ecclesiastical center of Europe and, indeed, was responsible for the very survival and flourishing of what we know today as Europe and you’re not likely to get the...

Hagia Sophia angel uncovered in Turkey Restoration workers have uncovered the mosaic face of an angel in the world-renowned Hagia Sophia Museum in the Turkish city of Istanbul 29 Temmuz 2009 Çarşamba 02:35 The mosaic, believed to be one of a group of six, was found in the pendentive, an arched triangular section supporting the dome of the monument. Some experts believe the six-winged figure dates back to the 14th century, but the Hagia Sofia Science Board is set to determine the relic's true age by comparing it to similar mosaics found in 1935. Built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian,...

A 16,000-year-old clay figurine of a female was found by archaeologists during excavations in southern-eastern Turkey. The mother goddess sculpture was discovered in the Direklu Cave in the Kahramanmarafl Province, which archaeologists have been excavating since July 15, Gazi University Archaeology Department lecturer Cevdet Merih Erek told national media. The find suggests that women had a high social status in the region at the time the figurine was made, Erek explained. In addition, it challenged archaeologists' previous knowledge by suggesting that the method of using fired clay to make figurines was much older than previously thought. Before this recent discovery,...

SUKHUMI, August 18 (RIA Novosti) - The Abkhazian president appealed to the UN Security Council and the European Union on Tuesday over the seizure by Georgia of a Turkish tanker carrying fuel to the former Georgian republic. "On August 16, 2009, Georgian patrol officers seized a commercial vessel en route from Turkey to Abkhazia again. This was the third incident of Georgian piracy this year," Sergei Bagapsh said in a statement. The Turkish Buket vessel was delivering over 3,000 metric tons of gasoline and 775 metric tons of diesel to Abkhazia, when the incident occurred. Tbilisi, which considers Abkhazia to...

Constantinople and Norsin MUMTAZER TURKONE m.turkone@todayszaman.com There is a contradiction in a question posed by Devlet Bahçeli to the president, who referred to Güroymak as Norşin. "Will you also change the signboard reading ‘İstanbul' that you encounter on the highway traveling from Gebze to İstanbul to ‘Constantinople'?" asked Bahçeli. Here are my questions: What will happen if we change it? What change will this make? The answer: Only our habits will change. Why? It is because there is nothing in the name “İstanbul” that belongs to Turks, Turkishness or the Turkish language other than our habits. İstanbul as a name...

Osprey Media. - Peterborough Examiner - Ontario, CA [Emperor] Constantine's Last WalkJunior Fiction winner Local News - Wednesday, July 11, 2007 @ 00:00 By Erik Blackthrone O'Barr Grade 9 Peterborough Collegiate The cannon fire grew closer with each thundering belch of rock and iron, as the walls of Constantinople, wonders of the world that had never been breached save for treachery, groaned under the strain. Buildings crackled with scorching heat, set ablaze by pitch- covered arrows. The shouts and screams of the dying echoed in the empty streets of the once great city. And Constantine XI Palaiologos, last Emperor of...

Aug 14, 2009 From church to mosque: Istanbul’s forgotten Byzantine heritage Is it a church? Is it a mosque? Is it a museum? Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia, the Church of Divine Wisdom) may be one of İstanbul's most famous buildings, but it's also one that suffers from an acute identity crisis, having started life as the great sixth century church of the Emperor Justinian, before becoming a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and then a museum in 1935 after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk declared the Turkish Republic. Something similar happened to Chora, near Edirnekapı, which also kicked...

Inscriptions revealing complaints about high taxes from 1,700 years ago have been found during the excavation of the ancient city of Rhodiapolis in Antalya's Kumluca district. The excavation was started by Professor Nevzat Çevik, head of the archaeology department in Akdeniz University's faculty of science and literature, and led this year by Assistant Professor İsa Kızgut. Kızgut told the Anatolia news agency that they made interesting discoveries concerning the social life of the people of Rhodiapolis. Noting that one of the most interesting discoveries was an inscription, Kızgut said: “In addition to many historical artifacts, we uncovered some relics concerning...

8:40am PT (11:40am ET): During a break, Edmonds and the attorneys stepped outside. DoJ still a no-show, so the questioning has proceeded, and Edmonds has been able to say "everything that she hasn't been able to say so far, implicating many members of Congress in a criminal conspiracy," according to interviews with Fein and others. Edmonds' attorney, Michael Kohn said: "The Justice Department decided not to show. Therefore, the deposition has gone much more smoothly than we had anticipated." There are apparently a handful of mostly independent and foreign media outlets present outside the NWC. No corporate MSM, from the...

.....Sadly, Freddy wasn’t built for suburban life. He snarled traffic with his insouciant strolls and attacked motorcycles with unexplained ferocity. An increasing menace to motorists, the beloved bird was shot by police last week, his life tragically cut short by his full-throttle lifestyle and a raft of complaints - including one from a motorcyclist who was forced into oncoming traffic after a head-on attack.

VATICAN CITY (CNS)—Despite a personal request from Pope Benedict XVI and repeated requests by Christian leaders in Turkey, the Turkish government has decided that the only church in Tarsus, the city of St. Paul's birth, will remain a government museum. The Church of St. Paul, built as a Catholic church in the 1800s and confiscated by the government in 1943, was used throughout the 2008-2009 year of St. Paul for prayer services by Christian pilgrims. After the end of the yearlong celebration commemorating the 2,000th anniversary of St. Paul's birth, the Turkish government decided the building could not be used...

While the Western & Official Islamic Iranian Media ignores the story, a Turkish lawyer has claimed that his Iranian client, Esmail Safarian-Nasab, has transferred an $18.5-billion treasure from Iran to Turkey through "courier services" - reportedly two truckloads as opposed to the original story of just one. The TWO container-TRUCK loads of "courier services" of US dollars and gold bullion was delivered to Ankara Customs last month. (Watch video below for visuals only unless you speak Turkish) but efforts have been made by Turkey (even denying any money arrived) and some Mullah friendly Press, to confuse/misdirect it with a smallish,...

Italian newspaper says plane crash north of Tehran which left 168 people dead was caused by explosion of fuses slated to be delivered to Lebanese organization. According to report, members of Revolutionary Guards among casualties 08.02.09 / Israel News An Iranian plane crash two weeks ago – which left 168 people dead – was caused by the explosion of sophisticated fuses slated to be delivered to Hezbollah, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported Saturday, quoting sources in the Middle East. According to the report, the pilot of the Tupolev plane, which was making its way from Tehran to Armenia, sent...

A total of seven lieutenants from the Turkish navy were arrested recently on charges of plotting to assassinate two admirals as part of the trial concerning the alleged activities of Ergenekon. Istanbul prosecutors accused the lieutenants of planning the assassination of two admirals, identified as "Ugur" and "Metin." Metin is believed to be the current Naval Commander Metin Atac due to retire in August, and Ugur is allegedly Esref Ugur Yigit, who is expected to replace Atac (Milliyet, July 29).

Here is video from Turkey of how NOT to implode a building! The building used to house a Flour Factory, and when the planned implosion took place, instead of collapsing, the building rolled over onto its side and ended up upside down on its roof right up against an apartment building. Sky News reports there were no casualties. . . . . . (Watch Video)

A plan to demolish a building in Cankiri, central Turkey went badly wrong when the 25-metre high structure rolled over onto its roof. The building, a flour factory built in 1928 which had been idle since the 1980s, was scheduled to be demolished to make way for a shopping centre. No-one was reported to have been injured.

Bayram Bozyel, the General Chairman of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Hak-Par (Rights and Freedom Party) has disclosed a plan he claims will soon be implemented to dissolve the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan – PKK) and end the longstanding conflict between Turkey’s military and the Iraqi-based Kurdish militants (Haber Turk, July 6; Sabah, July 11). Hak-Par seeks greater Kurdish autonomy within a Turkish federal system. According to Bozyel, who made the revelations following meetings with leading members of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the four-part plan was drawn up by Turkey, Iraq and the United States and has the full...

British-born Christopher Hitchens is one of the few journalists actively working to keep the brutal invasion and continued occupation of Cyprus in the news. Hitchens has written extensively about the 1974 invasion by Turkey and the refusal of Turkey to remove its occupation troops from the island despite condemnation from every world organization, including the United Nations.

Note; The following news brief is a quote: July 24, 2009 TURKEY DETAINS 200 ISLAMIST HIZB UT-TAHRIR SUSPECTS todayszaman.com Turkish police detained nearly 200 suspected members of the outlawed Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir in simultaneous raids in 23 provinces across Turkey, the state-run news agency Anatolian said on Friday. Posted on 24 July 2009 @ 15:12 GMT

Energized Alliances by: Mytheos Holt, July 20, 2009 This Wednesday, the Brookings Institution convened three panels of experts to discuss the new relationship between Russia and Turkey, whose history of hostilities has apparently abruptly ground to a halt. Every panel featured scholars from both Russia and Turkey, and were briefly interrupted for keynote address by Richard Morningstar, special envoy for Eurasian energy at the U.S. Department of State. “Russia today is Turkey’s largest trading partner,” said Stephen Larrabee of the RAND Corporation. “This has introduced into Turkish foreign policy a desire to avoid, if possible, clashes with Russia.” Offering a...

Dissatisfied with the results of a joint venture with Israel to supply the Turkish Armed Forces (Turk Silahli Kuvvetleri -TSK) with Heron model unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), Turkey is turning to the United States in an effort to purchase a much improved and far more lethal version of the Predator UAV known as the “Reaper.” The TSK is looking to the advanced drones to enhance its capabilities in combating the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan – PKK) and to decrease its reliance on intelligence from American sources. The MQ-9 Reaper has been described as a “true hunter-killer,” with lethal...

For years it's been a closely held secret: The People's Republic of China is an empire desperately trying to make the world think it's a state. The riots by Uighurs in China's far northwest are not something new; the place really erupted back about the time of the American Civil War. Clashes between Han Chinese moving into the basin, range and uplands inhabited by the much different ethnic people of the Central Asian heartland began at least 2,000 years ago in the Han Dynasty. Some of the most powerful pieces in Chinese literature, like the Tang Dynasty Ballad of the...

Beijing urged Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to retract his statement that China is committing "genocide" against its Muslim minority.Developments in China's Xinjiang Province and the attacks against the minority Muslim Uighurs there may not have led to vocal protests in most of the Muslim world. But in Turkey, the events in western China have led to large protests in the streets and strong words from Turkish officials. The comment raising the loudest outcry has been Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's accusation last week that China is committing "genocide" against the Uighurs, a statement that Beijing is now pressuring him to...

China has demanded that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan retract his accusation that Beijing practised genocide against ethnic Uighurs. Mr Erdogan made the comments after riots in the Muslim Uighur heartland of Xinjiang in which 184 people died. Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, is under heavy police and military control. UK-based analysts say al-Qaeda-linked militants in Algeria have called for reprisals against Chinese workers in the wake of the violence. China's rejection of Mr Erdogan's remarks came in an editorial headlined "Don't twist facts" in the English-language newspaper China Daily. It said the fact that 137 of the 184 victims of...

No wonder Russian president Dmitry Medvedev gave such a sour look when Barack Obama shook his hand.  A consortium of nations led by the US has cracked the Russian monopoly on natural-gas sales to Europe with a new pipeline in Turkey.  The deal, which had stalled until the Russians cut off deliveries during the winter in a price dispute, will route energy supplies from the Caucasus to Austria: Officials from six countries gathered Monday in Turkey and signed a deal to build a U.S.-backed pipeline, aimed at breaking Russia’s near-monopoly on natural gas supplies to Europe.The proposed Nabucco pipeline would...

Pirates on Wednesday seized a Turkish cargo ship and its all-Turkish crew of 23 off the coast of Somalia, a spokesman for the company which owns the ship said. The bulk carrier Horizon 1 was sailing from Saudi Arabia to Jordan with 33,000 cubic metres of sulphide when it was seized around 0530 GMT by pirates on speedboats, Omer Ozgur from Istanbul-based Horizon Maritime and Trade told AFP. "Because the ship was loaded, it was very easy for the pirates to board it," he said. The Horizon 1 was passing through the warship-patrolled transit corridor, which vessels are encouraged to...

SNIPPET: “WASHINGTON - Last week, German authorities discovered that groups of terrorists may have been dispatched from training bases in Pakistan to launch crippling attacks.” SNIPPET: “They say as a minimum of 12 al-Qaida operatives who were trained in the tribal region of Pakistan have left the training camps and are headed back to their home countries. Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Egypt are just some of those countries. According to the source, the threat levels also were raised for many other Western European countries to include concerns for “Turkish Airlines flying passengers from Istanbul to the...

Saddened by the wickedness of man, God directs the righteous Noah to build an ark for his family and two of each species of animal. Together, they ride the ark through 40 days and 40 nights of torrential rains that God unleashes upon the Earth. And when the waters subside, Noah and the animals return to land. "That seems almost like a fairy story," said archaeologist Randall Price, who is director of Liberty University's new Center for Judaic Studies. "But we believe it was an actual event." This summer Price, 57, plans to continue on a journey to prove just...

edited the best parts

Pictures of a piece of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat (meaning: sacred land or high land), eastern Turkey or former western Armenia, because Noah's Ark is in pieces!

Many believe that Mount Ararat in Turkey hold the remains of Noah's Ark.

On the 2nd December 2002 Claudio Schranz of our group and alpine guide has been able to film clearly a beam of Noah's Ark protruding out of the ice on Mount Ararat. It was found at 4000m between the beginning of the Parrot glacier.

The girder comes out from the glacier of Mount Ararat, at an altitude of 4200 meters. It's visible to the naked eye and the Alpine guide Claudio Schranz of Macugnaga has no more doubts: it's a piece of the Noah's Ark. He saw and photographed it at a distance of five meters. It's the morning of December, 2nd, Schranz is an Alpinist and he's 51 years old, he has hundredths of expeditions in all the world to his credits.

SNIPPET: "The Turkic peoples have until now played a fairly peripheral role in global jihadism. They have not attracted much academic attention, and apart from the 2003 Istanbul bombings and the 2008 American Consulate attacks, operations carried out by Turkics have gained little attention. The Waziristan-based group Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) seems to be trying to change this (as Jihadica has suggested before). The IJU broke off from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in 2001, and went for a while under the name Islamic Jihad Group. When the name changed in 2005, the group also assumed a new strategy, one...

Note: The following text is a quote: June 19, 2009 Student jailed for trying to fight British in Afghanistan His fellow traveler, on the other hand, was "acquitted after claiming he thought he was going on a trekking holiday' when he travelled to Turkey, and that he had been deceived by his co-defendant." "Student jailed for trying to fight British in Afghanistan," from Military World, June 19: A gap-year student who vowed to battle British soldiers with a Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other has been jailed. Mohamed Abushamma, 21, was intercepted by anti-terror police in...

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti military commentator Ilya Kramnik) - A Turkish military delegation has come to Russia to discuss the possible acquisition of Mi-28 attack helicopters. This is not the first time the two countries have discussed cooperation. In the 1970s and the early 1980s, Turkey bought 32 used AH-1P/S Cobra attack helicopters in the United States and later upgraded them to the AH-1F specifications. The Turkish army still has 23 AH-1P/S Cobras. However, Turkish military authorities started thinking about replacing them in the mid-1990s. During the subsequent tender they considered several models of combat helicopter, including the Ka-50-2 Erdogan, a...

ANKARA - Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was elected the president of Iran for the second time. They called Ahmadinejad on the phone and congratulated him for his success in the election. Ahmadinejad won 62.6 percent of the votes in the presidential election on June 12 and became the president of Iran for the second consecutive period.

Dozens of US, British and Turkish pilots are engaged in mock aerial battles over central Turkey indicating deepening cooperation between the allies. The military says pilots from Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are also participating in the Anatolian Eagle exercises, near the central Turkish city of Konya. A total of 83 jets, most from Turkey, are engaging in live bombing and strafing in a realistic training environment with simulated surface-to-air missiles confronting aggressors. The aerial battles are recorded on tape so pilots can study errors that could have killed them in real combat. The drill will continue until Friday.

There's a well-known account of ten year old Georgie Hagopian, who saw Noah's Ark while climbing Ararat with his uncle in 1904. The date isn't precise but this was around the time my grandfather was in the region and heard convincing stories of the Ark, preserved in ice and snow, still occasionally visible. My grandfather died in 1980, aged 106. As a boy, I listened to his adventures as a doctor in Eastern Turkey and Russia between 1904 and 1910. He worked in the very shadow of Greater Ararat - the legendary Biblical landing place of Noah's ship. My grandfather...

Turkey, whose earlier request to buy US Cobra attack helicopters has so far been turned down on grounds that they are not available, is sending a military-led delegation to Russia today to further talks over the planned acquisition of at least 12 Mil Mi-28 “Havoc” attack helicopters as a stop gap measure in the fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Today's Zaman has learned. A Turkish military delegation's planned visit to Moscow, expected to start today, comes in the midst of calls made by Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ in Washington for the US administration...

The staff of Congressman Steve Cohen called police to his home today after an argument with an Armenian-American activist in town from California ended with Cohen physically pushing him out the side door. Peter Musurlian, a documentary producer for Globalist Films in Glendale, Calif., followed a reporter from The Commercial Appeal into Cohen’s Overton Park home, where the Congressman had invited local media to respond to a commercial from Nikki Tinker, his 9th Congressional District opponent in Thursday’s Democratic Primary, that Cohen called “more mudslinging.” When members of Cohen’s staff realized who the cameraman was – Cohen said Musurlian followed...

Blog: Note: The following blog entry is a quote: Blog Details Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria to Link Their Power Networks Iran, Iraq, and Turkey yesterday signed an agreement for power and energy cooperation and for linking their power networks with that of Syria. The memorandum of understanding was signed by Iran's Minister of Energy Parviz Fattah and his Iraqi and Turkish counterparts at the end of the first regional power conference, held in Baghdad. Under the agreement, power networks of the Persian Gulf Arab states, Central Asian republics and regional countries will in the long run be connected to those...

Sharon Stone flapped her way through a speech at the recent opening of a luxurious resort in Turkey - stunning the crowd with her admission she had never heard of the country's fierce ally Azerbaijan. The Basic Instinct actress was paid a staggering $1.5 million just to emcee at the launch of the Mardan Palace in Antalya - Europe's most expensive luxury resort - on Saturday. Stars including Mariah Carey, Tom Jones and Paris Hilton were all paid the same fee to show their faces at the bash. But despite the hefty pay check, Stone failed to impress her Turkish...

Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 14 04:31 PM Age: 11 hrs By: Urged by a senior al-Qaeda ideologue to take over Pakistan, members of jihadi internet forums have begun to examine the possibility of controlling Pakistan’s nuclear weapons (al-faloja1.com, April 24). At the same time, jihadis continue to collect information on nuclear facilities around the globe, especially Israel’s nuclear projects, waiting for an opportunity to perpetrate successful terrorist attacks against these facilities after massive terrorist attacks using conventional weapons failed to give rise to the global supremacy of Islamic law (al-faloja1.com, April 22). On March 14, al-Fajr Media Center...

Assailants have carried out arson attacks on four separate mosques in Istanbul, Turkish media reported on Tuesday. According to a report on HaberTurk television, no one was wounded in the attacks, and damage to the mosques was minimal. Mustafa Cagrici, the mufti or chief cleric for Istanbul, confirmed Tuesday that fires had broken out in four mosques. He would not say if they had been caused by arson. Last year, police arrested a mentally unstable man for a series of arson attacks on mosques in Istanbul.

Americans hope that there will be more reform in Kurdistan, but there is a feeling that it is not the job of Americans to bring change. Iraqi Kurds have their own future in their hands, says resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin. He has written several articles about the domestic politics in the Middle-East. Rubin is also a Senior Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School and gave lectures at the Kurdish Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok (Iraqi Kurdistan). In the recent years he got a lot of attention for his critical articles in western media aimed...