Now the Turkish government has taken umbrage at the actions of Christian Action Network, and is attempting to bully them into submission.
Long-time Gates of Vienna readers will remember the Christian Action Network, which is headquartered right here in Central Virginia. CAN has been in the forefront of the campaign to expose the domestic jihad compounds of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, the Pakistan-based terror organization which has planted communities of American converts to radical Islam throughout the United States. Marty Mawyer and Jason Campbell courageously investigated these compounds in person, and released their findings in the movie Homegrown Jihad.
Now CAN is under fire from Turkey for its use of the Turkish flag on the cover of its most recent documentary. CAN member Ryan Mauro has written an article at Front Page Magazine about the incident. Some excerpts are below:
Turkey vs. Christian Action Network
The Christian Action Network (CAN), where I serve as the National Security Adviser, is being condemned by Turkey’s ambassador to the U.S. for using the Turkish flag on the cover of the organization’s new documentary, Sacrificed Survivors: The Untold Story of the Ground Zero Mosque. Ambassador Namik Tan is accusing the CAN of slandering the Turkish people by using the flag and criticizing their government’s Islamist agenda. This accusation of bigotry is an attempt to distract from Turkey’s move away from secularism to the side of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Sudan.
The controversy erupted when the Turkish media criticized the use of the flag on the cover of the film. CAN says they wanted to use a flag with Islamic symbols to emphasize the connection between radical Islam’s goal of promoting Sharia-based governance and the Ground Zero mosque. The Turkish flag was chosen because as the CIA World Factbook explains, “the crescent moon and star serve as insignia for the Turks, as well as being traditional symbols of Islam.”
The organization said it regretted any hurt feelings caused by the decision and it did not mean to single out Turkey. CAN sought to rectify the situation by adding the flags of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and Sudan to the cover to identify some places where radical Islam has taken hold and is being promoted from. Turkey’s flag remained to serve as an example of how a secular, Western ally like Turkey can fall to the influence of Islamism as it has under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party.
Ambassador Namik Tan wrote a letter on November 4 to Martin Mawyer, President of CAN, berating him for “unacceptable and unfair accusations about Turkey, the Turkish government and the Turkish people in your website.” He wrote, “You inaccurately and insultingly accuse the Turkish people and the government of supporting ‘radical Islam.’” He acknowledges that the group denies branding the Turkish people as a whole, but says CAN is doing this in “reckless fashion.”
However, CAN’s criticism of the Erdogan government made a specific point of explaining that the majority of Turks are not sympathetic to terrorist groups or radical Islam. Polls show that only four percent support suicide bombings, two percent have confidence in Osama Bin Laden to do the right thing, three percent have a favorable view of Hezbollah, and five percent have a favorable view of Hamas. The backlash among the Turkish people against Erdogan’s Islamist agenda was also mentioned.
The warnings about Turkey’s government are well-founded. Prime Minister Erdogan was once a member of the Welfare Party, which Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy describes as the “motherboard of Turkish Islamists.” When his Justice and Development Party won in 2002, the Muslim Brotherhood praised them for the “exposing of the failure of the secular trend.” Under Erdogan’s leadership, Turkey has taken a confrontational stance towards Israel. It has held joint military exercises with Syria, and the President and Prime Minister have personally met with Moqtada al-Sadr, the Iranian-backed Iraqi militia leader that waged war on Coalition and Iraqi forces. Prime Minister Erdogan opposed the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudanese President Omar Bashir because “no Muslim could perpetrate a genocide.”
[…]
Martin Mawyer, the President of CAN, has responded with a letter asking if the Turkish government will publicly oppose the Ground Zero mosque, commit to providing no assistance to Imam Rauf’s project, and “publicly oppose the implementation of Islamic (Sharia) law in all its forms within its own country.”
Read the rest at Front Page Magazine.
11 comments:
Minareler süngü, kubbeler miğfer
Camiler kışlamız, mü’minler asker
Bu iláhi ordu dinimi bekler
Allahu Ekber, Allahu Ekber.
The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets,
the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.
I expect an army of this divine religion
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.
Poem, attributed to Ziga Gökalp, quoted in a speech on 6th of December 1997 by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who at that time was mayor of Istanbul. Erdoğan added to this poem the following strategic word: "Democracy is just a train on which we travel, until we have reached our goal."
While visting Germany in february 2008, Erdoğan called the assimilation of Turkish immigrants “a crime against humanity”.
Mr. Wilders is right: Erdoğan is a total freak.
Errata sheet... Where it says Turkey’s flag remained to serve as an example of how a secular, Western ally like Turkey can fall to the influence of Islamism (sic), it ought to actually say islam, period. This is something I can't stand in Ryan Mauro's and Barry Rubin's articles. I've even seen Turkish columnists say "Erdogan's policies are guided by islamism, not islam." That's like saying that a byproduct of burning charcoal is carbon dioxide, not CO2, isn't it?
Otherwise, Mr Mauro's article does a good job of continuing to warn the West about how foolish it is to regard Turket as an "indispensable and most reliable mahoundian ally" (as if the black-cube worshippers could ever be viewed as such), among other things.
Thomas, I checked up on the Erdoğan quote. There's something significant few people know:
He didn't quote those lines, he wrote them!
He took the Gökalp poem, which was kemalistic, and rewrote the opening stanza to be Islamistic, with the lines we know so well.
Erdoğan is a crafty person. But for anyone following the details and connecting the dots, there is no doubt, whatsoever, about his Islamistic world view.
The Turkish ambassador to Austria is a clever chap too. The way he twists and gyrates in the interview on this site is quite a performance. He is obviously intelligent and at first glance what he says seems to have some merit but his agenda shows here and there in the interview - these Turkish newcomers living in Austria will always be Turkish. lf one wishes to integrate one doesnt attend a Turkish school or take lessons in Turkish from teachers sent from Turkey. Generally when one emigrates one says goodbye to the old country and tries to become a good citizen of the new - but that isnt what he is about.
Henrik, interesting. What's your source?
Irrelevant Claptrap:
"Polls show that only four percent support suicide bombings, two percent have confidence in Osama Bin Laden to do the right thing, three percent have a favorable view of Hezbollah, and five percent have a favorable view of Hamas. The backlash among the Turkish people against Erdogan’s Islamist agenda was also mentioned."
Gibberish, all of it. Turkey under Erdogan is Islamic, no longer Ataturkish. The freedom sack can be freely whacked over the heads of many women who would never wear it, the army which was said to be 'secular' (how secular exactly? They are still Muslim, are they not?) is now an Islamic army and the Koran will be taught in schools as if nothing else mattered.
Fools all of you who believed for one moment that we have nothing to fear from Turkey.
Such bad sports.
I'd think they'd be PROUD.
I can't remember if it was the 70s or 80s when Turkey invaded and conquered 1/2 of Crete. This action proved that the Turks were still obeying Mohammad even though they were talking about secularism, it was only a matter of time before the Islamists too over. You will note that they waited until the West had decided to unilaterally disarm before they started their actions in Turkey. The first moves were in Iran while Carter was President and he was so weak he caused the Moslems to decide they could take on the West and win.
Richard: Cyprus, 1974, 35 % of the island. And Turkey did not withdraw. That area is *still* under Turkish occupation. If you are from a EU country, please contact members of parliament and demand that Turkey respects international law and withdraws.
Thomas: I can't find that Erdogan reference at the moment. It's worth digging into and creating an article about, but I have too many draft articles on my desk already. Feel free to grab the idea and use Skt. Google for research :)
In each and every "isolated" incident where the evidence of islamism is overwhelming, the Left use ready-made arguments to minimize the damage and undermine our ability to defend ourselves. One favorite is: "All Muslims are not Islamic radicals or terrorists".
Well, that statement is just about as true for Muslims today as the statement "All Germans are not Nazis" would have been in 1938 - or in 1942, for that matter.
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