Foto: Imago (Msn).

"Police and domestic intelligence agencies are now investigating in both the city-state of Hamburg and the northern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania after CDU officials said their party sites were paralysed overnight when hackers replaced their homepages with a black background featuring a Turkish crest and critical comments.

Hackers “GHoST61” and “Emre Y” had left their mark claiming responsibility for sabotaging the site, with the comment, “Hi Hamburg: We are from Turkey.”

In Hamburg the CDU took its website offline by mid-morning on Tuesday, spokesperson Anna Christina Hinze said.

The Mecklenburg-Western Pomeranian arm of the CDU had a similar experience, discovering that their website had been replaced with an Ottoman Empire crest and some pointed questions about the party’s immigration policies. Their site was repaired by afternoon.

The hackers left a message asking: “Where is the money for integration? Where is the money for mosques?” and “Where is the tolerance? Where is the freedom of religion?“"

"After four years of legal battle in a Turkish court, a judge acquitted two Christians of insulting Turkey and its people by spreading Christianity, but not without slapping them with a hefty fine for a spurious charge.

Four years ago this month, Turan Topal, 50, and Hakan Tastan, 41, started a legal battle after gendarmerie officers produced false witnesses to accuse them of spreading their faith and allegedly “insulting Turkishness, the military and Islam.”

At the Silivri court an hour west of Istanbul, Judge Hayrettin Sevim on Thursday (Oct. 14) acquitted the defendants of two charges that they had insulted the Turkish state (Article 301) and that they had insulted its people (Article 216) by spreading Christianity. Sevim cited lack of evidence.

He found them guilty, however, of collecting information on citizens without permission (Article 135) and sentenced them to seven months of imprisonment each. The court ruled that the two men could each pay a 4,500 lira (US$3,170) fine instead of serving time, said their lawyer Haydar Polat.

At the time of their arrests, Topal and Tastan were volunteers with The Bible Research Center, which has since acquired official association status and is now called The Association for Propagating Knowledge of the Bible. The two men had used contact information that individuals interested in Christianity had volunteered to provide on the association’s website. "

Christian Wulff

"In his speech, Wulff stressed immigrants need not give up their cultural identity or background. But those living in Germany should respect and protect the values of the German constitution, including freedom of speech, equality and the right to a religiously and ideologically neutral state.

'Those who wish to live in Germany must follow these rules and accept our way of life,' he said.

Wulff also touched on the subject of religion, calling on Turkey and other Islamic countries to be more open to Christianity. 'We expect Christians in Muslim countries to have the same right to live their faith publicly, to educate their youth in theology and build churches [as Muslims do in Germany],' he said.

'Without a doubt, Christianity belongs to Turkey,' he said, recalling his Unity Day speech from earlier in October, in which he stated that Islam had become part of Germany."

Members of the Christian community in Turkey have called on State Minister Faruk Çelik to make an apology over his remarks which they said had insulted their religion.

Faruk Çelik

“The minister has scorned Christians just to suppress rightful demands of the Alevis in Turkey,” Yuhannas Aktas, head of the Syriac Culture Association in Midyat, who was referring to Çelik’s labelling of Christianity as the religion of the ‘gavur’ (‘kafir’), a word meaning “infidel” in Turkish, which is often regarded as a degrading expression by non-Muslims.

Maybe you’re still a little unsure of what Turkish ruling élites really think of us infidels, after the smear campaign to delegitimise Israel, currently being waged by Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdoğan and President Gül?

Or unswayed after hearing that they had recently set up the headquarters of Turkey’s EU Membership bid campaign in a church confiscated from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate?

Somewhat on the fence after seeing the substantial (and growing) evidence of systematic persecution and harassment of Christians in Turkey?

Well now you can relax. Minister of Work and Social Security Çelik has just made it abundantly clear for you.

German President Christian Wulff will pay a visit to Turkey on Monday at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gül, to hold talks on the Turkish community’s difficulties integrating in Germany as well as with Turkey’s European Union membership talks. This will be the first visit from a German head of state to Turkey in 10 years.

...Muslims in Germany, including the Turkish community, highly regard the newly elected German president, particularly after his remarks earlier this month that “Islam also belongs in Germany.” Wulff delivered the remarks at a festival in Bremen celebrating the 20th anniversary of Germany’s reunification.

Tensions between Muslim immigrants, estimated to number 4 million and mostly ethnic Turks, and the German government have been simmering since an outspoken board member of Germany’s central bank, Thilo Sarrazin, accused Muslim immigrants last summer of leeching off the welfare state, refusing to integrate and lowering the nation’s intelligence. Wulff’s warm remarks relieved the Muslim community in the country.

Wulff is scheduled to meet with Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan next week. The details of the Erdoğan-Wulff meeting were also discussed during the former’s visit to Germany to have talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Oct. 8.

Germany adamantly opposes Turkey’s full European Union membership and proposes a “privileged partnership” for the candidate countries as an alternative to the membership. Turkey claims the EU leaders have pledged Turkey that membership talks will lead to only full membership and it claims the promises should be honored.

She said the so-called "multikulti" concept - where people would "live side-by-side" happily - did not work, and immigrants needed to do more to integrate - including learning German.

The comments come amid rising anti-immigration feeling in Germany.

A recent survey suggested more than 30% of people believed the country was "overrun by foreigners".

The study - by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think-tank - also showed that roughly the same number thought that some 16 million of Germany's immigrants or people with foreign origins had come to the country for its social benefits.

...as some analysts pointed out from the very beginning, there were serious reasons to question this assumption and its utility as a guide to policy. On the one hand, Iran’s brand of Islam had relatively few adherents in the post-Soviet states (only Azerbaijan had a Shiite majority) and Iran’s radicalism put off far more people there than it attracted.

And on the other, Turkey was never as secular as many in the West had assumed and has become less so with each passing year, and Turks because of their linguistic and cultural ties with five of the six Muslim majority former Soviet republics have enjoyed an influence there, on religion as well as on other matters, far greater than Iran.

In the 1990s, for example, Muslims in the post-Soviet states, including the Russian Federation, often travelled to Turkey either to study in medrassahs there or a way station on their route to Muslim educational institutions in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. Almost none of these people went to or through Iran.

And both the Turkish government and Turkish Muslim groups not only provided scholarship assistance to these people and religious literature for those back in the former Soviet republics but also provided enormous funds for the construction of mosques and religious schools in these countries, far more than Iran did.

One result of this difference is that the largest and most prominent mosque in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku was built by the Turks and one of the largest commercial facilities was the Bank of Iran, precisely the opposite of what Western governments and experts had expected and predicted.

Today brought two new reports which suggest that Turkey continue to play a far greater role in the rebirth of Islam in the former Soviet republics, including the Russian Federation. In the first, Gidayat Orudzhev, the chairman of the Azerbaijani State Committee on Work with Religious Structures, presented a report on foreign financing of mosques in that country.

According to Orudzhev, Kuwait has built the most, 71, but Turkey is in second place with 21, while Saudi Arabia has financed only one. He did not mention Iran’s role in this regard, but in the last decade at least, it has certainly been significantly smaller of that of Turkey and Turkish groups however much Iran has tried.

The second report highlights Turkey’s role among Muslims in the unstable North Caucasus republics of the Russian Federation. This week, a group of Turkish Muslim leaders and businessmen visited Ingushetia along with Bekir Gerek, the counselor for religious affairs of the Turkish embassy in Moscow.

The Turkish group was received by Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the head of the republic, who discussed with them the building of a new mosque in the republic capital, Magas, something that the Muslims of that republic have long sought. The Turks promised to fund the construction of the mosque as “a gift” to the Ingush Muslims.

The two sides also discussed the possibility of young Ingush receiving Muslim higher education in Turkey, something Gerek and his Turkish colleagues said they backed and would be happy to take full responsibility for funding, something that will make such training especially attractive given the high level of unemployment in Ingushetia.

More than two-thirds of the Germany citizens are against Turkey's EU entry, according to a poll, whose results emerged as Turkish PM Erdogan met Chancellor Merkel in Berlin.

69% of the Germans do not want to see Turkey in the EU, according to a survey of Emnid Institute while only 27% back this idea, reported Die Welt.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived Friday in Germany where together with Angela Merkel he watch the Germany vs. Turkey qualification match for Euro 2012 in Berlin, in the which the Germans won 3:0.

Erdogan and Merkel have held political talks on Saturday during which both called for the integration of the large Turkish community living in Germany.

"It's about participation in our society based on the foundations of our society. Assimilation is not at all on the agenda," Merkel said after meeting the Turkish PM.

Erdogan welcomed the statements by President Christian Wulff that Islam is now part of Germany as well as Christianity and Judaism.

"The EU must keep its promises. There can be no slowdown," Erdogan stated while asking Germany to advocate for the furthering of Turkey's EU accession negotiations.

Merkel in turn said the outcome of the accession talks was open but pointed out that at present they are stalled by the EU's insistance that Turkey open its ports and airports to ships and planes from Cyprus.

Source.

If Erdogan welcomes something, then we can safely say it isn't right...

Background:
CDU politician calls to stop Muslim immigration.
"Muslims should obey Constitution, not Sharia", Merkel says.
Conservative leaders reject Wullf's remarks on Islam.
Germany agrees in making easier for Turks to get visas.

A German official on Saturday called to stop Muslim immigration into the country, stirring public controversy.

Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Democratic Union Party (CSU), which is a member of the coalition government in Germany, said in an interview to Focus magazine, "It is obvious that immigrants from Turkey and Arab countries face more difficulty integrating into German society than other immigrants."

"In any case," Seehofer added," the conclusion is that we don’t need additional immigrants from 'foreign cultures'." 

...During the interview, Seehofer also argued that unemployment benefits should be revoked from immigrants who do not seek employment, arguing that immigrants should be forced to share the basic values of Germany, and have command of the language. 

According to the conservative politician, tolerance and openness to other religions, as cemented in the German constitution, do not grant these religions direct influence over the country's core values.
Seehofer's remarks angered politicians from across Germany's political spectrum, leading some politicians to dub him a "radical-rightist populist."

The ringleader of the alleged illegal Bulgarian branch of the extremist Al Waqf al Islami Foundaton is the Imam from the village of Sarnitsa, Saud Muutlu, according to the Prosecutor's Office in the southern city of Pazardzhik.

The Imam and people believed to be his accomplices have been closely followed and monitored in the last two years, including with special surveillance devices.

According to the Prosecutor, the Bulgarian radical Islam branch has been founded in Istanbul. The pre-trial proceedings against an unknown perpetrator date from the beginning of 2009.

The organization has a plan to convert Bulgaria to Islam and is financed from Saudi Arabia via Turkey while the funds are transferred through illegal channels.

Saud Muutlu has a circle of lecturers, each paid EUR 300 a month. The organization also has a program for girls' education and its lecturers are paid EUR 200 a month. The Foundation has cells in the southern city of Blagoevgrad, the second largest city of Plovdiv and the capital Sofia. Special people monitor the upbringing and education of Bulgarian Muslim children round-the-clock.

The name of the Foundation means Foundation for Assisting the Good Understanding of Islam.

According to its teaching every child is born a Muslim and then parents make if an infidel, a practice that must be halted.

The probe of the seized literature is ongoing, but the investigation says they have serious reasons to believe the organization is a threat to Bulgaria's national security.

The Al Waqf al Islami Foundation was established in the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands and it is believed to be financed by extremist Muslim circles from Saudi Arabia.

Its headquarters were closed after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US, when the Dutch authorities discovered ties between the Foundation and the perpetrators of the attacks.

The Armenian Apostolic Church on Saturday condemned the holding of a Muslim prayer hundreds of Turkish nationalists organized in an old Armenian cathedral in eastern Turkey with the permission of Turkish authorities.The Nationalist Action Party (MHP opposition) had organized a Friday prayer in congregation in the Cathedral of Our Lady Ani, the ruined capital of a medieval Armenian kingdom located near Kars, near the border with Armenia to Turkey.This ceremony was widely interpreted as a response to mass history allowed for the first time in 95 years by the Turkish authorities on 19 September, the Armenian Church of the Holy Cross, Van (east). It was the first Mass ever celebrated since the massacres and deportations of the First World War.
The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) announced earlier this week its intention to bring together supporters on Friday to a group prayer in the Cathedral of Our Lady and the party won regional authorities and the Ankara government permissions.On August 16th 1064, the Seljuk leader Alparslan Ani won the city and he dropped the cross of the cathedral and said a prayer on Friday. Aktash, who is head of the branch of the party wanted to reproduce the event in Kars after 946 years.According to a previous press release, the president of the nationalist Devlet Bahceli decided to begin the campaign for elections to the parliament with this prayer in the Cathedral on October 1.

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The Cathedral of Ani is a pearl of the original architecture of the Caucasus. Ani was the capital of an Armenian kingdom in the Middle Ages, which extended largely on Armenia and eastern Turkey today.The Cathedral was founded by order of King Sembat II and was completed under the patronage of the wife of King Gagik I, Queen Katranide. The Cathedral was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was built by the talented architect Tiridates, which was said monuments of the 10th century that they prefigured the Gothic style that came to Europe several centuries later.

Turkey's prime minister said on Wednesday a law that prohibits women wearing the Muslim headscarf at university was against freedom of belief, in his strongest hint yet the AK Party might try again to lift the ban.

Turkey's Constitutional Court struck down in 2008 an attempt by the ruling AK Party to remove the ban. But after voters approved constitutional changes in September to overhaul the court, AK Party officials have put the sensitive issue back on the government's agenda.

"We agree with society on the headscarf issue," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech to university students in Istanbul, which was broadcast live.

"We do not want to disappoint our youth. There is no sense in being so interventionist in freedom of belief and education anymore," Erdogan said.

His comments come months before a election that will herald a new constitution if his party wins.

Wearing the Muslim headscarf is a touchy issue in European Union candidate Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation with a strictly secular constitution.

A man who was allegedly a member of a group that plotted to attack U.S. targets in Germany has confessed in court to several of the charges against him. 

German news agency DAPD reported Friday that the man, identified only as Salih S., confessed he had trained in a terrorist camp in Pakistan. 

Salih S., who is on trial at a state court in Frankfurt, also confessed to procuring GPS devices, night vision goggles and other items for Adem Yilmaz. Yilmaz was convicted with three others earlier this year of plotting an attack in 2007 that a judge said could have killed large numbers of U.S. soldiers and civilians had it not been thwarted. 

Salih S. was arrested in 2008 in Turkey and extradited to Germany in July.

ARTINFO:

In most places, discretely lingering outside gallery openings with a cup of white wine or a can of beer in hand may earn a disapproving look from passersby, or, at worst, a citation from especially persnickety cops. In Turkey, however, it can lead to violence. Last night, a mob of about 30 people wielding sticks and other weapons attacked attendees outside two separate art receptions at Istanbul's Beyoğlu district, with the victims claiming they were targeted for drinking in public, according to the Doğan News Agency.

The two gallery events had begun at about 7 p.m. in a local cultural center, a site of much of the city’s nightlife activity. Hundreds of visitors, many drinking outside, were reportedly in attendance at the parties, which were just 100 feet apart. According to a witness quoted by Doğan, the attack began after gallery-goers and locals entered into a dispute that eventually brought dozens of other local residents into the melee, with some smashing the windows of one gallery and spraying pepper spray inside. Five people were hospitalized with injuries from the chemical together with "broken bottles, batons, and knives," the paper reports, and 40 victims have filed complaints with local police, though only one suspect has been apprehended.

Neighborhood residents told press that there may have been more than alcohol at issue in the attack, with some reporting that attendees had harassed people on the streets in the area. Other witnesses say authorities were "too tolerant" of the attacking mob. Istanbul governor Hüseyin Avni Mutlu decried the attack. "We will not allow the repetition of such things," he is quoted as saying in the Doğan article. "It is our duty to ensure that everyone can go about their business in peace."

Turkey's once-flourishing Greek community is fading away. The country is predominantly Muslim and led by a secular government that's had a complicated relationship with the patriarchate.

If Turkish laws, demographics and attitudes aren't changed, Bartholomew could ultimately be the last Patriarch of Constantinople.

"We are not all in despair for the future of our church," Bartholomew said. "It is not easy, but it is not impossible."

The Turkish government can veto any candidate put forward for the position of patriarch. And it requires the patriarch be a Turkish citizen. Bartholomew is, but most of those best qualified to succeed him are not.

So the government has proposed offering Turkish citizenship to Orthodox archbishops overseas. Several have applied; so far, none has been approved.

The Turkish government also refuses to recognize the title Ecumenical Patriarch, or Bartholomew's role as an international religious leader. (NOTE: There are approx 250 million Orthodox in the world whose visible head is Patriarch Bartholomew).

Image by World Economic Forum via Flickr

Western diplomats say they are alarmed by reports that Mr Erdogan has negotiated a deal with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Tehran to make a substantial contribution to the campaign funds of Turkey's leading Islamic party.

Under the terms of the deal Iran has agreed to transfer $12 million to the AKP, with further payments of up to $25 million to be made later in the year. The money is said to be meant to help support Mr Erdogan's campaign for re-election for a third term in next year's general election. 

"....The agreement between the AKP and Iran is a very worrying development," said a senior Western diplomat. "It will increase the suspicions of many Turks that the government is deepening its ties with Islamic states. 

Earlier this year Turkey annoyed Washington after it publicly backed Iran's controversial nuclear programme. Relations between Turkey and Iran have deepened following Ankara's backing for the aid flotilla which attempted to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip. 

Apart from transferring funds to the AKP, diplomats say Iran has also agreed to provide financial support for the IHH, the Turkish Islamic charity IHH which supported last May's aid flotilla which ended in disaster when it was intercepted by Israeli commandos, which resulted in the deaths of nine activists.