Thousands in Turkey Mourn Victims of Israeli Raid/Israel Signals New Flexibility on Gaza Shipments

Thousands in Turkey Mourn Victims of Israeli Raid
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/world/europe/04turkey.html?th&emc=th


ISTANBUL — It was a day of mourning for Turkey on Thursday, as a crowd of several thousand people streamed down a central boulevard here, bearing eight coffins draped in Turkish and Palestinian flags, one of them carrying an American citizen.

The outpouring came on the fourth day of a political crisis between Turkey and Israel that has dragged relations between the countries to their lowest point in history. The return of the activists from the flotilla raided by Israel on Monday defused the immediate crisis, but Turkish officials made it clear that it was not over.

“Israel risks losing its most important friend in the region if it doesn’t change its mentality,” said Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to news reports. He called the commando action, in which nine people were killed, “a historic mistake.”

It has been a startling series of events for Turkey, a NATO member and long one of Israel’s closest allies in the Muslim world. But Turkey’s leaders have grown increasingly at odds with Jerusalem over what they believe is an untenable policy in Gaza, a territory run by Hamas, which Israel sees as doctrinally committed to its destruction. Mr. Erdogan has become a sort of folk hero in the Arab world for his open challenges to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The raid served to deepen that divide.

“There is now civilian blood between the two countries,” said Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Bilgi University in Istanbul. “The natural arc of relations will have to change.”

President Abdullah Gul said on NTV television, “Turkey will never forgive this attack.”

In Istanbul, where most of the more than 400 Turkish activists were flown early on Thursday morning, traffic clogged the streets as protesters marched next to green Volkswagen vans bearing the coffins, each marked with a name and a city of origin, followed by Gaza in parentheses, denoting solidarity. Marchers wore green headbands, the color of Islam, and peddlers sold Palestinian flags for $3.

“God is great,” mourners chanted in Arabic along with Turkish slogans saying, “Damn Israel” and “An eye for an eye, blood for blood, revenge, revenge.” A woman in a black T-shirt, jeans and sunglasses wore a green headband with the words, “We are all Palestinians now,” echoing statements made after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States in which Europeans proclaimed that they were “all Americans now.”

Among the dead was a young man with dual American and Turkish citizenship, Turkish and American officials said. He was identified as Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old who was born in Troy, N.Y., and lived there as a small child, but later moved back to Turkey. His brother, Mustafa, told the Turkish news media that he was “clean-hearted with a happy face.”

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that American officials had spoken to the family to express condolences and offer consular services, and that two other Americans had been wounded in the raid and a subsequent protest, The Associated Press reported. She repeated an earlier call for Israel to “conduct a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation that conforms to international standards.” The United Nations has called for a full international inquiry into the raid, but on Thursday, Israeli officials rejected that demand, news reports said.

The Cihan news agency reported that Mr. Dogan died from bullet wounds to his head and chest, but a spokesman for Turkey’s Foreign Ministry could not confirm that. All nine deaths were caused by bullet wounds, the Turkish authorities said.

“We didn’t expect him to come back like this,” said Mr. Dogan’s brother, who was quoted in Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper. “However, we were not sorry to hear that he fell like a martyr.”

Martyr is a word usually reserved for Turkish soldiers who die in battle, but has been used repeatedly to describe the dead in the flotilla raid, giving the word a new, Islamist meaning that not all Turks are comfortable with. “They are dragging this county into Middle Eastern quicksand,” said Oray Egin, a columnist with the Turkish daily Aksam. “Gaza is not an emotional issue for me.”

Activists who had returned marched along with the crowd, linking arms with friends and supporters and basking in what people here saw as a heroes’ homecoming. Recep Goker, 51, who had struggled with the soldiers who boarded the ship, was stopped by a tall man in a white pressed shirt, who said he was from Gaza. “You did so good,” the man said. “You are our heroes.”

Mr. Goker said that the Turkish group that led the flotilla was planning another voyage in December, and that he would be part of it. “We will not stop before the embargo is over,” said Mr. Goker, who had a purple bruise on his arm where a plastic bullet had hit him. “We will be the winners, and Israel the loser.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Thursday that all the activists had been deported except for seven who were hospitalized and recovering from injuries, as well as the wife of one of the wounded and two others who had been held up for reasons relating to documentation.

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.




Israel Signals New Flexibility on Gaza Shipments
By ISABEL KERSHNER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/world/middleeast/04flotilla.html?th&emc=th


JERUSALEM — While still insisting that its blockade of Gaza is essential to its security, the Israeli government is now shifting its position, “exploring new ways” of allowing goods to reach the coastal enclave, an Israeli official said Thursday.

Describing the latest thinking within the government on the condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly, the official said Israel was determined to have every ship heading to Gaza inspected to prevent the smuggling of rockets and other weapons. But at the same time, he said, the government wanted to facilitate the entry of civilian goods.

The government’s new flexibility follows a week of unrelenting international outrage over Israel’s commando raid on a flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists, which left nine dead, and reports that senior officials in the Obama administration were calling for a “new approach” in Gaza and had concluded that the blockade was untenable.

President Obama added to the pressure on Israel in an interview with Larry King that was broadcast Thursday night. While declining to condemn the raid, he said, “What’s important right now is that we break out of the current impasse, use this tragedy as an opportunity so that we figure out how we meet Israel’s security concerns, but at the same time start opening up opportunity for Palestinians.”

Israel’s Channel 2 television news reported on Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had proposed to Tony Blair, the international envoy of the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers, that an international naval force inspect future aid ships bound for Gaza.

Mr. Netanyahu met with Mr. Blair on Thursday, but there was no immediate confirmation from Mr. Netanyahu’s office or from Mr. Blair’s that such a proposal had been discussed.

Since the raid on Monday, Israeli officials have staunchly defended the blockade of Gaza, saying it is needed to prevent Hamas, the militant Islamic group that rules the territory, from receiving shipments of rockets, missiles and other arms. Mr. Netanyahu said Thursday that giving ships unfettered access to the enclave was the equivalent of having “an Iranian port in Gaza.”

Earlier on Thursday, a senior Israeli security official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Israel had shown flexibility “all the time” regarding supplies allowed through the land crossings.

But he reiterated the longstanding Israeli position that if Hamas wants real change, “they can release Gilad Shalit,” the Israeli soldier captured in a raid and taken to Gaza in 2006, as well as recognize Israel’s right to exist and renounce violence.

Gaza has been under an Israeli-led blockade since Hamas took full control of the territory in 2007. Israel, the United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization.

The diplomatic developments were accompanied by reports on Thursday that one of the nine people killed in the raid on the flotilla this week was a 19-year-old United States citizen of Turkish descent who had lived most of his life in Turkey, officials in Turkey and Washington said.

Hundreds of activists, many of them Turks, were flown to Turkey overnight. They had been detained when the Israeli Navy towed the ships to shore on Monday. Israel said it had released all the detainees without pressing charges, part of an effort to prevent further diplomatic damage.

But as processions of coffins bearing some of the dead wound through a devout neighborhood of Istanbul on Thursday, accompanied by thousands of Turkish mourners, public anger in Turkey seemed undiminished.

A new potential confrontation seemed to be avoided Thursday with word that another ship bound for Gaza with pro-Palestinian activists was being delayed. The 1,200-ton cargo ship, named the Rachel Corrie for an American protester who was crushed by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, was waiting “somewhere in the Mediterranean,” according to Hedy Epstein, 85, a Holocaust survivor and prominent member of the Free Gaza Movement, one of the main organizers of the last flotilla.

Although the group was keeping the whereabouts of the Rachel Corrie vague, Ms. Epstein, speaking by telephone from Cyprus, said it would not be approaching Gaza this weekend, as originally expected. CNN reported Thursday that the voyage was being delayed while the ship was fitted with greater video and satellite transmission capabilities.

Israel said Thursday that seven activists remained in Israeli hospitals, not yet well enough to travel. The Australian wife of one of the wounded, also an Australian citizen, had asked to stay behind.

The deaths occurred during a violent confrontation on a Turkish-flagged liner carrying 600 passengers. After it seized the ships, Israel said it would deliver the goods that the activists had been trying to take to Gaza.

But the Hamas authorities were not allowing supplies from the ships to enter Gaza on Thursday, said Maj. Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Israeli authority responsible for the crossings. About 30 truckloads had been unloaded from the ships, he said.

Ahmed al-Kurd, the minister of social affairs in the Hamas government, said that first, “Israel has to release all hostages,” referring to the flotilla activists.

In addition, Mr. Kurd said that it was up to Turkey to decide on “the mechanism to distribute or to handle the aid,” whether through international or Turkish organizations, and that the aid must arrive complete.

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Fares Akram from Gaza.