Burak Bekdil: Turkey Still Dances with ISIS/Sibel Hurtas: Turkish religious scholar says masturbation is imperative and necessary/Mahir Zeynalov:Turkey in, refugees out: EU’s dirty deal

Turkey Still Dances with ISIS
Burak Bekdil/The Gatestone Institute/October 20/15
Originally published under the title “Turkey’s Grisly Dances with the Islamic State.”

The largest terror attack in Turkish history targeted a peace demonstration.
On October 10, Turkey woke up to the worst single terror attack in its history. The twin suicide-bomb attack in Ankara killed 97 and injured nearly 250 people, with more than 60 of the wounded being treated in intensive care. As of October 14, no one had claimed responsibility, but all indications pointed to the Islamic State (ISIS, or IS)—the same jihadists Turkey’s Islamist government once helped logistically, in the hope that they would facilitate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s downfall and the establishment of an Islamist regime there.
In fact, the attack in front of the main train station in downtown Ankara looked like a bigger-scale version of a July 20 attack in Suruc, a small town on Turkey’s border with Syria. A Turkish-Kurdish suicide-bomber with ties to the Islamic State murdered 33 people at a pro-Kurdish meeting in Suruc, and paved the way for a spiral of violence that has since claimed hundreds of lives. Actually, since most of the deaths resulted mostly from Turkish-Kurdish clashes, the attacks may have claimed thousands: Kurdish militants’ casualties remain unknown. Since July 20, more than 150 Turkish police and military officers have been killed.
ISIS felt that Turks had not followed its call to “rise up and fight against these atheists, these Crusaders and these traitors.”
One of the two perpetrators of the Ankara bombings now is believed to be the brother of the Suruc bomber. The second suspect also has alleged ties with jihadist groups.
On October 10, thousands of pro-peace activists from different NGOs—most of them pro-Kurdish, secular, leftist and opponents of the AKP government—had gathered in front of Ankara’s main railway station, to protest the wave of violence sparked by the Islamic State suicide-bombing in Suruc in July. They had no way of knowing that two other jihadists would turn their “peace rally” into a bloodbath. The usual police body searches for weapons or bombs—carried out routinely before every public rally—were omitted this time. Interior Minister Selami Altinok admitted that the body searches were not done, but refused to accept allegations of negligence.
The murder of nearly 100 people in a terror attack is shocking wherever in the world it happens, or whoever commits it. But the Ankara attack was hardly a total surprise. This author has mentioned at least a few times the findings of an August 2014 poll, which found that 11.3% of Turks did not view the Islamic State as a terrorist organization. Eleven percent is in no way a marginal figure: If a “mere” 11.3% of Turks thought so generously of ISIS, it meant that there were nearly nine million Turks sympathetic to jihadists. And only 5% of that would mean an army of nearly 450,000. The two suicide-bombers on October 10 were most likely just a two of that big bunch of 450,000 or so sleepers inside Turkey.
Shocking? Not really. In August, the Turkish Justice Ministry revealed that there were only 126 people in Turkish prisons on charges of being a member of IS. “Hence the unnerving threat of IS attacks on Turkish cities, most probably by the group’s ‘sleeper cells’ inside Turkey,” this journalist previously warned. IS had recently released a video promising to “conquer” Istanbul by the armies of the Caliph:
Soon, Turkey’s east will be dominated by the atheist PKK [Kurdish militants], and the West will be dominated by the Crusaders. They will kill children, rape women, and enslave you. O people of Turkey; before [it is] too late, you should rise up and fight against these atheists, these Crusaders and these traitors. You should also repent. You should condemn democracy, secularism, human-made laws, tomb-worshipping and other devils.
Apparently, the people of Turkey did not “rise up and fight against these atheists, these Crusaders and these traitors.” So they had to be killed by jihadists in suicide-bombing attacks. IS promised to attack, and it did.
450,000 minus two (suicide-bombers) leaves behind too big a number. Turkish cities are unsafe. Turkey’s Islamist leaders look appalled to have been attacked by their one-time comrades. They should not. They wanted to dance with the devil in order to “Islamize” the failed state of Syria. The dance has ended up in carnage. It had to.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu suggested that Kurds or Communists might have been involved in the blast.
Turkey’s Islamist leaders once hoped that they would triumphantly visit Damascus when it would be Sunni Islamist, not Shia and secular. Instead, their former jihadist friends hit them right in the heart of their capital. But Ankara does not learn.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, instead of calling a spade a spade, mentioned three other organizations as potential culprits for the attack. In addition to the Islamic State, he said, other suspects were the PKK, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) and the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP).
These Kurdish and extreme left organizations mentioned by Davutoglu are big enemies of jihadists, not friends with whom to jointly organize a terror attack. Most victims were sympathizers of the Kurdish and leftist groups. Yet four days after the Ankara bomb attack, after the police had already identified the two suicide-bombers as Turkish sleepers linked with the Islamic State, Davutoglu still said that the attackers were linked with both IS jihadists and Kurdish militants.
Davutoglu cannot admit that jihadists alone simply murdered people en masse in twin bomb attacks.
The Ankara bombing was a bad ending of one part of the Turkish Islamists’ willing dance with the devil. The dance is not over yet.
**Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Turkish religious scholar says ‘masturbation is imperative and necessary’
Sibel Hurtas/Al-Monitor/October 20/15
Sare Davutoglu, the wife of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, is a gynecologist known for her conservative approach to medicine. A graduate of Istanbul University’s medical faculty, she worked at a clinic at the Islamic University of Malaysia in the 1990s. Interviews she gave during that period, her argument that Islam’s edicts on health could be used in modern medicine and her alleged support of the fatwa institution made headlines in the Turkish media after she became the first lady last year. The issue was important, for many people in rural Turkey still resort to faith healers and exorcists instead of doctors. Ridding the health sector of faith healers and transforming the people’s mentalities is actually the history in a nutshell of the struggle doctors have in Turkey. Hence, Sare Davutoglu’s views on Islamic medicine were met with concern and criticism.And while her views were thus far judged on the basis of interviews or speculation, they boiled down to a concrete initiative in October. An annual congress on prophetic medicine, which used to convene in the form of small gathering, was this year held under Sare Davutoglu’s patronage and for the first time hosted by a university — the Cukurova University in the southern city of Adana. Local governor’s offices, public hospitals, education departments and mufti’s offices were officially mobilized to boost participation to the event.
More than 160 speakers took part in the four-day prophetic medicine congress, which opened on Oct. 7. Only a handful of physicians attended the event, while the majority of participants were members of theology faculties and masters of the Quran with no academic background.
The presentations at congress, which opened with recitation of Quranic verses, covered issues such as healing concepts in the Quran and the hadiths, the Prophet Muhammad’s treatment practices and recommendations (cauterization, wet cupping, etc.), substance abuse, Islamic faith and immunology, the effects of worship on human health, circumcision, organ donation and mental health through prayer.
Recep Cigdem from Harran University’s theology faculty made one of the most attention-grabbing presentations, titled “Islam’s approach to sexual life.” The presentation, made available to Al-Monitor, addressed anal and oral sex as well as sadism and masochism, and included the following lines: “The hadith [says] ‘He who has an anal intercourse with his wife is accursed.’ Allah does not look [approvingly] to those who approach men or women from the anus. Though different views exist on this issue, they are not supported by the verse. … With regard to oral sex, some Islamic scholars describe it as permissible, while others as something objectionable. There is no religious text that openly describes it as something prohibited. … Sadism and masochism are inappropriate. … Stimulating drugs are not advisable. … Sexual plastic surgery (breast enlargement, penis enlargement) is not advisable unless it is medically necessary. … There is no religious text banning masturbation. In the face of adultery and similar risks, masturbation is imperative and necessary.”
Mustafa Unverdi from Gaziantep University’s theology faculty made another interesting presentation — on organ donation, a controversial topic in Islam. The paper, which he made available to Al-Monitor, said, “The opponents of organ donation argue it is unknown to which person transplanted organs would be a witness and hence interpret organ transplantation as a sort of evading accountability. I, however, believe these verses are metaphoric. Organ transplantation does not pose a problem in terms of religious accountability because the foundation of accountability rests on reason and will. Organ transplantation does not amount to the transfer of personality. In sum, since no problem is seen in terms of faith, I believe that organ and tissue transplantation is not only legitimate but also imperative and necessary as a treatment when the necessary conditions arise.”
These presentations are quite important in terms of weeding out superstitions from the faith-related medical realm. Yet the congress was largely brushed aside by the media, falling victim to prejudices for being called a “medical” event. Had it been presented as a congress aimed at weeding out superstitions from Islam, it would have certainly received the attention it deserved.
Medical professionals also raised objections to the “medical” label of the event. Neslihan Mungan, the head of the medical chamber in the host city Adana, released a critical press statement that read, “Scientific truth can change only in time with positive evidence and can be interpreted only with the use of scientific data and norms of proven efficiency. Faiths should not be expected to be part of or contribute to this platform. Obsolete knowledge that has not passed through the filter of reason is nothing more than superstition. Superstitions cannot guide science. They hamper science and prevent the progress of societies. In this context, the organization of congresses in Turkey and the speeches there should not be made by individuals outside the related field. Medical congresses should be organized by doctors and theology congresses by theologians.”
The medical label of the congress was not a coincidence, but rather an omen that the winds of conservatism, which have blown strong under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), are swaying the health sector as well. Last year, the Health Ministry paved the way for the use of traditional treatments in public hospitals, including wet cupping, leeches and bone setting. In August, the ministry began equipping hospital rooms in Ankara with Qurans, books about the life of the Prophet Muhammad and prayer rugs. Like all other public institutions, hospitals across Turkey have been equipped with prayer rooms. This drive raises questions not only about Islamization in the health sector but also about discrimination, with the state catering to the followers of only one religion. In a country where faith healers and exorcists are still in business, especially in underdeveloped regions, a congress addressing medicine on the basis of Islamic beliefs under the auspices of the prime minister’s wife is a disputable matter. One wishes these efforts were canalized to weeding out superstitions from faith-related medical issues, which would have served both to enlighten the people and break prejudices toward Islam.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/10/turkey-sex-islam-anal-masturbation.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+[English]&utm_campaign=802ffd552e-October_20_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-802ffd552e-102494681

Turkey in, refugees out: EU’s dirty deal
Mahir Zeynalov/Al Arabiya/October 20/15
A few years ago, Libya’s late leader Muammar Gaddafi castigated Europe for supporting rebels fighting against him, and threatened to be unhelpful in curbing Europe-bound migration. That bargaining chip, migration, is now being offered to Turkey by the European Union (EU). German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Turkey last week was part of an EU-led initiative to offer what some called a “dirty deal,” raising eyebrows across Europe. Germany’s largest-selling newspaper Bild asked on its front page: “Who gains most from the chancellor’s Turkey trip: Merkel or [President Recep Tayyep] Erdoğan?” Other German dailies and opposition figures blasted Merkel for emboldening Erdoğan as his former party, the AKP, is set to run in elections in just two weeks. Merkel offered to revive EU membership talks even though rights and freedoms in Turkey are getting worse. Amnesty International criticized her visit, and asked her to insist that Turkey clean up its act before treating it as a reliable partner in EU border management. “Talks between the EU and Turkey… risk putting the rights of refugees a distant second behind border control measures designed to prevent refugees from reaching the EU,” Amnesty said.
In Turkey, 100 academics penned a joint letter to Merkel, warning her that the visit would strengthen a man who has blatantly violated EU values.
EU incentives
The EU faces the biggest migration crisis since World War II, with hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants waiting at border crossings in Balkan countries, hoping to be able to proceed to more affluent Western Europe. Germany, which has promised to take in at least 800,000 this year, is feeling the strain at a time of rising anti-immigrant sentiment across the continent. European leaders deliberately avoid using the term “refugees,” because international law forbids turning them back. They are described as “migrants” seeking a better life in Europe, rather than desperately fleeing war or persecution. One of the proposals Merkel set forth during her visit was to designate Turkey a “safe country” for refugees, a move that would allow the EU to deny asylum requests by refugees. Turkey is already feeling the burden of hosting more than 2 million, and complains of inadequate international aid. The EU offered 3 billion euros for Turkey’s help in stemming the refugee tide, a deal resembling that between Europe and Gaddafi. Italy offered $5 billion to Libya to curb illegal immigration to Europe. Turks themselves are unable to travel to Europe without a visa. It is the only country with membership negotiations that is not given a visa-free regime. Merkel promised to push EU leaders to start dialogue on the issue. Ankara started EU membership talks a decade ago, but there was little if any progress. EU reluctance to accept Turkey is coupled with Ankara’s failure to meet EU criteria in reforms, governance and standards. Merkel offered to revive EU membership talks even though rights and freedoms in Turkey are getting worse. Ankara is clearly more interested in breaking its international isolation and joining European leaders in photo-ops. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu asked Merkel for an opportunity to attend European summits. If accepted, the move would be a major PR boost for a ruling party that has lost most of its international friends in the past couple of years.