Lawrence of Cyberia graciously provided an obituary on the nine Turkish peace activists who died on the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. They were all Turkish citizens. In retrospect, one can only imagine how they, like others aboard the flotilla, were affected by the Gaza massacre of December 2008, when Israel killed 1,400 Palestinians, especially the more than 300 children who died. The pictures were heartbreaking.
We all saw those pictures. Yet only a few of us, like those who died on the Mavi Marmara, were inspired enough to act. So these now dead activists joined an humanitarian aid convoy. They ended up dying for their principles. In the terminology of Islam, they died martyrs.
A brief introduction to the nine Turkish people shot dead on 31 May 2010, by Israeli soldiers who attacked the Turkish vessel M.V. Mavi Marmara, as it attempted to transport humanitarian aid to the people of the Gaza Strip.
1.Ibrahim Bilgen, 61, an electrical engineer from Siirt. Member of the Chamber of Electrical Engineers of Turkey. Married with 6 children.
2. Ali Haydar Bengi, 39, ran a telephone repair shop in Diyarbakir. Graduate of Al-Azhar University, Cairo (Department of Arabic Literature). Married to Saniye Bengi; four children.
3. Cevdet Kiliçlar, 38, from Kayseri. Originally a journalist, worked for the past year as webmaster for the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH). Married to Derya Kiliçlar; two children. He participated in an IHH African relief project.
4. Çetin Topçuoglu, 54, from Adana. Former amateur soccer player and taekwondo champion, who coached Turkey’s national taekwondo team. Married with one son, Aytek. His wife, Çigdem Topçuoglu, was also aboard the Mavi Marmara, but survived.
5. Necdet Yildirim, 32, an IHH aid worker from Malatya. Married with a three-year-old daughter.
6. Fahri Yaldiz, 43, a firefighter who worked for the Municipality of Adiyaman. Married with four children.
7. Cengiz Songür, 47, from Izmir. Married to Nurcan Songür; six daughters, one son.
8. Cengiz Akyüz, 41, from Iskenderun. Married to Nimet Akyüz ; three children – Furkan (14), Beyza (12) and Erva Kardelen (nine).
9. Furkan Dogan, 19, student at Kayseri High School; hoped to become a doctor. Son of Dr. Ahmet Dogan, Assoc Prof at Erciyes University. A Turkish-American dual national, with two siblings.
Check out Lawrence of Cyberia’s link above for further information about these dead Turkish peace activists.
Thanks Diane.
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(CNN) – Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) — Autopsy results by forensics experts in Istanbul revealed that all nine of the men killed by Israeli commandoes aboard the humanitarian convoy that had planned to dock in Gaza died of gunshot wounds.
The autopsy results give clues about how the violence unfolded after Israeli commandoes stormed the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in the pre-dawn hours on Monday.
Five of the men died with bullet wounds to the head, said Dr. Haluk Ince, the director of Istanbul’s Medical Examination Institute (ATK).
One casualty, a 19-year-old dual national Turkish-American citizen named Furkan Dogan, was found to have bullet wounds in his head and multiple bullets in his body, Ince said.
EXECUTION STYLE
In one case, Ince said, a gunshot victim had been shot at at extremely close range.
“From the analysis of the bullet distance on one of the bodies,” Dr. Ince said, “the gun was fired between 2 and 14 centimeters’ distance from the victim’s head.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Try this link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/04/gaza-flotilla-activists-autopsy-results
5 shot in the back of the head or back at close range among other horrendous details.
And we shouldnt forget that this was an illegal attack on ships in international water. Now what do we call that?
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The sloppy Israeli propaganda effort against the Free Gaza humanitarian flotilla has been so bad that the pictures released by the Israeli army have been tagged by alert bloggers as forgeries, some of them having been on the Web for years. This site alleges that many of the pictures put out by Israel purporting to show arms on the aid ship still contained internal tags allowing them to be identified as old photos from years ago. Even if the charges of forgery are false, the photos show chains, sticks, an axe- things that would be on any ship.
How Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Fakes Photos of Seized Weapons
(h/t Ibn Kafka) – The following is a repost, due to the amazing hard work of one Ibn Kafka. He has taken the liberty of translating the original post from French into English.
On the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs’ Flickr page, the pictures of the so-called weapons seized on the ships taking part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla provide ample evidence of the deviousness of those darned anti-semitic terrorists. Be forewarned: the following pictures are not for the faint-hearted.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
In response to discussion at ET.
This photo is now missing, see link in my comment …
Nikon D2Xs user: Itamar MoattyPhoto [deleted] info at Wikipedia, photo released by IDF Spokesperson’s Unit
● Gaza: Israelisches Militär fälscht Fotos
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Nikon D300 user: Itamar MoattyI must assume he is not using the old Nikon D2Xs anymore in 2010.
Found these archive photo’s on the Internet through Google: IDF spokesperson Itamar Moatty must have on board as ship docked in Ashdod. Israel police took other photo’s of Sheikh Raed Salah in the city of Lachish after his detention in 2007? Now on Flockr dated 2010-05-31.
IPTC Created Date: 2010-05-31
Release Date: 2010-05-31
IPTC and XMP Date/Time Created
See my original diary – Israeli Commandos Enter Mavi Marmara – Up to 16 Killed
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."She was on the flotilla. Heathlander has a post on the lack of opposition in the far right Knesset.