İsmail Sezgin, a London-based Turkish academic has tweeted on Tuesday that he will run a total of 10,000 meters in support of the families hit by an ongoing purge by the Turkish government. Releasing a statement on moneygiving.com, Sezgin said that he aims at raising a fund of 10 thousand pounds to help purge-victim families in Turkey.
From its founding amid the ashes of Al Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS has dealt in deception as well as death. Despite its name, ISIS represents a perversion of Islam. The group’s dress, flags and slogans cannot hide their abhorrent betrayal of the spirit of this major world faith. Denying this barbaric group a geographical base that emboldens them to claim statehood is a worthwhile goal that all Muslims should support.
It is heartbreaking that a concert, a joyful event meant to bring people together to enjoy music and friendship, so quickly devolved into a scene of violence, chaos and terror. Any attack on the sanctity of human life is an attack against humanity. I will continue to denounce without hesitation any use of violence to promote an agenda – whether religious, political or ideological.
The Alliance for Shared Values of the US & The Dialogue Platform of the UK have prepared a report on “UK’s relations with Turkey” that focuses on the Hizmet Movement. The report may be downloaded, disseminated for free and even printed. Representatives from these organizations were personally invited to submit written evidence by the Committee to explain Hizmet and provide Hizmet’s response to the AKP government’s allegations against Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet movement.
In a written statement released both in Turkish and English, UK-based academic Özcan Keleş denied recent allegations about him that appeared in Turkey’s mostly pro-government media outlets, saying that only his name, his father’s name, his hometown and the fact that Aksaray is a city in Turkey were accurate in the articles. “Everything else is untrue,” Keleş says.
Another woman, a former Turkish journalist before the government shut down papers that spoke out against it, said: “I feel like my voice has been taken. People don’t feel safe in London, even going shopping, because we don’t know what radicals will do.”
Germany, dependent on Turkey to hold back the migrant flow to Europe, has been muted in its response. The United States, under pressure to push Mr Gulen out of his exile, has also tried to soothe nerves in Ankara. Britain should not be so amenable. This campaign should not be allowed to infiltrate the streets of Britain.
FRANCES SLEAP Dialogue can be hard work. It is an indisputably good idea for there to be meaningful contact between people of different religious, ideological and cultural groups, but to make that happen where it hasn’t yet happened is no mean feat. Between 2010 and 2014 I worked at the Dialogue Society, with people putting […]
Over the weekend, we have received 5 reports from individuals who are involved in the delivery of social services here in the UK and who are of Turkish heritage. The text messages ask for individuals to inform on members of the Hizmet movement. The impact of these messages is to create fear within members of the Hizmet movement in the UK and who are active in social work within and beyond Muslim communities.