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Wed, April 13, 2011 | Hurriyet Daily News | By Serkan Demirtas

The Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara during nighttime

Turkey Should Block Gaza Aid Convoy to Avert New Crisis

Who is to blame for the Mavi Marmara incident, May 31, 2010? The Turkish government immediately blamed Israel for the killing of eight Turkish and one Turkish-American citizen despite overwhelming evidence that dozens of radical Islamists attacked the Israeli naval commandos who boarded the vessel.

It never occurred to Erdogan’s Islamist AKP government to take its own responsibility for this unnecessary provocation and as result escalation which threw Turkey-Israel relations into turmoil.

Several anti-Israeli left-Islamic groups are again organizing a Gaza-bound aid convoy due to set sail mid June, not because humanitarian aid for Gaza is needed, but to provoke, isolate and defame Israel again.

And again, the Israeli government called on the Turkish and European governments to take their responsibilities and to stop this new mission and thus making sure that another provocation will be avoided.

With the coming general elections in Turkey (June) approaching, the largest opposition party (CHP), calls on the Turkish government to take its responsibility and to prevent the Turkish IHH organization to go ahead with this anti-Israeli action.

Read this report by the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News:

Wednesday, April 13, 2011 | Ankara – Hürriyet Daily News

Turkey should prioritize its own interests and the protection of its citizens’ lives while evaluating its response to an Islamic charity’s plan to send a new aid convoy to Gaza, a main opposition party official has said.

“What is important is the interests of Turkey and not those of this civil-society organization,” Faruk Loğoğlu, a former ambassador who will run for Parliament from the ranks of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Wednesday.

An international group led by Turkey’s Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or İHH, plans to dispatch a flotilla of aid-carrying ships to Gaza in mid-June, in commemoration of last year’s deadly attack by Israeli commandos on an earlier convoy.

With general elections in the country rapidly approaching, domestic political considerations make it difficult for Turkey to avoid the new aid convoy to Gaza entirely, diplomatic sources said. They added, however, that Turkey could use its influence to keep the campaign low profile so as not to spark a new diplomatic crisis between Ankara and Tel Aviv.

“This is a civil-society initiative and has an international dimension as well. We are still reviewing the situation,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry official told the Daily News on Wednesday. Israeli Ambassador Gaby Levy has officially asked Turkey not to allow the new Gaza-bound aid convoy, which he said Israel sees as a provocation.

Loğoğlu said the Turkish government should evaluate the situation under three principles. “The first one is the responsibility of the government to protect its citizens’ lives. The second one is to take last year’s experience into consideration and the last one is to analyze the mission’s objective and to advise in an adequate way on its implementation,” he said, adding that the government cannot simply say that it the dispatching of the new flotilla is a civil-society move in which it has no influence.

Read full article here.