A morte em directo

É sempre difícil escrever a quente. Sobretudo porque é fácil tirar conclusões precipitadas.

O que sabemos até agora: um polícia turco, de 22 anos, assassinou o embaixador russo em Ankara, Andrey Karlov, na inauguração de uma exposição de arte. As imagens  captadas pela televisão turca mostram o homicida a disparar vários tiros e a gritar em turco:

.@lrozen: Full translation of 44-second video of Turkish gunman who killed Russian ambassador. https://t.co/7f7ZGTjZZS pic.twitter.com/y0lWyllB2i

— Barın Kayaoğlu (@barinkayaoglu) 19 de dezembro de 2016

Pouco depois o atirador foi abatido pela polícia turca. A sua morte impedirá o esclarecimento de questões imediatas:

• Quais as suas reais motivações?
• Agiu em nome de alguma organização ou a título individual?
• Teve cúmplices?
• Houve alguma falha de segurança que lhe permitiu aproximar-se do embaixador russo, aparentemente, tão facilmente?
• Quais serão as consequências para as relações entre a Turquia e a Rússia?

Para já, a resposta honesta é, ninguém sabe. Tudo o que se possa dizer a partir de certo ponto são apenas especulações.

Sabe-se também algumas outras coisas:

• Há uma semana houve uma manifestação em frente ao consuldado russo em Istambul, em que foi pedida vingança devido aos bombardeamentos em Allepo.

#Turkey gov’t allowed outlawed radical terror group to hold protests before #Russia consulate in Istanbul just a week ago. pic.twitter.com/ygOXvHeH2M

— Abdullah Bozkurt (@abdbozkurt) 19 de dezembro de 2016

• O terrorista referiu-se a Allepo em termos semelhantes aos utilizados pela Jabhat al Nusra (actual Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), a filial da Al Qaeda na Síria.
• Até agora nenhum grupo terrorista reivindicou o ataque, pelo contrário, apoiantes do auto-proclamado Estado Islâmico no Telegram têm pedido moderação aos seus seguidores.
• Os presidentes da Turquia e da Rússia já falaram ao telefone.
• Apoiantes dos grupos jihadistas começaram a espalhar as moradas das embaixadas russas, nas redes sociais, numa tentativa de incitamento de novos ataques.
• Amanhã  haverá em Moscovo uma cimeira entre Rússia, Turquia e Irão, sobre a situação na Síria. O encontro manteve-se, apesar do incidente.

Nos próximos dias haverá, certamente, novidades.

Uma última curiosidade: antes de o embaixador ser assassinado, Vladimir Putin dirigia-se para uma peça de Alexander Griboedov, o poeta, compositor e embaixador da Rússia, que foi assassinado em 1829 quando estava colocado no Irão.

 

O cartoon da semana: observatório

Pelo Vasco Gargalo

Atentado de Istambul ainda sem reivindicação

Este é o feed do Telegram da Amaq Agency, o meio de comunicação “oficial” do autoproclamado Estado Islâmico. Foi actualizado pela última vez às 21h58m. Não há, até agora, qualquer referência ao atentado no aeroporto de Istambul.

Leitura para o fim-de-semana: o campo de recrutamento do Estado Islâmico

Ninguém sabe quantos são. Podem ser centenas. Ou milhares. Sabe-se apenas que são muitos. Turcos, jovens, oriundos de bairros pobres de Istambul, que estão a ser levados por membros do Estado Islâmico para a região de Raqqa, na Síria, para engrossar as fileiras do mais perigoso grupo terrorista do mundo. A reportagem é da Newsweek.

Exclusive: ISIS Starts Recruiting in Istanbul’s Vulnerable Suburbs

By Alev Scott and Alexander Christie-Miller

When Deniz Sahin’s ex-husband phoned out of the blue to say he wanted to see their two young children, the call came as a welcome surprise. The father, a former alcoholic, who had kicked his addiction and turned instead to fundamentalist Islam, had shown little interest in his children for the past year, but she thought they missed him.

“I told him not to be more than two hours,” says 28-year-old Deniz, who weeps silently as she pores over photographs of Halil Ibrahim, 4, and Esma Sena, 10. After their father, Sadik, picked them up from their home in Kazan, near Turkey’s capital Ankara, in April, she never saw them again.

In one of the pictures, which were sent by Sadik a week after their disappearance, a smiling Halil Ibrahim clutches a pistol. The index finger of his other hand is held skyward in a gesture associated with the Middle East’s most feared armed group: the so-called Islamic State, also known by its former acronym Isis. The children now live with their jihadist father in Syria’s Isis-controlled Raqqa province. They are among an unknown number of Turks – potentially in the thousands – being abducted or lured into Syria and Iraq either to populate Isis’ self-declared caliphate or to fight in its bloody sectarian war.

Stories shared with Newsweek in recent days by Deniz and others show the group has sunk its tendrils deep into Turkey, a country that may now be in its firing line after being named as part of a Nato alliance to combat the jihadist group. Many fear Isis has the capacity to wreak havoc in a nation that attracts 35 million tourists a year and whose porous border adjoins Isis-controlled territory.

Last week at a Nato summit in Wales, US President Barack Obama said Turkey was part of a “core coalition” to fight Isis. However, Deniz and other victims of Isis recruitment question their government’s willingness or ability to tackle the terrorist organisation’s infiltration of Turkey. They speak of their frustration at police inaction and of their powerlessness to retrieve their loved ones. In her extended family alone, Deniz says, 15 people – including five children – have gone to live under Isis rule or fight in its ranks in recent months.

Her story is echoed by others in Istanbul, who describe an organised recruiting network operating online and through religious study groups, targeting young men from Sunni Muslim districts plagued by poverty and drug addiction. One family, whose son joined Isis, says that he was among 19 young men from their neighbourhood alone who left for Syria recently, with at least four others planning to join them soon.

In June, Turkey’s Milliyet newspaper reported that as many as 3,000 Turks have joined the group. “No other Nato country is as exposed to the threat of Isis jihadism as Turkey is,” says Sinan Ulgen, a former diplomat and head of Edam, an Istanbul-based foreign policy think tank. In the past, Western diplomats have accused Turkey of indirectly facilitating the flow of arms and foreign fighters to Isis by operating an open-

border policy with Syria in its eagerness to help the rebels seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad. After the group overran Turkey’s consulate in Mosul in June and took dozens of staff hostage, however, most now agree that authorities in Ankara has woken up to the seriousness of the threat, but may now have its hands tied in responding to it.

Forty nine Turkish citizens, including the consul general, remain Isis’ prisoners. In the past month it has beheaded two American journalists it was holding hostage in retaliation for US airstrikes.

“Turkey is not ‘soft’ on Isis,” a Turkish government official says. “It just avoids unnecessary rhetoric, in particular on the issue of hostages in Mosul.” He adds that “all necessary actions and precautions are being taken” to combat the domestic threat posed by the group.

ISIS IN ISTANBUL

That claim is disputed by the family of Ahmet Beyaztas, a 25-year-old Kurdish car mechanic, who joined the group last month. Speaking at home in the bleak factory town of Dilovasi, a polluted and poverty-stricken community on the fringe of Istanbul, his brother Kenan tells of how local Isis supporters openly displayed its flag in the windows of their cars and homes.

A month ago, Ahmet was among 19 young men from the neighbourhood who boarded two minibuses and headed to Syria to join the fighters. A member of parliament for an opposition party recently told a local newspaper that he believed 90 young men from another nearby town have made a similar journey in recent weeks.

“There are many, many more who are joining. And the police are doing nothing,” says Kenan, 30, a schoolteacher. “I’m Kurdish and a leftist. If four Kurds get together the state will break them apart. Of course they can stop them if they choose to.”

O artigo completo está aqui.

Em directo da praça Taksim

Esta manhã o governo turco enviou a polícia anti-motim para a praça Taksim – o centro dos protestos que há vários dias ocorrem no país. O canal Russia Today tem uma câmara no local que está a emitir em contínuo e em directo pela internet. Neste momento há muita gente a andar de um lado para o outro e, de vez em quando, são disparadas granadas de gás. Se quiserem acompanhar os acontecimentos podem fazê-lo aqui.

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