Tag Archives: ISIS

10 Monday Nov 2014

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“Eleven-year old girls are raped, and the males are massacred,” Hoenlein said with obvious pain in his voice, “yet you don’t hear the outcry… it is so horrific, yet the indifference of the world continues, and no steps are being taken; very few countries are interceding with aid and the like… I cannot understand: Where are the demonstrations? Where is the UN Security Council? It just reminds you [of what happened during the Holocaust]…”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/187235#.VGFVzzTF98E – 11/9/2014.

The UK Daily Mail published a price list for the going rate of slaves in the IS market. The prices range according to age, with 40 to 50-year-olds going for only 50,000 dinars (about $43 US), while children under nine fetch 200,000 dinars (about $175).

http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/24058/isis-sex-slave-market-shows-plight-yazidi-girls/#pjZFXjEFT7l1wZVp.99 – 11/10/2014.

This unusual article — FSA cooks infiltrate and poison ISIS fighters — piggybacked the slave market video on the end of the story:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dozen-isis-fighters-killed-after-4590573 11/8/2014.

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FTAC – Without Conscience

30 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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The world that needs to do something is the world itself, and there’s plenty of it to overwhelm every corner of Islamic Jihad. However, two of the superpowers are invested in despotism themselves — China, quietly; Russia, now famously — and whether in Syria or Iraq, the middle that wished to become modern either has not had the wherewithal to power itself or, as where ISIS has penetrated, remains deeply committed to a deeply medieval script and teleology. Add some Really Big Money to the formula plus bribes and intimidation — don’t leave out the most parochial interests — and no one moves.

In the lawless, also, there is of course an ethical and moral lostness. The Qur’an read as explicit instruction and untempered by the presence of a greater human conscience affords zero navigational assistance. The black flag of piracy flies where there is no conscionable law.

The inspiration for the above comment:

They have been subjected to physical and sexual violence, including systematic rape and sex slavery. They’ve been exposed in markets in Mosul and in Raqqa, Syria, carrying price tags.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/30/world/meast/isis-female-slaves/index.html

Never Again?

Wake up.

Related Reference

That the Islamic State has enslaved Yazidi women and children it captured is an established fact. For example, a United Nations report found that “300 [Yazidi] women had been forced into slavery.” Now, in its slick multi-language journal Dabiq, the terrorist group offers its theological justification for this practice.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/390390/isis-boasts-its-yazidi-slaves-daniel-pipes – 10/16/2014

But one ugly, deadly and recurrent reality check persists: genocide. Genocide has occurred so often and so uncontested in the last fifty years that an epithet more apt in describing recent events than the oft-chanted “Never Again” is in fact “Again and Again.” The gap between the promise and the practice of the last fifty years is dispiriting indeed. How can this be?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/genocide/neveragain.html – by Samantha Power, n.d.

“Early this morning we found those corpses and we have been told by some Islamic State militants that ‘those people are from Sahwa, who fought your brothers the Islamic State, and this is the punishment of anybody fighting Islamic State’,” an eyewitness said.

Tribal sheikhs from Albu Nimr say both sets of victims were among more than 300 men aged between 18 and 55 who were seized by Islamic State this week.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/content/hundreds-iraqi-tribesmen-opposed-islamic-state-found-mass-graves – 10/30/2014.

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FTAC – On “The dictator Khamenei-Putin-Assad . . . .”

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Spychology, Politics

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I’ve joked about the dictator “Putin-Assad-Khamenei — together they are defending political absolutism”, but recently I’ve become curious about the roles played by Putin’s FSB and Khamenei’s VEVAK in the middle east and in relation to drawing down U.S.-NATO resources and resolve.

Khamenei coming out and pointing the finger the CIA for ISIS, a huge absurdity, makes me want to point the finger back at VEVAK by way of blackmailed private money in KSA and Qatar. I know I know I know and promise not to indulge further in conspiracy-think but given the consolidation of wealth in Iran’s Setad operation, the dictator “Khamenei-Putin-Assad” might make some sense.

The public — any public — knows one thing about secrets-keeping in times of war: if the authorities aren’t talking candidly, conditions might be larger and worse than imagined.

Two items inspired the note in the Awesome Conversation: one was the initiation of Russo-Iranian military exercises in the Caspian Sea (Times of Israel, October 17, 2014); the other was Khamenei’s off-the-wall accusation through his Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi of combined Mossad, MI6, and CIA involvement in launching, so I call it, “BadDaddy’s Islamic Hate” AKA “ISIS”.

Should that finger pointing not be pointing back at the Islamic Devilution in Iran?

Too much politics “behind the curtains” destroys democracies and perhaps only temporarily strengthens despots.  What is certain today would seem Putin’s deeply callous (for Sochi: $51 billion; for Syrian relief: $0) relationship with a Syrian regime that set off on political suppression by jailing and torturing children caught up in protest, appears to have moved to spare ISIS and related positions while bombing the hell out of noncombatant targets, and appears now to be sucking NATO toward collision on both Iraqi and Israeli flanks.

That Iran would undertake to create an enemy designed to distract Washington and that it might clean up should it make major gains makes more sense than Washington creating the monster against which it has been actively flying missions and seeking a strategy to undermine ISIS in every way possible.

So if ISIS has not been a Washington project, whose baby might it turn out to have been after all?

Who invested some seed money in it?

Given the criminal abuse of its own subjugated people – by theft or by hanging — and its long demonstrated indulgence in deception, deflection, and dishonesty with others, might it be . . . ?

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FTAC – Chompskyitis

16 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics

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Noam is a bright little boy who got a lot of attention in the campus-borne movements of the Vietnam Era, and he’s been loyal to causes and figures throughout at the expense of honesty and integrity.

This catches up with him as linguistics proves larger and more surprising than even himself (reference: Daniel Everett, linguistics) and as the absurdities in his position become glaring.

I had a friend suggest to me this morning that VEVAK, the Iranian intelligence service, has leveraged private money in KSA and Qatar to seed ISIS and is using the same to drain US-NATO resources, overrun Sunni Islam, and then lend itself to the same behind-the-curtains methods used to get it started but in the end to take it apart, finish it off, and leave the Islamic Devilution in Iran in charge of a larger world and its wealth (look-up: “Setad, Iran”).

Well, why not?

It makes as much sense as Chomsky’s disingenuous New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left patter.

Source of inspiration:

http://topinfopost.com/2014/10/06/noam-chomsky-the-united-states-created-isis – 10/6/2014.

War by proxy, war planning behind the curtains, hijacked religions, hijacked states (including perhaps the United States of America by a Manchurian Obama) appear to be themes playing in the background of the Islamic Small Wars.

What are the world’s secret security services and intelligence operations doing . . . right now?

?

And is Obama addressing ISIS as an acute challenge deserving sorties while Iraqi Sunni and Shiite communities sort themselves out far enough to enlarge the scale and scope of the war or get around it (together) now?

Have the Ayatollah and the capitalist and piratical Setad umbrella become powerful enough to blackmail or otherwise manipulate pockets of private wealth in Saudi Arabia and Qatar?

BackChannels will refuse right here to pull an Alex Jones on you and fly whirlybird style into thin air, but there is the region of the hidden, private, and shameful (probably) in which politics takes place off stage and lives are destroyed in the maniacal gathering of power to an immense fragile malignancy.

Pair for entertainment: VEVAK : ISIS

There will be records, and when it’s all over some day, perhaps we will be able to read them together.

Posted to YouTube in 2011:

Dig the English accent, the cocktail lounge underscore, the glamour, and pour me a martini, stirred, never shaken.

Related Reference

http://commart.typepad.com/oppenheim_arts_letters/2010/05/chomsky-think.html – 5/17/2010.

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Islam – Two Recent Political Attitude Surveys

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

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Reference on this blog: “Shimmer”.

Update – October 9, 2014

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/06/ben-affleck-and-bill-maher-are-both-wrong-about-islamic-fundamentalism/ – 10/6/2014.  The global survey highlights tell at least a story suspected: attitudes are different in North America from those predominant in Asia and elsewhere.

As with other mirage, as one in fact draws closer to the object sought, the shimmering stops and more solid details maintain their appearance with solidity.

Update – October 15, 2014

The most striking as well as encouraging finding is that ISIS has almost no popular support in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Lebanon – even among Sunnis. Among Egyptians, a mere 3 percent express a favorable opinion of ISIS. In Saudi Arabia, the figure is slightly higher: 5 percent rate ISIS positively. In Lebanon, not a single Christian, Shiite, or Druze respondent viewed ISIS favorably; and even among Lebanon’s Sunnis, that figure is almost equally low at 1 percent.

http://fikraforum.org/?p=5608 – Distributed 10/14/2014 by The Washington Institute.  The web page summary has attached to it the full PDF report.

The BackChannel’s page “Shimmer” launched to suggest that factual data should exist somewhere between the apologist’s “ISIS does not represent Islam” and the strident anti-Jihadist’s “Islam is represented by ISIS”.

It should be noted that Islam-defending apologist and the strident Jihad watcher share the same abhorrence as regards what ISIS represents.  In contest, however, one argues that Muhammad the Messenger and the Qur’an are okey dokey and some Muslims are nutty (and need to be dealt with) and the other’s analysis suggests Muhammad’s battlefield history — with the Banu Qurayza signal to what was to come — plus the contradictions within the Qur’an plus patently vicious Hadith, including the counsel to deceive the infidel, are just plain ugly all the way through.

Now we’re starting to see numbers.

From a dimensional perspective, fog floats with them: the reduction “ISIS bad : Brotherhood good : Hamas very good” (suggested by facets of the Fikra Forum report) is a head scratcher: what central beliefs and tenets and related attitudes constitute irreducible surveyed objects of interest?

While the “Islamic Small Wars” burn everywhere beneath the surface or on it,  the want to address those “beliefs, tenets, and related attitudes” as candidly, completely and specifically as possible remains compelling.

Related and Recommended Reading

One woman gestured to her hijab, her face flushed, shouting: “Who are you to talk about these victims, when you aren’t even visibly Muslim?” For good measure, she added that I was personally responsible for the post 9/11 escalation in the harassment of veiled Muslim women.

I was stunned.

Ahmed, Qanta.  “In the Company of Prophets: One Muslim’s journey into Islamism, courtesy of Rutgers.”  National Review, October 15, 2014.

Update October 24, 2014

http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/09/10/muslim-publics-share-concerns-about-extremist-groups/ – 9/10/2013.  This poll predates the other two, but it belongs here as may Daniel Pipes’ classic “How Many Islamists?” from 2003.

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Kobani, ISIS, Turkey, and the Political Smog of War

13 Monday Oct 2014

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The order is reverse-chronological

Turkey has not reached a new agreement to let the US use its Incirlik airbase in the fight against Islamic State (Isis) militants, and talks are continuing on the subject, the prime minister’s office has said, in comments that run contrary to a statement made by US national security adviser Susan Rice on Sunday.

The prime minister’s office said an agreement had been reached to train moderate Syrian rebels on Turkish soil, but that it was not yet clear “where [and] in what way” that would happen.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/13/turkey-denies-agreement-open-air-bases-us-isis – 10/13/2014

Turkey has agreed to let US and coalition forces use its bases, including a key installation within 100 miles of the Syrian border, for operations against Islamic State (Isis) militants in Syria and Iraq, US defence officials have said.

But progress in negotiations with Turkey, including Ankara’s agreement to train several thousand Syrian moderate rebels, may not be enough to stop the massacre of civilians in Syria’s border town of Kobani, where intense fighting continues.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/13/turkey-opens-bases-isis-syria-kobani-kurds-coalition – 10/13/2014.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the Associated Press the Islamic State militants, also known as ISIS or ISIL, have not been able to advance in Kobani since Friday but are sending in reinforcements. The Observatory’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, said the group appears to have a shortage of fighters and has brought in members of its religious police known as the Hisbah to take part in the battles.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/10/12/triple-suicide-bombing-in-iraq-kills-26-kurds/ – 10/12/2014

NATO should not expect any straight answers from the Administration of Turkey’s President Erdogan on anything having to do with Sunni Islamist Supremacist ambition.

ISIS-Held Hostages Return to Turkey – Two Observations

20 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Turkey

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Turkish broadcaster NTV said Turkey did not pay a ransom for the hostages who were held for three months by ISIS militants.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/09/20/Turkish-hostages-seized-in-northern-Iraq-are-free.html – 9/20/2014.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is struggling to cut off the millions of dollars in oil revenue that has made the Islamic State one of the wealthiest terror groups in history but has been unable to persuade Turkey, the NATO ally where much of the oil is traded on the black market, to crack down on an extensive sales network.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/09/13/seeks-turkey-help-starve-islamic-state-oil-revenue/IQIx3EPqamJ4iMfwEhQ7wI/story.html – 9/14/2014.

In relation to “hoping the crocodile eats you last”, the definite-maybe “crocodiles” of the Islamic Small Wars may be ambivalent about whether their role is to be crocodile or the prey of one.

We’ll have to imagine the degree of leverage or rollover, either, involved in securing the 49 hostages taken by ISIS in their sweep into Mosul, Iraq.

Davutoglu said their release was the result of the Turkish intelligence agency’s “own methods”, and not a “point operation” involving special forces. He gave no further details.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/20/isis-releases-hostages-turkish-consulate-mosul – 9/20/2014..

Additional Reference

http://www.thetower.org/1057-sale-of-smuggled-oil-to-turkey-boosting-isis-coffers/ – 9/12/2014.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/analysis/2014/08/28/Experts-ISIS-makes-up-to-3-million-daily-in-oil-sales.html – 8/28/2014.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/business/2014/06/turkey-syria-isis-selling-smuggled-oil.html – 8/13/2014.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/isis-makes-million-day-selling-oil-analysts/story?id=24814359 – 8/2/2014.

Update

While the details of the hostage deal are still unclear, Ankara has had interlocutors with IS — from Arab tribes to former Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who sought refuge in Turkey — who could have been instrumental in reaching it. Such a deal, however, may include a promise of continued non-involvement in the campaign against the jihadist group, with the soldiers stationed at Suleyman Shah serving as an insurance policy for the jihadists.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/21/islamic_state_turkey_hostage – 9/21/2014.

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NATO – ISIS – Turkey’s Weakened Stance

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Regions, Turkey

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Under perhaps the pretext of defending Turkey from ISIS, Turkish Prime Minister, now President Recept Tayyip Erdogan appears to have methodically trounced basic western values in the maintenance of open responsible and responsive governance.

When this past June ISIS took control of Turkey’s embassy in Mosul, Iraq, which site it today uses for its headquarters, and kept hostages, then Prime Minister Erdogan ordered coverage of the matter kept out of the state’s news: whatever was to happen, Turks would not be able to follow it in a free press.

When ISIS then “offered” (or ordered, for this matter also appears dark) ISIS oil in exchange for Turkish cash, it appears then Prime Minister Erdogan accepted the offer (which perhaps he could not refuse, either for defensive purposes or patently offensive ones — i.e., perhaps nothing beats hiding a venal intent behind one’s own hostages).

In the matter of NATO radar defense arrangements in Turkey, then Prime Minister Erdogan whined across months that the same not be used to protect Israel (“the only democracy in the”  yada-yada and once robust trading and defense partner with Turkey).

Finally, and with unmistakable reference to anti-Semitism, now President Erdogan has refused Israel an oil pipeline westward.

Back in May: “At least 10 firms bid for Israel-Turkey gas pipeline: Report.”

Yesterday: “Turkey nixes energy partnerships with Israel.”

While Turkey may wish to look strong as a Muslim-majority state and reliable as a NATO partner, anti-Semitism itself has a reputation as a great deflector of attention away from mediocrity and weakness.

Additional Reference

Turkey’s discomfort with NATO and its pro-Semitic western stance comes through its lax border control, which it is now being asked to address, its battering relationship with the Jewish State, and its perhaps compliant position with the Islamic State — and saying it ain’t so won’t prove it ain’t so as now President Erdogan perhaps walks down both a familiar and increasingly lonely road.  He may feel enlarged, as autocrats do, by the “narcissistic supply” arranged through deflection and cultivated with pandering,  but as that story grows large too in the chaos and disruption it engenders, it never ends well for the host.

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When ISIS took Turkish photojournalist Bunyamin Aygun hostage in 2013, he said the militants repeatedly told him “Turkey is next.” After the first few weeks of his detainment, he was transferred to an ISIS brigade made up of mostly Turks. “They rained curses on Erdogan, and Davutoglu, saying they were ‘infidels,’” Aygun told al-Monitor. “They claimed that if Turkey sealed the border gates that were under IS control they would hit one Turkish village after the other and trigger a civil war inside Turkey.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/nato-coalition-against-isis-turkey-role-mostly-symbolic-1680708 – 9/7/2014.

Since Turkey’s 49 consulate staff and their family members were taken hostage in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on June 11, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has taken all measures to keep the public in the dark on the issue.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/daloglu-mosul-hostage-crisis-erdogan-isis-iraq-turkey.html#ixzz3Cv1ThPsZ – 6/25/2014.

Mahmut Tanal, a lawmaker from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), told The Daily Beast he was trying to get an official government comment on reports saying that ISIS was exporting up to 4,000 tons of fuel to Turkey every day and earning $15 million every month from the trade. “I am expecting some answers here,” he said.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/08/is-nato-ally-turkey-tacitly-fueling-the-isis-war-machine.html – 9/8/2014.

“For energy projects to proceed, the human tragedy in Gaza will have to be stopped and Israel will have to instate a permanent peace there with all elements,” Yildiz told reporters in Ankara, referring to the recent counter-terror Operation Protective Edge.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/184930#.VBBOQcJdV8E -“Turkey Refuses to Transfer ‘Inhumane’ Israeli Gas to Europe” – 9/9/2014.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/zaman-isis-turkeys-mosul-consulate-headquarter-iraq.html – 7/17/2014

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/03/turkey-tomb-suleiman-shah-syrian-territory-pretext-incursion.html# – 3/27/2014.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/turkey-syria-borders-smuggling-guns-conflict-kurds-pkk-isis.html##ixzz3Cv7wzwGu – 4/30/2014.

An 18-vehicle convoy was dispatched to the Tomb of Suleiman Shah to rotate the troops and resupply. The convoy entered Syria from the YPG-controlled Kobani and returned via ISIS-controlled Jarablus. A Syrian Kurdish source told Al-Monitor that, as per the accord reached with the officials of the “Kobani canton” who recently visited Turkey, the YPG provided security to the Turkish army convoy while passing through Kurdish-controlled area. According to this source, the convoy was stopped by ISIS in Cadde village, three kilometers [two miles] from the tomb, after it left the Kurdish area. Since official sources kept mum on what transpired at Cadde and along the way, speculation grew.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/09/turkey-usa-syria-iraq-isis-coalition.html##ixzz3CvAeBuNa – 9/8/2014.

Needless to say, if Obama would find an enthusiastic NATO ally in his quest to construct a coalition to deal with IS, his attitude toward his Turkish counterpart might be different. Yet, Turkey’s reluctance in taking part in the efforts led by the United States against IS is also confirmed by Turkey’s media outlets following the Erdogan-Obama meeting.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/15/us-nato-turkey-israel-idUSBREA0E0NZ20140115 – 1/15/2014.

(Reuters) – Turkey has accepted assurances a planned NATO missile defense system in which it is playing a part is not designed to protect Israel as well, the alliance’s deputy secretary-general said on Wednesday.

Alexander Vershbow said objections by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government had resulted in part from confusion about a Turkish-hosted NATO radar. Ankara had been further assuaged by alliance Patriot anti-missile batteries assigned to protect its territory from Syria.

Related:

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-based-nato-radars-israel-protection-in-question.aspx?pageID=238&nID=69424&NewsCatID=483 – 7/22/2014.

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http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/08/04/nato-commander-u-s-radar-turkey-wont-used-help-israel/ – 8/4/2014.

Turkey has opposed Israel’s participation in NATO exercises. Officials said Ankara was abandoning plans to improve relations with Israel.
“Normalization with Israel is a fantasy,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/umut-ozkirimli/stoking-the-fire-antisemi_b_5779302.html – 9/8/2014.

Yet something was different this time around.   Something to do with the intensity and audacity of displays of anti-semitism, and the not so covert official backing they received, which was one of the talking points of the recent meeting between U.S. President Obama and Turkish President Erdoğan who discussed, according to the statement by the NSC Spokesperson Caitlin Hayden “the importance of … combating the scourge of anti-Semitism,” among other things.

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http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703279704575335043894776482 – 6/29/2010.

Brothers in Arms

Some major Israeli arms contracts with Turkey

1997: $632 million order for Israel to outfit Turkish F4E Phantom aircraft with advanced avionics.

1998: $90 million order for Israel to provide AGM-1 and Popeye-1 missiles for the upgraded Phantoms.

2002: $687.5 million deal to upgrade Turkey’s M60-A1 tanks to Israeli Sabra-3 version, the last of which was delivered in April.

2005: $183 million deal to provide 10 Heron drones.

Note: All contracts completed except drones, which are being delivered. Source: Serdar Erdurmaz, Turkish Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies

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http://www.dailysabah.com/mideast/2014/09/10/over-40-states-combine-forces-against-isis – 9/10/2014.

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