Title: March 9, 2004 attack of Istanbul restaurant
Description: Freemason-frequented restaurant attacked
Description: Freemason-frequented restaurant attacked
The Antagonist - July 25, 2007 09:04 PM (GMT)
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| March 9, 2004 attack of Istanbul restaurant From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia An attack of an Istanbul restaurant on March 9, 2004 killed one and injured five. Two militant Islamic militants entered a restaurant frequented by freemasons in the Kartal district of Istanbul, Turkey. The men were holding automatic weapons and had strapped their flak jackets with 10 homemade pipe bombs. They shot the guard in his feet and entered the dining hall where they began shooting at 40 people in the room. They then detonated bombs at the entrance, killing a waiter. One of the militants died, the other was seriously hurt. This attack occurred 911 days since 9/11. [1] A statement was received by the newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi on March 11 which claimed that an al-Qaida affiliated group, Jund al-Quds, or Soldiers of Jerusalem, had carried out the attack. The statement's primary purpose was to claim responsibility for the March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks. In August 2004, the trial of the suspects began. While Turkish authorities said there was likely an al-Qaida link, the surviving bomber, Engin Vural, claimed it was an independent act he planned along with the dead bomber, Nihat Dogruel. The prosecution charged that a man named Adem Cetinkaya, who was also charged, organized the attack and was also planning to bomb a private television station. Turkey has five Masonic organizations dating back to the days of French and British influence. The organizations are said to have over 10,000 members total but they are mistrusted because of a perception of Jewish membership and rumors of Jewish ritual practices. |
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| Bombers hit Istanbul restaurant (Agencies) Updated: 2004-03-10 08:47 Two suicide bombers struck a crowded restaurant in an Istanbul building used by freemasons late on Tuesday, killing two people and wounding five more, the city's governor said. The explosion, which occurred on the Asian side of the Bosphorus Straits which bisect Turkey's largest city, revived memories of four deadly blasts blamed on the al Qaeda network in November in Istanbul in which 61 people were killed.  Rescuers load an injured man onto an ambulance after an explosion in Istanbul Tuesday night. [cnn.com] Governor Muammer Guler told reporters two men entered the restaurant on the ground floor of the three-storey building at 10:10 p.m. (3:10 p.m. EST) after firing at the windows and shooting a security guard in the foot. "(One of the men) detonated the bomb he had on him," Guler said, killing himself and a waiter. The second attacker lost an arm in the blast and was rushed to hospital "with his intestines hanging out," Guler said. About 40 people had been eating in the restaurant at the time of the attack. The explosion occurred near the entrance and the wounded were all seated nearby, Guler said. Apart from broken windows, the building did not suffer much damage. "The identity of the bombers is being investigated," he said. Two eyewitnesses spoke of hearing two explosions, but this could not be immediately confirmed. "I heard a second blast and looked out the window and saw smoke rising from the building," Ahmet Gunesli told NTV commercial television. Freemasonry has long claimed followers in Muslim but secular Turkey among businessmen, academics and politicians, especially in Istanbul, a vibrant, cosmopolitan city of more than 10 million people. November's attacks targeted two synagogues, the British consulate and a British-owned bank, killing 61 and wounding 644 people in one of the worst spate of peacetime violence in modern Turkish history. Turkish prosecutors have opened a court case against 69 people accused of involvement in the attacks, which the authorities have linked to the al Qaeda network. Five defendants face charges carrying a life sentence for "trying to change the constitutional order by force." The rest could face jail terms of up to 22-1/2 years for charges including being a member of, or aiding, an illegal group. |
The Antagonist - July 25, 2007 09:42 PM (GMT)
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| Freemasonry in Turkey: a by-product of Western penetration PAUL DUMONT Département d'études turques, Université Marc Bloch, 67000 Strasbourg, France. E-mail: pdumont@umb.u-strasbg.fr Abstract Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, various European Masonic obediences set up lodges throughout the Ottoman empire, many in Istanbul, while another important centre was Smyrna. Freemasons were also active in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus and Macedonia. Lodges were established in the main political, economic and cultural centres of the Empire. There was a strong parallelism between the Ottoman Masonic geography and that of European colonial expansion. It is easy to delineate the social and ethnic structure of lodges, but we know less about what was going on behind the walls of Masonic temples. For sure, Ottoman Freemasons, like their brethren in other parts of the world, when not busy with ‘table works’ or ceremonies, dedicated themselves to philanthropic activities. A considerable part of the annual income of the lodges was used to finance various charitable works (assistance to orphans, to brethren in distress …) and to fund educational institutions. The lodges were also places for the discussion and exchange of ideas about current themes: socialism, feminism, venereal diseases, progress of science, etc. Some mingled with politics, displaying a highly nationalistic discourse. The politicization of Ottoman/Turkish freemasonry climaxed during the years of the Young Turk revolution (1908–1914), when an autochthonous obedience was created. One of the goals of the new organization, coldly received by most European freemasonries, was to rid the Ottoman Empire of foreign penetration. After the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, this national freemasonry continued to flourish, except for 13 years between 1935 and 1948 when |
Source: Cambridge Journals