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Europe
France to ban Turkish ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves group: minister
2020-11-03
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]

The Jerusalem Post adds:
La Belle France plans to ban Ottoman Turkish far-right nationalist group the Grey Wolves, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Monday.
Courtesy of Pappy, this is what we know about them: The youth wing, or paramilitary division of the Nationalist Movement Party, the Grey Wolves were founded in the late 1960s. During the 1970s, Grey Wolves killed Kurds, left-wing intellectuals, students, and Christians. Mehmet Ali Agca, who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, was a member of Grey Wolves. Another member attempted to assassinate Prime Minister Turgut Özal in 1988. In recent decades the party has moderated its platform but adopted a more Islamic stance. After the fall of the Soviet Union, soldiers fought under the Grey Wolves banner in both Chechnya wars as well as in the Nagorno-Karabakh War on the side of the Azerbaijanis against the Armenians. The organization was banned in Azerbaijan in 1995 after an attempted coup and in Kazakhstan in 2005. There are Grey Wolves groups in Germany, Netherlands, France and Belgium.
A ban on the "particularly aggressive" Grey Wolves would be submitted to the French Cabinet on Wednesday, Darmanin told a National Assembly hearing on La Belle France's fight against Islamist krazed killers.

The ban follows recent incidents in La Belle France involving the Grey Wolves group amid growing tensions between La Belle France and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...Qatar's satrapy in Asia Minor...
 and over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

In one incident last weekend, La Belle France 3 television reported that the Armenian memorial near Lyon was tagged with pro-Ottoman Turkish slogans and inscriptions with the Grey Wolves' name.
Related:
Grey Wolves: 2018-06-11 Erdogan Predicts ‘War Between the Cross and Crescent’ over Austria Mosque Closures
Grey Wolves: 2017-03-16 Package containing explosive material discovered in German Finance Ministry
Grey Wolves: 2017-03-13 Islamic State’s German Magazine Tells Fighters To Kill ‘Apostate’ Imams
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The Grand Turk
Mehmet Ali Agca who shot #Pope John Paul II in 1981 brags about the hit on national teevee
2020-03-17
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
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Europe
John Paul ll Shooter Claims Iran's Khomeini Told him to Do it
2013-02-02
[An Nahar] The Turk who shot pope John Paul II in St Peter's Square in 1981 claimed in a new book on Friday that the founder of the Iranian revolution, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, told him to do it.

The Vatican immediately denied several assertions in the book including the claim by Mehmet Ali Agca that he had spoken of the Iranian link at his meeting with John Paul II in his prison cell.

Ali Agca, a former far-right extremist and Islamic fundamentalist, said he was "indoctrinated" in Tehran after escaping from a Turkish prison where he was serving time for killing a journalist.
Mehmet, have you ever been...in a Turkish prison?
Oh. You have?
At a nighttime meeting with Khomeini, Ali Agca said the Supreme Guide of the Iranian revolution told him to kill the Polish pope -- who was badly wounded but survived the assassination attempt.

"You have to kill the pope in the name of Allah. You have to kill the devil's mouthpiece on earth," Ali Agca said the Ayatollah Khomeini told him.

The book has been published in Italian and is entitled "I Was Promised Paradise: My Life and the Truth Behind the Attack Against the Pope."
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Europe
Turkey releases gunman who shot pope in 1981
2010-01-19
London - After nearly 30 years behind bars, the Turkish man who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II walked out of a prison a free man Monday and promptly predicted the end of the world. Now a gray-haired 51-year-old, Mehmet Ali Agca declared himself the "Christ eternal" and prophesied that humanity would be wiped out this century, in a statement passed out to a scrum of television cameras and waiting reporters in Ankara, the Turkish capital.

Later, the hollow-cheeked Agca, who has spent more of his life in prison than out, was declared mentally disturbed by doctors who exempted him from mandatory military service, the Associated Press reported.

Agca shot John Paul several times on May 13, 1981, as the pontiff waved at followers while riding in his open-backed popemobile through St. Peter's Square in Rome. Bystanders screamed in horror as the pope was whisked away with serious wounds to his hand, arm and abdomen. Agca was caught at the scene, convicted and sent to an Italian prison, where he remained for 19 years. But his motives for the shooting have remained opaque, clouded by his own contradictory statements, and it is still unclear whether he acted on his own or whether the attack was plotted by others.

Allegations persist that Agca's assassination attempt was commissioned by Soviet intelligence, acting through Bulgarian agents, to remove John Paul because of his support for the anti-Communist Solidarity movement in the pontiff's native Poland. An Italian parliamentary panel concluded in 2006 that the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991, was responsible. Moscow denies any involvement.

Agca has said he would speak about the attack after leaving prison and that he would entertain book and movie offers. Upon his release Monday, he also vowed to write a new and perfect Gospel, telling reporters that the one in the Bible was flawed. He also proclaimed that "all the world will be destroyed [and] every human being will die" by century's end.

In 1983, John Paul visited his would-be killer and bestowed his forgiveness.

In 2000, the Italian president issued an official pardon for Agca. That cleared the way for his extradition to Turkey to serve out a sentence for the murder of a left-wing journalist, Abdi Ipekci, in 1979. Agca, an alleged sympathizer of a far-right movement called the Gray Wolves, had escaped from prison less than six months into his sentence for Ipekci's killing.

Agca has expressed a desire to travel to Rome to pay tribute to John Paul, who died in 2005.

"If Ali Agca wants to come and pray at John Paul II's tomb, I fully agree," Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, told Italian television Monday, according to Italy's ANSA news agency.

"Let's not forget that . . . the first to forgive him was John Paul II," Turkson said. But, he added, Agca "would have to be accompanied to the Vatican by a large number of security officers -- that has to be clear."
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Europe
Mehmet Ali Agca wants to be baptised at the Vatican
2009-05-14
[ADN Kronos] The Turkish gunman, who tried to kill the late Pope John Paul II in 1981, has told an Italian newspaper he wants to convert to Catholicism. In an interview with the Italian daily, La Repubblica, Mehmet Ali Agca said he wants to be baptised in St. Peter's square, where he shot and wounded the Polish pope.

Mehmet Ali Agca wounded John Paul II on 13 May 1981. He was a member of the radical right-wing Turkish group, the Grey Wolves and was captured immediately after shooting the pontiff.

The pope later, from his hospital bed, forgave his assailant.

"Once freed, I would like to be baptised. I would like to do it in front of media from all over the world, in the Vatican, exactly in front of St. Peter's Square, the place where I struck Pope Wojtyla (John Paul II)," said Ali Agca in an interview published on Tuesday.

Regarding John Paul II, Ali Agca says he remembers him as a kind human being.

"I remember the pope as the most respectable and kind-hearted human being of the 21st century. I would like to pay him a tribute in front of his tomb," he said.

When asked about how he feels in Turkey, Agca said he missed Italy, but would like to receive Portuguese citizenship.

"I am okay. Although I thought I would feel better in Turkey once I was extradited. They treat me well here, but I miss Italy and I miss freedom.

"I would like to travel, have a simple life and work...we are trying to talk to the Portuguese government. I would like to obtain citizenship there.

"In Portugal, at Fatima, there is a statue of the Virgin of Fatima which was dear to Wojtyla," he said. "Pope Ratzinger explained that the assassination attempt constituted the famous Third Secret, that is why I chose Portugal."

The Third Secret of Fatima is a prophecy believed to have been given to three Portuguese children during a series of apparitions by the Virgin Mary in 1917 on 13 May, the same day John Paul II was shot.

The text, written down more than 50 years ago by one of the children, refers to a bishop dressed in white being killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him.

However, there have been many reports about a so-called conversion by Ali Agca.

Recently in a letter to Italian weekly, Diva e Donna, Ali Agca said he would like to marry an Italian and that he had already converted to Catholicism on 13 May 2007, 26 years after the attempt on John Paul II's life.

After serving almost 20 years of a life sentence in prison in Italy, he received an official pardon from former Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in 2000 and was deported to Turkey.

He was then jailed at the Yenikent jail in the capital Ankara where he is serving a separate sentence for robbery and murder.

Ali Agca first claimed he was commissioned to kill the pontiff by Bulgaria on the orders of the Soviet KGB or intelligence services.

Agca later recanted, but suspicions continued about a Bulgarian connection, involving secret services of the then Communist bloc who feared the Polish Pope's influence on the global stage.
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Europe
Pope Benedict XVI sets up anti-terrorist squad
2008-06-11
The Vatican has created an anti-terrorist unit in order to guard the Holy See and the pope from a possible attack.

Vatican security forces now include an anti-bomb squad and a rapid response team, according to Domenico Giani, the head of the Holy See's 130-man gendarmerie. The Vatican will also work more closely with Interpol to gather information on any threats, he said.

The deal with Interpol, the pan-European police agency, will give the Vatican access to a large data bank of suspects and information on the latest anti-terrorism techniques.

"The teams report directly to the head of the Gendarmerie," said Mr Giani in an interview with L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper. "The rapid response team will carry out investigations across the spread of information channels and will be supported by a sophisticated technical team. It will be able to intervene immediately in case of danger," said Mr Gianni.

"The second group is made up of highly-specialised experts, armed with sophisticated and innovative technology," he added.

He said the two teams would not be confined to the Vatican, but would also travel with the pope. The Swiss Guards have also been given anti-terrorism training, and now carry SIG P75 pistols and Heckler-Koch MP5 sub-machine guns, as well as their traditional halberds.

Earlier this year, Osama bin Laden repeated threats against Pope Benedict, who he accused of "leading a crusade against Islam". The pope has been the subject of a series of attacks since 2006, when he used a quotation in a speech at Regensburg University that said Islam was an "evil and inhuman" religion.

Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded in St Peter's Square in 1983 by a Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca.
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Europe
Italy protests music video of Turkish singer praising priest's murder
2007-09-19
Rome, 19 Sept. (AKI) - Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has strongly criticised a video clip by a famous Turkish folk singer singing about the death of priest Andrea Santoro.

According to a statement, Prodi telephoned the Italian Ambassador Carlo Marsili in Ankara on Tuesday and "expressed his displeasure, and that of the Italian government, following the news of a music video where the homicide of Don Santoro is celebrated".

In the clip posted on YouTube.com folk singer Ismail Turut's voice can be heard singing the song "Do not make any plans" with lyrics by poet Ozan Arif. The song is accompanied by images showing Ogun Samast, the teenager who allegedly shot dead ethnic Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink in Istanbul on 19 January as well as a suspected accomplice, Yasin Hayal, who was also implicated in the 2004 bombing of a McDonald's restaurant.

Monsignor Luigi Padovese, apostolic vicar in Turkey, in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI) called the video a "repugnant act" which does not express the feelings of the community.

Other images include those of a wolf, apparently symbolising the ultra-rightwing Grey Wolves group, and one of the group's most notorious members, Mehmet Ali Agca who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981.

Prosecutors are considering whether Turut, Arif or the unknown person who created the video could be charged with inciting hatred. "If they find me guilty, I am ready to serve the punishment. However, I am not guilty" Turut has said in response to the probe.

The image of Dink, an advocate for the claim that the mass deaths of Armenians under Ottoman rule during the World War I period was genocide - appears when the lyrics "whoever betrays the country, he will be finished off" are sung.

The images on the video showing the murdered Italian priest have been removed, and the Italian Ambassador has pledged to continue to work closely with the local authorities to avert future similar cases.

The clip has received considerable media attention in Turkey and has outraged activist groups with two, the Human Rights Association in Turkey and the Association of Solidarity for Oppressed People, announcing they would file lawsuits against Turut and Arif.
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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
3 Killed in Attack on Bible Publishing House in Turkey
2007-04-18
ISTANBUL, Turkey —
Attackers killed three people Wednesday at a publishing house that had been the subject of protests for distributing Bibles in Turkey, the government-run Anatolia news agency reported.

One person who had his throat cut inside the publishing house and another who jumped from the third floor to escape were taken to local hospitals for treatment, the private Dogan news agency said. Anatolia said one of those taken to the hospital later died.

Nationalists previously had protested outside the Zirve publishing house in the city of Malatya, accusing it of proselytizing, Dogan reported.

Video footage broadcast on private NTV news channel showed one man being tackled by police outside of the building, and another in a neck brace being loaded into a stretcher.

Malatya is known as a hotbed of nationalists and is the hometown of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981.
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Olde Tyme Religion
Pope Rage in Istanbul
2006-11-28
By Robert Spencer

Pope Benedict XVI is set to arrive in Turkey on Tuesday, and tensions are running high. Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, wrote to Benedict: “Your life is in danger. You absolutely must not come to Turkey.” And several weeks ago, a Turk named Ibrahim Ak stood outside Italy’s consulate in Istanbul and fired a gun while proclaiming his desire to strangle the pope. As he was arrested, Ak shouted: “I am happy to be a Muslim!” He said that he hoped the Pope would decide not to come to Turkey, and that his actions would inspire other Turks to violence: “God willing, this will be a spark, a starter for Muslims ... God willing, he will not come. If he comes, he will see what will happen to him.”

Turkish officials are trying to make sure nothing does. According to the Associated Press, they have “mobilized an army of snipers, bomb disposal experts and riot police, as well as navy commandos to patrol the Bosporus Straits flowing through Istanbul.” However, Meliha Benli Altunisik, a professor at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, questioned whether such precautions were necessary at all: “Will there be protests? Yes, of course. But I cannot take seriously the notion that he is in physical danger. He will rather be ignored.”

Certainly Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan originally planned to ignore him. Erdogan will be attending a NATO summit in Latvia on the first two days of the Pope’s visit and at first announced that he would not meet with him during the last two days, either. “You can't expect me to arrange my timetable according to the pope,” Erdogan huffed, and of course he’s right: how could anyone expect him to rearrange his busy schedule to meet with someone so unimportant as the Pope? (However, on Monday he did finally change his plans and agreed to meet with Benedict.)

The real reason why Erdogan did not want to meet the Pope, of course, is the same reason why security is so tight: Turks are enraged over the Pope’s speech at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006, in which he quoted the fourteenth century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologos: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” There were riots all over the Islamic world over these remarks in September, and several Christians were murdered in Iraq and Somalia. In Turkey, tempers haven’t cooled. Turkish politician Salih Kapusuz said: “The owner of those unfortunate and arrogant comments, Benedict XVI, has gone down in history, but in the same category as Hitler and Mussolini....It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades.” The Crusades were on Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahri’s mind also: he likened Benedict to Pope Urban II, who called the First Crusade in 1095.

Unfortunately, the danger of and anger over the Pope’s visit to Turkey has overshadowed both the real focus of the visit, and what should be its major preoccupation. The main purpose of the Pope’s trip is to meet with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church. One may hope also that the Pope will take an opportunity to shed some light upon the woeful condition of religious minorities, principally Christians, in what is nominally a secular state that allows for religious freedom. Two converts from Islam to Christianity, Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal, are currently on trial on charges of “insulting ‘Turkishness’” and inciting hatred of Islam. What seems to be behind the charges is that Tastan and Topal were proselytizing – which, while not officially illegal, is frowned upon and has sometimes resulted in beatings of Christians trying to hand out religious literature. On November 4, a Protestant church in western Turkey was firebombed, after months of harassment that was ignored by Turkish authorities. The murderer of a Catholic priest, Fr. Andrea Santoro, last February in the Turkish city of Trabzon was recently sentenced to only eighteen years in prison. (The killer shouted “Allahu akbar!” as he fired shots at the priest.)

All this bespeaks a Turkish officialdom that is hostile – at best – to non-Muslim forms of religious expression, Turkey’s guarantees of religious freedom be damned. The institutionalized subjugation and second-class status of religious minorities under the Ottoman Empire was bad enough, but Turkish secularism has been, if anything, even worse. Constantinople was 50% Christian as recently as 1914 (its name was changed to Istanbul in 1930); today, it is less than one percent Christian. The Catholic Church has no legal recognition; Catholic churches, like other churches, remain inconspicuous so as not to draw the angry attention of mujahedin. Even the recognized Churches are not allowed to operated seminaries or build new houses of worship – in accord with ancient Islamic Sharia restrictions on non-Muslims in an Islamic state, which restrictions paradoxically enough still have at least some force in secular Turkey.

The righteous fury with which the Pope will likely be greeted in Turkey will shift attention from the shame Turkish authorities should feel over the mistreatment of Christians in their land that nominally allows for religious freedom. The mainstream media will focus on protests against the Pope, and pay scant attention to anything he may say, if he says anything at all, about the oppression of Christians in Turkey. And that, in the final analysis, may lead the Turkish government – for all its security precautions -- to hope that the protestors will turn out in force.
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Europe
Attempted assassin warns Pope against Turkey visit
2006-09-20
The man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981 has warned the current Pope not to visit Turkey, saying his life would be in danger, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

The comments came amid a furor in the Muslim world over Pope Benedict's comments on Islam and ahead of his scheduled visit to Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, in November. "As someone who knows these matters well, I say your life is in danger. Don't come to Turkey," Mehmet Ali Agca said in comments released in a statement by his lawyer Mustafa Demirbag. "Also, I won't be able to meet you as I am in prison," Agca said. Pope John Paul visited Agca in a Rome prison in 1983 and forgave him.

Agca is serving a sentence for the killing of a newspaper editor in the 1970s and also for robbery and is scheduled to be released from prison in January 2010.

In a separate rambling letter released by the lawyer, Agca said the Pope was a victim of bribery plot hatched by intelligence agencies and called on him to resign and return to Germany.

The former right-wing gangster served 19 years in an Italian prison for the assassination attempt before being pardoned at the Pope's behest in 2000 and extradited to Turkey. He was briefly freed from jail in January but a high court overturned the decision to release him.

His motives for shooting Pope John Paul in Rome's St Peter's Square remain a mystery. Some believe he was a hitman for Soviet-era East European security services alarmed by the Polish-born pontiff's fierce opposition to communism.
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Fifth Column
$8 million for pope's would-be assassin
2006-01-20
World Net Daily. Salt as needed.

A Hollywood film company has struck an $8 million deal with the man who shot Pope John Paul II, according to the Italian news weekly Gente. Mehmet Ali Agca, who was released from an Istanbul jail last week, already has received a $500,000 advance from an unidentified company to make a film explaining how and why he carried out the 1981 attack, says his bodyguard, Haydar Mengi. Gente said the movie deal caused Agca to back out of a $600,000 agreement to give an exclusive television interview upon his release.

The pope nearly died after he was shot twice by Agca while greeting crowds at the Vatican's St. Peter's Square. The Turkish gunman immediately was arrested and later sentenced by an Italian court to life in prison. John Paul famously visited Agca in prison two years later and forgave him.

Mengi said Agca had gone into hiding to finalize the negotiations, which is why he didn't sign in at his local police station as required.

Circle shows Mehmet Ali Agca aiming at Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square in 1981. "As part of the deal, Agca must give a full interview about what happened leading up to the shooting and the shooting itself and he will also play himself in the movie," Mengi said. "Other terms of the contract ban Agca from giving interviews and he must keep out of trouble."

Agca initially said he acted alone then confessed to being hired by the Bulgarian secret service. He later retracted that, but it was widely believed the Soviet Union's KGB initiated a plot to kill the Polish pope because of his threat to communist rule in Eastern Europe.

Mengi told the magazine Agca will fly to Mexico soon to begin production for the film. "But Agca's life is without doubt at risk – he knows too much," Mengi said. "Killing him is the only way of keeping him quiet. I'm certain he would be safe if he told his story to as many people as possible."

Agca was pardoned by Italy's president in 1999 and sent back to Turkey to serve an outstanding sentence for the murder of a Turkish newspaper editor. A judge decided last week to release him, but Turkey's justice minister has ordered a probe and could return him to jail.
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Europe
Agca offered to nab bin Laden
2006-01-18
... which is all very nice, except that he also offered to sprout wings and fly to the moon...
Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II, once volunteered to go to Afghanistan to kill or capture Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as a gesture to the United States, a newspaper report said Tuesday.

The mass-circulation Hurriyet published excerpts from letters Agca wrote from prison over the past few years before his release last week after a quarter of a century behind bars in Italy and Turkey. In a letter dated September 1, 2000, addressed to the then head of Turkish intelligence, Agca wrote of U.S. help to Turkey in capturing Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan in Kenya the previous year. "America gave us Ocalan as a gift. Let's give them bin Laden in return," wrote Agca, then jailed in Istanbul, one year before the September 11 attacks in the U.S., Hurriyet reported. "I'm ready to go on my own to Afghanistan, penetrate bin Laden's organization and hand him over to America, dead or alive," he wrote. "I really hate terrorism. If I become a national hero in America, this will be to the great benefit of the Turkish nation and the Turkish state," he wrote.

Many consider Agca, 48, to be deranged, while others believe he is a sly operator playing the madman. He has pronounced himself as the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and Hurriyet said some of his letters were signed "The Messiah." In another letter, he wrote that he refused a Vatican offer of $50 million and the title of cardinal to convert to Catholicism. "I'd rather be a monkey in Africa than a king at the Vatican," he reportedly wrote.
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