War on Christianity - 6th Century Byzantine Cathedral to Become a Mosque

Matthew 24:15. "Therefore when you see the ABOMINATION

OF DESOLATION which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet,

standing in the holy place (let the reader understand)

..

Turkish President Erdogan Signs Decree Turning Istanbul's

Hagia Sofia into a Mosque After Court Ruling

© Reuters / Murad Sezer

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signed a decree opening the world-famous Hagia Sophia as a mosque, after a court ruled that its conversion to a museum in the 1930s was unlawful.

The court ruled on Friday that the 1934 decree converting the ancient Byzantine cathedral into a museum was not lawful. Immediately after the ruling, Erdogan shared a copy of a decree on Twitter, mandating that the site be turned over to the country's religious directorate and reopened for worship.

In a televised address later in the evening, the Turkish leader said that the first prayers will be held in the Hagia Sophia on July 24.

Dating back to the 6th century, the Hagia Sophia is one of the most visited cultural sites in Turkey, as well as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

UNESCO has expressed concern over Erdogan’s vision for the historic structure, noting in a statement on Friday that the building has a “strong symbolic and universal value.” It called on Turkey to "engage in dialogue" before taking any steps that might impact its universal value.

Even before his decree was issued, the Turkish president’s plan was condemned by leaders of the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches, who warned that it would be seen as an affront to Christians and create a fracture between East and West. Washington has also urged Turkey to maintain the Hagia Sophia as a museum.

Moscow has also highlighted the cultural significance of the building while acknowledging that the matter was an "internal affair" for Turkey.

Erdogan himself said that opening the Hagia Sophia for worship will not prevent local or foreign tourists from visiting the iconic site, which he said is a part of “humanity’s common cultural heritage.” 

"Like all of our other mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia will be open to all, locals or foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims,” he added.

I think this will not end well for the ambitious Erdogan.

Historian Unearths Evidence that Istanbul Directed Armenian Genocide

New documents suggest the Armenian genocide was both sanctioned and assisted by leaders of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul

By Brooks Hays

Armenian civilians, escorted by armed Ottoman soldiers, are marched to a nearby prison.

Photo by Wikimedia Commons

(UPI) -- Between 1914 and 1923, during and after World War I, hundreds of thousands of Armenians living in Turkey were systematically rounded up and murdered. Thousands more were forced to flee their homes. Some estimates put the death toll at more than 1.5 million.

Now, researchers say newly discovered documents suggest the Armenian genocide was both sanctioned and assisted by leaders of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul.

The fact that the Armenian genocide happened is well-accepted within academic circles. However, the Turkish government has continued to deny the culpability of their predecessors.

"The Armenian diaspora is trying to instill hatred against Turkey through a worldwide campaign on genocide claims ahead of the centennial anniversary of 1915," Turkey's president, Recep Erdogan, said in 2015. "If we examine what our nation had to go through over the past 100 to 150 years, we would find far more suffering than what the Armenians went through."

Erdogan's sentiments aren't without the support of the vast majority of the Turkish population. As the New York Times reported in 2015, a poll conducted by the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, an Istanbul research organization, fewer than one in ten Turks believe the government should label the atrocities genocide and apologize.

"Turkish government officials continue to use the same argument, the argument that the Ottoman government never had the intent," Taner Akçam, an Armenian genocide expert and history professor at Clark University in Massachusetts, told UPI. "They accept that there were casualties and some massacres, but they claim the Ottoman government was not able to control the remote areas and that some Kurdish tribes or bandits or some other group, they committed these kinds of crimes."

What was missing, Akçam said, was a "smoking gun" linking the atrocities to the Ottoman government. That's exactly what Akçam found.

"This new evidence is a major blow against Turkish denialist arguments," Akçam said.

His discovery suggests the genocide was indeed carried out on periphery, not by rogue agents and bandits, but by provincial governors. These governors were in communication with and assisted by leaders in Istanbul.

"This shows the radicalization process started in the provinces," Akçam told UPI.

The evidence, a series of telegrams transcribed, decoded and signed by Turkish officials, was discovered among a slate of new documents released into the Ottoman archive, a collection of historical documents in Istanbul, organized by the government and made available to researchers.

The newly discovered letters feature the first unambiguous use of the terms "extermination" and "annihilation" by Ottoman officials, both among the provinces and in Istanbul. Analysis of the signatures confirmed several of the transcribed telegrams were authored by Bahaettin Şakir, head of the para-military Special Organization and one of the architects of the Armenian Genocide.

Though the plan to exterminate all of the Armenians living in Turkey began as a provincial idea, the new evidence suggests Istanbul was eventually convinced to back the genocidal approach.

In addition to the documents retrieved from the Ottoman archive in Istanbul, Akçam also discovered similar letters -- transcribed telegrams -- that were used as evidence in tribunals organized by the postwar Ottoman government.

"There were 63 different trials and more than 200 defendants," Akçam said. "The materials from these court procedures went missing. Government officials never made these court proceedings available to researchers."

Researchers only knew about these tribunals from reports written by daily newspapers in Istanbul. A few of the verdicts were also published by the Ottoman government. But some of the documents from these tribunals ended up in the private archive of a Catholic priest in Armenia.

Among the tribunal documents, Akçam found transcribed telegrams using the same coding system -- a series of Arabic letters and numerals to represent words and suffixes -- found among the letters unearthed from the Ottoman archive.

"I went to the Ottoman archive, I discovered that this four digit coding system was the same for both sets of telegrams," he said. "The authenticity cannot be disputed, this was the major discovery."

The transcribed telegrams provided further evidence of communication between those carrying out the genocide in the provinces and military and political officials in Istanbul, including messages that Akçam characterized as "killing orders."

As to why these revealing documents were publicly released by a government intent on denying its predecessors culpability, Akçam guesses officials simply didn't read them thoroughly. The documents in the archives were summarized by officials before being released, and the summaries of the newly discovered telegraphs mention nothing of the details relating the Armenian genocide.

Akçam said his discoveries, summarized in the Journal of Genocide Research, will further solidify the truth of the Armenian genocide. It's a truth he hopes will soon be accepted by the Turkish government.

According to Akçam, the genocide has implications for the political situation in modern Turkey.

"Turks and the Turkish government has the same problems today with Kurds as the Ottomans had with Armenians in the past," he said. "Armenians were making demands for legal and social equality. The Kurds are making similar demands today."

As a result, Akçam said, the Kurds have been labeled as a security threat and the Turkish government has attempted to suppress these democratic demands.

"Without acknowledging historical wrongdoings, Turkey cannot establish a democratic future," Akçam said.

According to the historian, reconciling with the record of the Armenian genocide is essential for improved relations between Turkey and its neighbors.

"Speaking regionally, if you continue this policy of denialism, this means you have the potential to repeat the same policy against your neighbors," Akçam said. "This is why many of Turkey's neighbors consider the Turkish government a security threat. Without reconciling history, peace will not be achievable in the region."

75 Years Since the Struma Disaster

Disaster? Or an atrocity committed by everyone involved?

Remember, these were people trying desperately to escape the Holocaust.
One of the most successful massacres of Jews during WWII,
and not a single German in sight!

In December 1941, 769 Jewish passengers boarded the MV Struma, a ship that was to set sail from Axis-allied Romania to seek refuge in Israel. 

The passengers each paid an exuberant amount and were promised a luxurious ship that would transport them to Israel; however, when they reached the boat, they discovered that the Struma was in fact an old dilapidated vessel, containing one bathroom, no kitchen, and hardly any space. 

She was built in 1867 as a British marquess's luxury steam yacht and ended 75 years later as a Greek and Bulgarian diesel ship for carrying livestock. Wikipedia.

After a three day journey filled with engine failures, the Struma arrived at Turkey, where they were told they would be going to pick up their immigration certificates – but there were no immigration certificates to be found. The Turks refused to let the ship board, and towed the broken ship to a quarantine section while they figured out what to do with them.

Lloyd's Register of Shipping lists her as still having her steam engine in 1934, but within a few years it had been replaced with a three-cylinder marine diesel engine built by Benz & Cie. of Mannheim in Germany. Some sources claim that the diesel engine had been salvaged from a wreck sunk in the Danube. 

In 1941 the New Zionist Organisation and the Betar Zionist youth movement chartered Struma from Jean Pandelis to take Jewish refugees from Romania to Palestine. On 12 December 1941 she left the port of Constanța in Romania carrying 10 crew and about 781 refugees. 

Her diesel engine was not working so a tug towed Struma out to sea. She drifted overnight while her crew tried in vain to start her engine. She transmitted distress signals and on 13 December the tug returned and the tug's crew repaired Struma's engine in exchange for the passenger's wedding rings. Struma then got under way but by 15 December her engine had failed again and she was towed into Istanbul in Turkey.

The British refused to let the ship sail to Mandatory Palestine, and Romania refused to allow them return. While Turkey was deliberating what to do, the boat remained anchored and isolated for ten weeks, its passengers suffering from starvation inhumane conditions.

While Turkish mechanics made unsuccessful attempts to repair Struma's engine, there was a 10-week impasse between British diplomats and Turkish officials over the fate of the refugees. Because of Arab and Zionist unrest in Palestine, Britain was determined to minimise Jewish immigration to Palestine under the terms of the White Paper of 1939. Under pressure from Britain, Turkey denied the refugees permission to come ashore. One pregnant refugee who suffered a miscarriage was allowed to disembark and admitted to an Istanbul hospital.

Reaching no agreement with England and Romania, the Turkish government decided to tow the Struma out of Turkish waters and into the Black Sea, where they left the inoperative ship and its passengers to rot with no fresh water, food, or fuel.

After just a few hours of drifting on February 24, 1942, a Russian ship torpedoed the Struma, killing all but one of the passengers on board.

On 23 February 1942 Turkish authorities boarded Struma. Her engine still did not work so they towed her back out into the Black Sea and cast her adrift about 10 miles off Istanbul. On the morning of 24 February the Soviet submarine Shch-213 torpedoed her. Struma sank quickly and many people were trapped below decks and drowned. 

Many others aboard survived the sinking and clung to pieces of wreckage, but for hours no rescue came and all but one of them died from drowning or hypothermia. Struma's First Officer clung to a piece of wreckage that was floating in the sea along with a 19-year-old refugee, David Stoliar. The officer died overnight but Turks in a rowing boat rescued Stoliar the next day: the only survivor of about 791 people who were aboard.

May their memories be a blessing.

And may their memories bruise the consciences of every man and woman who hates Jews. This is what Jew-haters are capable of. May God have mercy on their souls.

Greek Officials Say Reading of Koran at Sacred Turkish Landmark 'Incomprehensible'

By Doug G. Ware
ISTANBUL, Turkey, June 7 (UPI) -- Greek foreign affairs ministry officials expressed opposition and disappointment in the Turkish government this week, for its allowing the reading of prayers from the Koran at a former religious landmark that remains sacred to both Christians and Muslims.


Turkey's Hagia Sophia museum, a UNESCO world heritage site since 1985, was formerly a Christian church, a Greek Orthodox cathedral and Imperial Ottoman mosque before it became a secular museum in 1935. The landmark is recognizable around the world for its iconic dome and unique architecture. File Photo by Mehmet Cetin/Shutterstock

The first prayer was read at Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, a former Byzantine cathedral, on Monday to mark the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. In addition to those in attendance, faithful throughout the heavily-Muslim nation also listened to the prayers via broadcast by the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT).

As Hagia Sophia is considered a sacred site to many for its history, Greece's Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to the prayer readings by saying they are inappropriate for such a revered and secular landmark.

"We condemn as regressive the Turkish authorities' announcement of the scheduling of a Koran reading in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, on the occasion of Ramadan," the ministry said in a statement Monday.

"Obsessions, verging on bigotry, with Muslim rituals in a monument of world cultural heritage are incomprehensible and reveal a lack of respect for and connection with reality," the ministry added. "Such actions are not compatible with modern, democratic and secular societies"

Turkey is no longer a secular society. Erdogan is slowly turning it into his own private caliphate!

Another Greek politician said the prayers amount to "disrespect against Orthodox Christians across the world."

Did you really expect Erdogan to respect Christians?

Turkish officials, though, decided last month to allow the Muslim prayers and broadcasts at the site, which is now a heritage museum, until the end of the month.

"Since the United States are siding with the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party], and Germany has clung to the [Armenian] genocide lie, friendship has shifted," Samil Tayyar, a deputy for Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, tweeted last week. "It's our turn. [Hagia] Sophia should be open for worship."

So, Christians will be allowed to worship there as well? The government's defence of the Ottoman slaughter of Armenians reveals the distance Erdogan has taken the country from Attaturk's secular vision of Turkey. That has been abandoned completely as Erdogan attempts to rebuild the Ottoman Empire with himself as Sultan.

Tayyar was referring to a resolution passed by Germany last week that considered mass killings of Americans (sic - Armenians) by Ottoman Turks in World War I a genocide. The declaration upset the Turkish government, which responded by recalling its ambassadors from Berlin.

Hagia Sophia, recognizable around the world for its large dome, was originally a Christian church and a Greek Orthodox cathedral centuries ago before it became an imperial mosque when the Ottoman Empire took power in the 15th century. It was turned into a secular museum in 1935 and designated a UNESCO world heritage site 50 years later.

Ramadan, a holy month of of fasting that commemorates the first revelation of the Koran to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, runs through July 5.