Middle East Madness > Turkish troops not to be deployed in Syria - Netanyahu; Iran's top military commander offers $30,000 bounty on Americans - dead of alive

 

Netanyahu: Syria was on verge of deploying Turkish troops—Israel warned against it

U.S. envoy Tom Barrack expressed “deep concern” over an attack in northwestern Syria, which the IDF has not commented on.

(Aug. 19, 2026 / JNS)

Syria was on the verge of breaching the status quo in security matters by permitting the deployment of Turkish troops at an airbase near Aleppo, Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement on Tuesday night.

Overnight Monday, the Abu al-Duhur Military Airbase in Idlib in northwestern Syria reportedly came under attack. Syrian authorities accused Israel of carrying out the offensive.

“Israel repeatedly warned Syria that such a deployment would pose a threat to Israel’s security. Syria chose to ignore these warnings,” the PMO continued, apparently referencing the strikes.

“Israel will not tolerate threats to its security, and would welcome a return to the status quo,” which was agreed to with Syria, the PMO added.

Syria’s foreign ministry on Tuesday blamed Israel for carrying out the attack, calling it “a violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates described the strikes as “an unjustified act of aggression” and a “dangerous escalation” threatening the region’s security and stability, the state’s official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported.

Syria called on the international community and the United Nations Security Council to take a firm stance against any Israeli violations of Syrian sovereignty.

United States Ambassador to Turkey and Special Presidential Envoy to Iraq and Syria Tom Barrack said that “we are deeply concerned that the confirmed Israeli airstrikes on Abu al-Duhur Airbase constitute an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability.”

Barrack said in an X post that Syria’s al-Sharaa government had signaled a preference for deescalation with Israel and said Washington would continue facilitating discussions between the sides. He urged “restraint and engagement” and called on all parties to prioritize dialogue over additional military incidents.

“Highly sensitive intelligence was shared with the United States in advance, at the most senior levels of the various agencies and bodies,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News on Tuesday. “Al-Sharaa understands that he cannot operate like the previous Syrian regime, which maintained proxy forces. It’s possible that he didn’t understand what was going on, or didn’t know.”

The official couldn’t offer more details, “due to the highly classified nature of the intelligence,” Fox News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst reported.

Idlib Province, Syria

Iranian army top dog promises $30,000 to anyone who captures or kills an American

Aug 19, 2026 5:00 pm By Robert SpencerLeave a Comment

This is more evidence of the criminal character of the Iranian regime. He didn’t specify that the captured American had to be a soldier. Anyone, even a civilian, will apparently do. This is the same regime that sends missiles into Israeli residential neighborhoods. The aim is collective punishment and ultimately genocide.

Iran Army Commander-In-Chief General Amir Hatami: Anyone Who Captures Or Kills An American And Hands Him Over To Our Military Will Receive A Gift Of $30,000

MEMRI, August 16, 2026:

Iran Army Commander-in-Chief General Amir Hatami said in an August 16, 2026 ceremony honoring journalists aired by IRIB News (Iran) that any individual or soldier who kills or captures an American will receive not only the spiritual reward of jihad, but also a “gift” of 5 billion Iranian toman (30,000 USD).

Amir Hatami: “The criminal U.S. president declared that he wants to make the Strait of Hormuz part of his criminal territory. First of all: The hell you will! Although after realizing they made a grave mistake, they claimed that it was just a joke. Even joking about this is completely unacceptable.

[…]

“Any individual or any soldier who kills or captures and hands over an American to any of the Islamic Republic’s army units… With the support of the people who are part of the ‘financial jihad’ of the army, they will receive – in addition to the high [spiritual] reward of Jihad – a gift of $30,000, which is about 5 billion toman. The dear soldiers of our army…”

=============================================================================================

Middle East Politics > New party to challenge Erdogan in Turkey

 

Turkey: Persecuted Opposition Leader to Create Breakaway Party to Challenge Erdogan

Jul 23, 2026 8:00 am By Christine Douglass-Williams2 Comments

Reuters reported in May about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s unprecedented crackdown on his opponents. One of those is Özgür Özel, whose power, due to his popularity, Erdogan has attempted to neutralize. “Özel said he had been forced to leave the party founded by modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa ‌Kemal Ataturk after a court annulled the CHP congress that brought him to power, deepening the country’s political crisis.” But Özel isn’t going down so easily. More about his new party: 

Turkish opposition leader to create breakaway party to take on Erdoğan

by John Paul Rathbone, Financial Post, July 21, 2026:

The deposed leader of Turkey’s main opposition party has said he is creating a new political party to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a bold move that could reshape Turkish politics. Özgür Özel’s gambit could unite Turkey’s fractured opposition, mobilise disgruntled voters and threaten Erdoğan at the next presidential election scheduled for 2028. But he also faces the risk of prosecution as part of a continuing legal crackdown by Turkish authorities against government critics and dissent. Recent polls suggest that Özel’s still unnamed “new party” would handily beat Erdoğan’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) if a vote were held today. “We are charting a new path,” Özel said to lawmakers of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, in Ankara on Tuesday. “We will leave no one behind . . . on this march to power,” he added to rapturous applause. “We carry within us the unwavering hope of a new beginning.”

Photo: Özgür Özel, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Turkey has been likened to “the new Iran” for justifiable reasons. Erdogan has dreams of a revived Ottoman Empire, with himself as caliph. As a man who has declared “Our God commands us to be violent towards the kuffar” (infidels), he is dangerous beyond the region.

Erdogan will predictably continue efforts to suppress any threats to his leadership from Özel.

Last year, Jihad Watch reported about another key opponent besides Özgür Özel, who also threatens Erdogan: Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, whom Erdogan likewise targeted. Imamoglu had considerable support in his bid to challenge Erdogan for the presidency, but then he was arbitrarily detained on “corruption” suspicions — which are often conjured up against anyone who threatens Erdogan’s authority or leadership. Imamoglu was arrested, interrogated, jailed, and stripped of his title as mayor. The furious protests that subsequently erupted in Turkey were a threat to Erdogan. What happened next was even more potentially disastrous for the Turkish president. Despite Imamoglu’s incarceration, the opposition CHP party officially nominated him anyway as its presidential candidate for the 2028 elections. The numbers in support of him were overwhelming. “Some 15 million people voted” in the primary. Erdogan had hoped that Imamoglu would languish in jail and be silenced, but he is doing neither. The Guardian subsequently published a letter Imamoglu wrote from jail HERE. In February, Imamoglu dared Erdogan to call early elections.

History repeats itself in a modern-day Turkey, where Erdogan, the self-appointed embodiment of the Ottoman caliphate, stands against the past leader of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s CHP party, Özgür Özel, whose new breakaway party is expected to draw many from the CHP. Ideally, Özel and Imamoglu would find a way to join forces to unite the opposition and fight against Erdogan’s crackdown and tyranny.

The  Financial Post further states that with Özel’s popularity and high profile, “he helped lead the CHP to a resounding victory against the AKP in the 2024 municipal elections.” And that his successes are “likely to place him at the centre of the opposition’s efforts to unseat Erdoğan, who has governed Turkey for more than 23 years.”

Between the tenacious Özel and Ekrem Imamoglu, Erdogan finds himself facing a dual threat at the ballot box to his tight grip on power. Erdogan will no doubt continue to tyrannize both Özel and Imamoglu and wage a ferocious battle against both ahead of Turkey’s next election in May 2028, as he views these opponents as existential threats.

In the meantime, both opposition leaders can exert diplomatic pressure on Erdogan by appealing to international human rights watchdogs, as well as to NATO, of which Turkey is still a member. They can also appeal under the European Convention on Human Rights. These measures would stir media interest, and embarrass and potentially isolate Erdogan, giving Turkish democracy a fighting chance in 2028.

Erdogan's Satanic Reversal > Israel is a danger to the world, not Islam!!!

 

Erdogan Spreads Wild Fantasies About a Supposed Threat From Israel

Jul 8, 2026 2:00 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald11 Comments

The U.S. and other NATO members are courting Erdogan:

Turkey’s Erdogan is waging war on the West and Israel

– NATO must not ignore it – opinion

by David M. Weinberg, Jerusalem Post, July 4, 2026:

Erdogan said, “When we fight Zionism, we are not conducting a personal struggle for ourselves. We are conducting this struggle for our own survival and for the collective survival of our nation. Zionism threatens not only me, not only our party, and not only our alliance, but everyone.”

Zionism, in Erdogan’s view, “threatens everyone” in the world. And what do you do to such a threat? Why, you must destroy it completely. You annihilate the Jewish state, and expel or kill its Jewish inhabitants. Judea delenda est is his murderous motto.

Satanic reversal means Erdogan has completely reversed the truth in that Israel is no threat to anyone that is not a threat to them. Islam is the threat to the world, not Zionism. But, as I have been saying for a couple of years now, Erdogan is looking for an elegant way to enter the Middle East war.

Then he hit back at Israel for formally recognizing the Armenian genocide by escalating his oft-repeated false accusations of Israeli genocide: Israel being “a country that has the blood of 73,000 innocent Gazans, most of them children and women, on its hands.”…

Of the 73,000 people who have died in Gaza since October 8, 2023, all of whom Erdogan describes as “innocent” victims of Israel’s “genocide,” we know the following. About 25,000-30,000 were terrorist members of Hamas, with some — not many — belonging to, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Another 2,000 were the estimated number of Gazans that the IDF did not kill. The Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched missiles from Gaza that misfired and fell short in the Strip itself, killing civilians. Most of those missiles that Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched fell short and killed Gazans.

In one memorable example, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad missile struck a parking lot next to the Al-Ahli Hospital, killing — according to Hamas — 471 people. In addition, there have been deaths in Gaza from natural causes —cancer, heart disease , COVID, diabetes, accidents, and so on. How many? Some calculate that natural deaths in a population of 2 million over a 2.5-year period amount to 39,000-41,500. This estimate is calculated using typical crude mortality rates of ~ 8.5 to 9.5 per 1,000 people.

But that strikes me as much too high. The head of the statistics team at Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry, Zaher al-Wahidi, says that about 5,000 Gazans have died each year from natural causes; over the 2 ½ years since the Gaza war began, that would mean 12,500 Gazans died of such non-combat related causes. Now, let’s do the math for Erdogan, who accuses Israel of “genocide.” 73,000 total deaths minus 30,000 Hamas combatants killed equals 43,000. 43,000 minus 2,000 killed by misfired missiles that landed in Gaza equals 41,000. 41,000 minus 12,500 (natural deaths) equals 28,500, the total number of non-combatants who have died in Gaza as a result of the war. Erdogan insists that the IDF has killed “73,000 innocent civilians.” His math is way off.

But speaking in his playacting parliament, the Turkish tyrant said Israel’s military actions in Syria and Lebanon have escalated to a level that could endanger Turkey, warning that Israeli “aggression” poses a threat to the entire world and must be stopped.

How could Israel’s military action in Lebanon or Syria endanger Turkey? In Israel, the only reason the IDF has taken and is holding onto some Lebanese territory is to push the terror group Hezbollah further away from the border with Israel, so that its missiles will have a harder time reaching northern Israel. Israel and the Lebanese government are on the same side — both want Hezbollah to be disarmed and dismantled. How does that endanger Turkey?

As for Syria, the Israelis now control a small enclave inside Syria is because of fears that terror groups, at encouragement of the jihadist regime of Al-Sharaa, will attack Israeli villages. And another goal of the IDF is to support the Druze in Sweida governorate south of Damascus and the Kurds in northeastern Syria. It is this last — Israeli military support for the Kurds — that most infuriates Erdogan.

Let the NATO members remind Turkey that it is an alliance of democracies, and his authoritarianism, grading into despotism, is fast making Turkey an odd man out. He should be told that his support for Iran, a country at war with the West, that openly declares its hatred of America (“Death, death to America”) is unacceptable. His menacing posture toward Greece, a fellow member of NATO, must stop. And his annihilationist threats toward Israel are deeply distressing. Israel is not a member of NATO, but it is a founding member, one could say, of Western civilization.

Meanwhile, Senators, make sure you prevent Trump’s mad plan to sell Turkey a squadron of F-35 fighter jets from being realized.