RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Erdoğan has cynically referred to these students as ‘terrorists,’ vowed to expel them from Boğaziçi University, and to deny them the right to study at any other university. We have heard this kind of verbal attack from Erdoğan before and it was followed by the detention of thousands of academics, journalists, artists, and human rights advocates.” — Open Letter signed by over 1,800 renowned academics from around the world, including Nobel and Pulitzer Prize laureates.

Ankara does nothing to prevent ISIS from selling Yazidi women and children in Turkey; allows unspecified numbers of people to use Turkish territory as a point of entrance into Syria and Iraq to join ISIS or other jihadist groups; hosts and aids Hamas, a terrorist organization that proudly targets civilians and vows to obliterate Israel; and enables jihadi terrorism through the oil trade.

Turkey, a NATO ally that considers itself a worthy candidate for EU membership, warmly welcomes and assists terrorists who commit genocidal crimes against humanity, yet persecutes non-violent academics and journalists whose opinions differ from those propagated by the regime.

On March 19, a group of students at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University, Turkey’s leading institute of higher education, demonstrated against an event on campus. The event against which they were demonstrating, organized by the Society for Islamic Research, was to champion the Turkish soldiers who had participated in the Afrin invasion. While the pro-government students distributed Turkish delight sweets, the counter-demonstrators unfolded a banner reading: “Invasions and massacres are not [to be celebrated] with delights.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded by having the anti-war students arrested for spreading “terrorist” propaganda. On April 3, a Turkish court jailed nine of them and freed the other six, pending their trial.

(CNN)Here is some background information on terror attacks involving vehicles used as deadly weapons by radicalized individuals or terror groups.
Facts:
Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch encouraged its Western recruits to use trucks as weapons. A 2010 webzine article, “The Ultimate Mowing Machine,” called for deploying a pickup truck as a “mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.”
In September 2014, ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani called for lone wolf attacks using improvised weaponry, “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock or slaughter him with a knife or run him over with your car or throw him down from a high place or choke him or poison him.”
Timeline:
March 3, 2006 – Mohammed Taheri-azar, an Iranian-American, drives an SUV into an area crowded with students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Nine people sustain minor injuries during the attack, which Teheri-azar later says is retribution for the killing of Muslims overseas. He is convicted of attempted murder in 2008 and is sentenced to 33 years in prison.

October 22, 2014 – A three-month old girl and an Ecuadorian tourist are killed when a driver swerves into a crowd at a light rail station in Jerusalem. The driver, Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi is shot and killed by police. Israeli media reported he published militant writing on Facebook and supported Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic group that has conducted attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, but his family denied he supported Hamas or any terror organization.
July 14, 2016 – After a Bastille Day fireworks display in Nice, France, a man drives a 20-ton rental truck into the crowd, striking and killing 86 people. The attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, a Tunisian national, drives nearly a mile on the beachfront promenade before he is shot and killed by authorities. French officials say Bouhlel seemed to become radicalized “very quickly” by ISIS propaganda before the attack. He also suffered from mental illness, according to his father.
November 28, 2016 – At Ohio State University, 11 people are injured when a student, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, carries out a car and knife attack. A campus police officer shoots and kills Artan, whom police believe was inspired by ISIS and the radical cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki.

BERLIN — Authorities say a van crashed into a crowd Saturday outside a popular bar in the German city of Muenster, killing two people and injuring 20 others. The driver of the vehicle shot and killed himself after the crash, local police said. Six of the injured are listed in critical condition.

It’s not yet clear who the suspect is or what the motive is. Police said they are examining reports that other suspects may have fled the crash scene.

The incident is being treated as terrorism, but the suspect’s identification has not yet been transferred to the U.S., a U.S. intelligence source told CBS News.

Herbert Reul, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, said the driver was a German citizen. Reul stressed the investigation is at an early stage but said “at the moment, nothing speaks for there being any Islamist background.”

“We are investigating in all directions,” he explained, according to the Associated Press. Reul said two people were killed in the crash, lowering the previous figure provided by police.

Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reports that the suspect’s apartment was being searched for possible explosives.

On Twitter, local police warned residents to “avoid the area near the Kiepenkerl pub” in the city’s historic downtown area where a large-scale police operation was underway.

Police said a suspicious object was found in the van and they’re still examining it to see if it is dangerous. They told German news agency dpa that the object was the reason why a large area around the scene was sealed off after the crash.

Residents said they were enjoying the first warm afternoon in the area that features many shops and cafés, CBS News correspondent Roxana Saberi said on CBSN. People were outside enjoying themselves, many of them college students, enjoying the weather.