Turkish Nationalist Youth Group Humiliates U.S. Troops
ANKARA (Duvar) – A
number of U.S. troops were humiliated by nationalist Youth Union of Turkey (TGB) on Tuesday as the group has announced that its members had put sacks over the heads of the U.S. troops who just arrived at Istanbul’s Sarayburnu port.
The U.S. troops are believed to be among the crew of the U.S. Navy warship “USS Mount Whitney” which is currently docked at Sarayburnu Port, Duvar English reported.
The TGB is a nationalist group closely linked to the Patriotic Party (Vatan Partisi).
“We have put sacks on the heads of American soldiers in Sarayburnu,” read a statement of the TGB on Twitter on Tuesday.
The amphibious command and control ship ‘USS Mount Whitney’ belonging to the U.S. Navy with the side number LCC-20 anchored in Sarayburnu Portyesterday evening. The ship, which will stay in Istanbul for three days, will then sail to the Black Sea for exercise.
Aydınlık, the newspaper of the Patriotic Party, has also released photos from the scene of the incident.
The group published photos that showed a group of people indicated to be U.S. troops are taking a hit from TGB members.
In 2014, TGB members had also put sacks over the heads of the crew of the American warship USS ROSS (DDG71) as it was returning from a NATO exercise in the Black Sea.
The TGB is undertaking this action as a form of protest to a July 2003 incident in which a group of Turkish Special Forces operating in northern Iraq were arrested by U.S. troops and led away with hoods over their heads to be interrogated.
They were released after 60 hours in response to protests by top Turkish leaders, but what became known as “the hood event” was viewed by many Turks as a deliberate insult.