French President Emmanuel Macron and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz are the two leaders of EU member states who are in favor of the EU’s consolidated fight against «political Islam» and sanctions against Turkey, which they perceive as a source of danger. Naturally, the recent terrorist attacks in France and Austria have become the cards they rushed to play in their game.
But what was the role of the authorities of these countries in these events, and what was the role of the Turkish authorities, strictly speaking, ignoring the policy of fomenting intolerance in one case and promoting dialogue in the other? We have already written about how the beheaded teacher, Samuel Paty, contacted the French police because of threats he had received for showing provocative cartoons to his students.
However, neither he personally, nor the school where he worked and near which he was killed, was provided with security, despite several requests. The assailant spent half a day interrogating students about him before committing the murder. Similarly, the warnings of the priest of the Notre-Dame church in Nice about threats he received shortly before the attack were ignored.
In contrast, while the security forces and police in France did not know the identities of the terrorists and their preparations for the attacks, their counterparts in Austria did. The Austrian special services were informed by their Turkish counterparts of the danger posed by Kujtim Fejzulai, who carried out the shooting in Vienna in 2018. He had been deported from Turkey, where he was trying to travel to Syria to join the terrorists.
So, as we can see, the Turkish authorities, whom Sebastian Kurz portrays as a threat to Europe, were actually trying to protect Europe from terror in this case. So, what did the Austrian authorities, led by the «defender of Europe,» do in this situation? Not only did they release Kujtim Fejzulai from prison a few months early, but they also ignored the warnings of the security forces of a neighboring country, which informed them in June about his attempts to acquire automatic weapons while passing through terrorist bases.
This information was sent by the Slovakian criminal police to the Austrian government led by Sebastian Kurz. So what did this «defender of Europe» do to really protect it from a real threat? Based on what happened, nothing, despite the fact that this person was known to be dangerous, as the Austrian authorities had previously been informed by the Turkish authorities, had been convicted on terrorism charges and had been miraculously released a few months earlier, only to be later discovered by the police of a neighboring country trying to purchase automatic weapons.
It should be remembered that a similar story has already happened in France. On that occasion, the Turkish intelligence services once again tried to protect Europe from terrorist attacks, informing their French counterparts twice, in 2014 and 2015, about the terrorist threat posed by Omar Ismail Mostefai, who was in France at the time. The warnings were ignored, and a few months later he became one of the organizers of the massacre in France that left over 100 people dead and over 300 injured.
And now, the leaders of Austria and France are proposing to introduce criminal penalties for expressing opinions that could be seen as inspiring terrorism, specifically targeting «political Islam» associated with Turkey. However, as we can see, in the most high-profile cases, it was actually the Turkish intelligence services that tried to prevent terrorist attacks in Europe, while it was the French and Austrian intelligence services that allowed them to happen, even when they were clearly warned about the danger posed by certain individuals.
So who is actually protecting Europe and who is creating a threat to it through their criminal actions or inactions?