One of the measures the Turkish government has long stated it would undertake if the government of Israel did not meet its three demands for normalizing relations is to pursue criminal cases in Turkey, and to assist other individuals and countries to do the same, against the IDF soldiers and officers who participated in the seizure of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla which resulted in the deaths of nine and serious wounding of 30 on the Mavi Marmara, and the wounding of dozens more on the other vessels which participated in the flotilla.
More detailed news of the efforts by the Turkish government to identify these IDF soldiers and officers have been published in the Turkish press, along with a list of IDF soldiers and officers who are said to have participated in the seizure.
This news was first published by the Turkish newspaper Sabah, and has also been reported by many other newspapers and media outlets here.
Almost immediately after the IDF seized the Gaza Freedom Flotilla last May, the Turkish Ministry of Justice began an extensive investigation to determine the identities of the IDF soldiers and officers who participated in the seizure. The Turkish intelligence service and other agencies are assisting with the investigation.
One of the methods used was to collect all available Mavi Marmara and flotilla related video and photographs from the world media, including Israeli media, and from any other available source. Experts then carefully went through all of it second by second and photograph by photograph. During this search images of IDF soldiers who had participated were collected.
Turkish experts in Hebrew worked with the Turkish intelligence service and other agencies to identify those who were in these images. One method that was used to put names to the images was to go through thousands of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking service accounts, to compare photographs posted on the accounts with the images which had been collected, to read what had been posted, and to follow links to other accounts.
Some of the passengers and crew on the Mavi Marmara and the other flotilla vessels were also involved in confirming that those depicted in the images and photographs had participated in the attack.
The names of several, reported to be twelve, of those whose images have been found have not been determined yet.
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Note: The three conditions of the Turkish government for normalizing relations with Israel are:
- an apology by the government of Israel,
- Israel’s paying compensation to those who were wounded during the seizure and to the families of those killed during the seizure, and
- a lifting, or possibly a major easing – freely allowing humanitarian aid into and exports out of Gaza under international supervision has been suggested as being acceptable, of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Contrary to what some say and report, there have always been these three conditions. They have been stated by the Turkish government and reported in the Turkish media since the beginning, but for a long time only the first two were generally focused on and discussed.
Some in the media only recently began reporting on the third, with some of those reports claiming it was a new condition.