Law-Forums.org

[said99]

According to general principles of international maritime law, Israel had no right to land on the "Mavi Marmara" vessel. The ship was in international waters and according an article I read in the German FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which is a high quality German newspaper), Israel had no right to search a ship or land on it in international waters.

http://www.faz.net/s/RubB30ABD11B91F41C0BF2722C308D40318/Doc~E5237CD1680B143708A8E91DACB267CF5~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

(sorry, in German)

Wikipedia says the following:

Ships sailing the high seas are generally under the jurisdiction of the flag state; however, when a ship is involved in certain criminal acts, such as piracy, any nation can exercise jurisdiction under the doctrine of hostis humani generis.

Therefore, I changed my mind and considered the landing of the troops as a hostile act and what the activists did as an act of self-defense.

Yesterday, I came across another regulation:

San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, 12 June 1994

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/385ec082b509e76c41256739003e636d/7694fe2016f347e1c125641f002d49ce

Art. 67 says the following:

SECTION V : NEUTRAL MERCHANT VESSELS AND CIVIL AIRCRAFT

Neutral merchant vessels

67. Merchant vessels flying the flag of neutral States may not be attacked unless they:

(a) are believed on reasonable grounds to be carrying contraband or breaching a blockade, and after prior warning they intentionally and clearly refuse to stop, or intentionally and clearly resist visit, search or capture;
(b) engage in belligerent acts on behalf of the enemy;
(c) act as auxiliaries to the enemy s armed forces;
(d) are incorporated into or assist the enemy s intelligence system;
(e) sail under convoy of enemy warships or military aircraft; or
(f) otherwise make an effective contribution to the enemy s military action, e.g., by carrying military materials, and it is not feasible for the attacking forces to first place passengers and crew in a place of safety. Unless circumstances do not permit, they are to be given a warning, so that they can re-route, off-load, or take other precautions.


Now, I'm confused.

Who is right now?

[darrell]

I will try to remain strictly on the international legal ground, so I won't take into account any unrelated factors including moral and political ones.
It is true that no one can board on to another ship on international waters. The exceptions you cited give legal reasons to stop and search and if it deems necessary, to divert the ship. The applicable exception in this case is the one concerning the Israeli blockade on Gaza. It may be argued that as the flotilla was breaching the blockade the Article 67 (a) is applicable. The problem with this kind of reasoning is that the Gaza blockade is itself illegal in accordance with the Article 33 of Fourth Geneva Convention, and therefore cannot be offered as a basis of legal claims. In other words, You cannot justify a criminal act by basing it on another criminal act. Thus, even if the captain of the largest ship shot an Israeli soldier with his own personal weapon it would be an act of self-defense.

Edit/Addition: It is extremely irrelevant to talk about the intentions or mindsets of the individuals in legal discussions. A court of justice would never sentence anyone to life for his/her intentions. Legal judgments are based on actions, not intentions.

@Zoi: Dear Zoi, not that I sympathize our PM, but as the ship is legally Turkish sovereign territory, Turkish government is exclusively responsible for the well-being not only of Turkish nationals but also of people from every nationality.

[montgomery69]

I cant say anything about the immediate attack but very likely about the organization of the whole incident this is right http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/14896075.asp?&hid=14896290

[avikar76]

After all that has happened, no one is right. But who decided to send that ship to the critical region is DEAD wrong.

[delron72]

I am confused too. All the different news.
Today I read and saw on Tv the ppl who were freed. They said that they were forced to drink a fluid and were undressed. They talked about the how horribale they have been treated.
Turkish doctors examined and tested the released ppl. They all had cancer causing substances in their blood?

Everybopdy knows how Israel uses exaggerated force all the time. Even if they were right in their matter, the way they acted was very very wrong.I wonder how they will "fix" this mess.

[banys]

I will have a more careful look at your links, there is no doubt that Israel acted like it was predicted and expected to act, meaning like a totalitarian authority, even in international waters.
Greek activists say that they were 70mls away from land, this means that Israel violated international law (20mls they are permitted to control), but anyway we are talking about Gaza, an occupied region actually and it's Israel who occupies it.

Apart from this, I want to state that in a very respectable newspaper in Greece,I 've read that Turkey went to Israel with 3 milirary aircrafts and demanded to load NOT ONLY the Turks but all of the captives, 350 or so persons in the whole, citizens of other nationalities, taking over this way the role of the ultimate controler, as the newspaper commented up on this.
This is what we say in Greek, Erdogan trys to 'sell tsambouka' (you are a Turk, I guess that tsambouka has the same meaning in turkish as in greek) to the Israelis and to present himself as the legitimate authority to put in order the messy situation.
I don't know what to believe and, to be honest, it's not of an extreme importance for me, we have other problems here right now.
I just feel sorry for those who died and for those who will be dead, and my mind goes to the verses of a Greek poet, Varnalis, a known communist of his age:
'at the war I was carrying weapons, so that he folks get killed for the master's food', from a poem that is also a song.

[culley96]

Bix, you and some others keep missing the real focus on this matter. As much as I agree with Highlighter that Turkey shouldnt be the sole tutelar of Hamas' Palestians, we need to consider that 9 regular people WITHOUT firearms have been killed by the members of an army WITH firearms. The rest is subtle details in my opinion. Whatever we do, we should not miss what the outcome was in this unfortunate matter.
IDF totally screwed this up and did what some of the activists wanted them to do. Israel in this matter is wrong from head to toe. In short it is:
-Attacking a civil ship of an allied country
-Killing civil individuals in that ship
-Confiscating ships and their passengers carrying myriad of different passports
-Not giving any information of the identities of the deceased and detained people

Everything in this picture is wrong. I'm sure this all started out as a self defense action in mind. Maybe if it was another country in Israel's place, it would have attempted to do the same. If only Israeli Army could confiscate all of the ships without hurting anyone, this would have been a short paragraph news on the newspapers.

But the real picture is, Israel killed civilians because of the incapability of its armed forces. After this point they are to accept their fault and offer their excuses with compensations to the families of the deceased ones and they should also announce the world that this is not going to repeat.

We all know that Hamas is attacking Israel from Gaza with rockets. And no one can deny the fact that they have the right to defend themselves against this. But not like that. The details you post up there do not justify that 9 fellow Turkish citizens have been killed by an army.

They screwed up and they have to clean this up. Naive explanations like "But but... the passengers have attacked our soldiers with iron bars" are not real excuses. Bad planning of a military operation killed 9 people. Rest is fuss

EDIT: Ladybug, this "making them drink the cancerous liquid" sounds pure propaganda to me. Dont give these IHH guys much credit pliz.

[ingel]

Unfortunately, and as usual, 'might' is right. The fact that the 'flotilla' was organised into a convoy-like system, and with the expressed aim of breaching a blockade, and that they resisted investigation, has given the Isrealis a number of excuses.
Given that her enemies see her as nothing more than something similar to a 'Crusader State' with a very limited and short lifespan, Isreal has no option but to respond in a premptory manner.
Britain, the mandated power over Palestine in the late 1940's, faced similar deadly challenges from organised Jewish activists and rapidly quit as a result of intransigent Jewish terrorism and insurgency.
In today's circumstances, and given the historical background, international law will only be adhered to when it suits either of the antagonists.
You have to ask yourself just why it is that the Gaza issue has not been resolved peacefully and who funds the ability for both sides to remain at loggerheads. Who funds it 'owns' it.

[spengler]

Having read lots of articles and tried to analyze the issue objectively, as a Turk i am really confused. I cannot answer who is right or wrong but i can compare the contradicting sources you supplied.

First of all second source you got in here does not clearly define 'reasonable grounds' plus i think the whole point missed is that the blockade of Gaza Strip itself is a controversial issue.

Secondly, i think self defence of an armed comando can not be considered equal to the self defence of those people. So we cannot see the issue as 'this if not that...'

I will not talk on wikipedia article for it has no liability.

Rather than thoughts i have senses about this issue. At first i was highy frustrated by the killings of my fellow nationals however now this seems to me that this is a plan.

Although nobody expected the world react that much, nobody expected Israel to go that far, either.

What comes to my idea about the plan? I think it is organised because

1st: PM Erdogan did not necessarily concentrate on the Turkish people killed or mistreated in the attack but was trying to justify the free gaza movement, giving details like 'there weres speech made me think that he is not considered by the life loss unlike the other countries' leaders who are more interested on their citizens' situations.

Secondly the strong relation of his party and IHH, the fact that he made his speech in his party's building as if this issue only concerns AKP not the whole country or as if he tries to make domestic profit out of it and all this happening after the uranium exchange between Iran Turkey and Brasil has been made DOES make me think this is a plan of Turkish government and other dynamics i can not really figure out.

All in all, i cannot understand why they insisted to go, break the blockade and they were let go. Another question. As a person who is more involved with the human rights facet of this sh*t, I question: Did 9 people need to die for this worldwide awareness peak?

Whatever, i doubt my writing has coherence, just sorry... but let me tell you my conclusions of all these..

1. Cant say Turkey or the activists are right but can easily say that Isreal was badly wrong in this and for the people who thin Turkey makes it a big issue it is the issue of Arabs; I dont really agree because this is an issue of humanity PLUS even Scandinavian people who has no tie to Palestinians DO show their reaction.

2. After this the whole world sees is Israel as a 'danger'. They say half a million Israeli tourist will not be going to Turkey but I the tourist number of Israel will decline more. At least people are going to avoid. Because in the previous days most of the media has shown that the army kills people and oes not necessarily try to justify it. Instead the Israeli politicians choose to draw a perfect portray of the most powerful state of the world who see itself rightful even in the most bloddy violations committed by its army . This is not exactly what I think but most of the people will see the issue like this. People did eye-witnessed that Israeli soldiers do not hesitate to kill. Previous day i have watched a documentary about similar incidents happened in the past. The Israeli army once directly caused one Libyan passenger plane crash and did not say anything, attacked and American ship and did not apologized... and many similar incidents

Now I have a flight to Manama tomorrow and i do think of the possibilites since it is going to fly over ME. Going to Israel??? With all due respect to Jews and Israelis but 'No, thank you!'

[unss94]

Even though I am Turkish, I also am confused.
First of all, I believe that what happens to Palestinians is not turkey's business. It is good to help people in need, but I think as a country we should be selfish sometimes in order not to cause things like that to happen. People may argue that providing goods and food is necessary but I don't think so. It is United Nations job to help, not Turkey's.
But then when I look at what has happened I see that Israel had no right to treat the people aboard the way it did. There were not only "terrorists" (as Israelis think) but many international people too. There w