Turkish security organizations accused the IHH of aiding Al Qaeda groups. The IHH previously was accused of transporting weapons to jihadists fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad under the guise of humanitarian aid.
Earlier this month, local media reports stated that an IHH truck was detained attempting to cross the Syrian border with weapons hidden among packages of aid.
IHH is best known as the main sponsor of the May 2010 flotilla to Gaza.
Working with the IHH, the flotilla was organized by the Free Gaza Movement, a coalition of leftist human rights activists and pro-Palestinian groups engaged in attempts to break a blockade imposed by Israel on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Ayers and Dohrn were close associates for years of President Obama, while Evans of Code Pink was a fundraiser and financial bundler for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
In January 2010, Ayers, Dohrn, and Evans provoked chaos on the streets of Egypt in an attempt to enter Gaza with the Free Gaza Movement to join in “solidarity” with the territory’s population and leadership.
The three helped to stir riots after the Egyptian government refused to allow a large number of protesters to enter neighboring Gaza. Eventually, the protesters accepted an Egyptian offer of allowing about 100 marchers into Gaza. Once in the territory, the marchers were reportedly met on the Gaza side by former Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
At the time of the march, Secretary of State John Kerry, then a senator, wrote a letter in support of a “humanitarian delegation from Massachusetts” to Gaza. Members of Ayers-Dohrn-Evans group documented on their blogs that Kerry’s letter was used at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to pressure Egypt to let the group into Gaza.
Images of the letter were also posted on the Electronic Intifada website run by Ali Abunimah, who was with Evans’s group in Egypt and who spoke at pro-Palestinian events in the 1990s alongside Obama. In one such event, a 1999 fundraiser for Palestinian “refugees,” Abunimah recalled introducing Obama on stage.
Kerry’s office previously met with Code Pink members. Sarah Roche-Mahdi of Code Pink also is a member of the United for Peace and Justice Palestine Task Force, which met with Kerry’s staffers.
Kerry in 2009 became the most senior U.S. politician to visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, although at the time he did not meet with Hamas leaders.
