American Reportedly Among Dead Flotilla Activists

Notice below how short and sweet this article is by the good Jewish folks at the Forward. You notice also how they attempt to diminish his value as a person by saying 'dual American-Turkish' citizen. They also fail to mention that he was born on American soil which makes him as 'American as apple pie'.

By JTA

Published June 03, 2010.

A dual American-Turkish citizen is reportedly among the activists killed by Israeli soldiers when a Gaza-bound flotilla was intercepted by Israel’s Navy.

Turkish investigators told the state-run Anatolia news agency that Furkan Dogan, 19, who has both Turkish and U.S. passports, took four bullets to the head and one to the chest in Monday’s incident.

A funeral was held for Dogan, as well as seven of the other victims, in the Faith Mosque in Istanbul, the Hurriyet News Agency reported. Hundreds of people attended the funeral, shouting anti-Israel slogans, according to the news agency.

http://forward.com/articles/128551/

Israeli raid on Gaza Freedom Flotilla killed US citizen Furkan Dogan

By Scott Peterson Scott Peterson

Thu Jun 3, 12:46 pm ET

Istanbul, Turkey – An American-Turkish dual citizen killed during an Israeli commando raid on a humanitarian aid flotilla was among activists buried in Turkey on Thursday.

Furkan Dogan was struck by five bullets shortly before dawn on Monday while atop the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara ship, according to friends who were on board at the time of the Israeli raid and attended the funeral for eight of the nine Turks who died.

The website of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who called the Israeli raid a "bloody massacre" and threatened to sever ties with Israel – listed Mr. Dogan's nationality as American. A State Department spokesman confirmed a dual US-Turkish citizen was killed and said the embassy in Turkey had offered consular services to the family.

Dogan’s death and his US citizenship were spoken of at the funeral.

“The soldiers started shooting and bombing” with bullets and percussion grenades, said Mr. Yunusoalu. “It was a big sound – you can’t hear a thing because of the noise.”

Dogan ran “everywhere” before he was killed, recalled Yunusoalu. “We were very afraid.”

Dogan's father told the state-run Anatolia News Agency that his son had been shot in the forehead, but that the family took comfort believing that Furkan had died with honor, reports the Associated Press.

"I feel my son has been blessed with heaven," said the father, who was not named by AP. "I am hoping to be a father worthy of my son."

Repercussions?Though Dogan’s ongoing American ties appear to be limited, the death of a US citizen will make it harder for the Obama administration to side-step a diplomatic confrontation with Israel.

So far, the US public and government response has been more muted than those in Europe or the Middle East, with the administration caught between a powerful pro-Israel constituency at home, on the one hand, and growing anger among other allies, on the other.

But the death of a US citizen by violence usually prompts a response from the federal government and politicians.

After American activist Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer as she tried to stop it from destroying a Palestinian home in Gaza in 2003, senior US officials demanded a full investigation of the incident.

The results of the Israeli investigation into her death was that it was accidental, which drew charges of a whitewash from her supporters and her family, which this year sued the Israeli military over the incident. An Irish-owned humanitarian boat that is steaming towards Gaza and could challenge Israel’s blockade as soon as Saturday was named in her honor: the MV Rachel Corrie.

Dogan was not the only American casualty of Monday’s events. Shortly after Israel's raid on the flotilla, US college student Emily Henochowicz was struck by an Israeli tear gas canister and lost her eye while attending a pro-Palestinian protest at the Kalandia crossing, along the fence Israel erected between Jerusalem and the West Bank.

How they died?Turkish media reported that initial examinations of the dead Turkish activists show they all had been killed by bullets, some fired at close range. A funeral for the ninth Turkish citizen killed was due on Friday.

Dogan’s apparent dual citizenship was not the only American connection weighing on some of several thousands mourners at the service at Istanbul’s Fatih mosque, where eight coffins draped with Turkish and Palestinian flags were lifted overhead to chants of “God is great!”

A few Turks also shouted: “Murderous United States of America.”

“No thanks to the Americans for supplying all arms to [the Israelis],” said Sakir Yildirim, a UK-Turkish dual national who was also on the Mavi Marmara ship. He said he witnessed three or four deaths of activists within a few yards of him – one of the men shot in the forehead when the red light of a laser rifle sight alighted there. “All that stuff is American made.”

Staff writer Dan Murphy contributed from Boston.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100603/wl_csm/305710/print

US citizen among those killed in attack

Furkan Dogan was struck by five bullets shortly before dawn on Monday while aboard the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara ship.

By Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor

Published: 15:00 June 4, 2010

Gaza City: The Israeli raid on Gaza Freedom Flotilla killed US citizen Furkan Dogan.

An American-Turkish citizen, killed during an Israeli commando raid on a humanitarian aid flotilla, was amongst activists buried in Turkey on Thursday, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Furkan Dogan was struck by five bullets shortly before dawn on Monday while aboard the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara ship. His US citizenship was highlighted at the funeral of eight of the nine Turks who died during the incident.

"Furkan was my friend," said Ali Yunusoalu, who had accompanied his friend during pre-dawn prayers on the top deck of the Mavi Marmar on Monday.

"The soldiers started shooting and bombing" with bullets and percussion grenades," he added "It was a big sound - you can't hear a thing because of the noise." Dogan ran "everywhere" before he was killed, he said. "We were very afraid."

Dogan's father told how his son had been shot in the forehead, but he also mentioned how the family took comfort in believing that Furkan had died in an honourable manner. "I feel my son has been blessed with heaven," he said. "I am hoping to be a father — worthy of my son."

Though Dogan was only part-American, he was a US citizen none-the-less and his death will make it harder for the Obama administration to side-step a diplomatic confrontation with Israel. The death of a US citizen through violent means usually prompts a response from the federal government.

After American activist Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer, as she tried to stop it from destroying a Palestinian home in Gaza, in 2003, senior US officials demanded a full investigation. However, the Israeli investigation into her death found it was accidental, which lead her supporters to claim the issue had been ‘whitewashed'. Her family, this year, sued the Israeli military over the incident.

http://gulfnews.com/news/region/palestinian-territories/us-citizen-among-those-killed-in-attack-1.636830

Turkey Buries Flotilla's U.S. Teen

Mourners carry Frukan Dogan's coffin near Kayseri's central mosque on Friday. Associated Press

Nichole Sobecki/Demotix for The Wall Street Journal

Furkan Dogan died on the Mavi Marmara Monday, when Israeli commandos -- who had boarded the ship to stop it from running Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip -- shot him once in the chest and four times in the face.

Born in New York, Furkan Dogan, 19, Won Lottery to Go on Mission; Becoming a Political Symbol

By MARC CHAMPION

KAYSERI, Turkey—Around 2,000 people shouted slogans and punched the air in this central Turkish town, traveling from its central mosque to its cemetery alongside the coffin of the U.S. teen whose body was returned this week from Israel.

Nineteen-year-old Furkan Dogan was born in Troy, N.Y., and spent his first two years there, his father said. For the first time since, his father said, Furkan was planning to return to the U.S. this summer. But first, he signed on with a Turkish aid group to cruise toward blockaded Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid.

Early Monday morning, as the Mavi Marmara steamed toward Gaza, Israeli commandoes interdicted the ship. Furkan was shot once in the chest and four times in the face.

Israel and Turkey disagree vehemently over who caused violence on the Mavi Marmara to escalate, with Turkey threatening Friday to sever diplomatic ties with Israel. Why the forces who boarded the ship shot Furkan Dogan, and what if any role he may have played in the fighting, is unclear.

Ahmet Dogan, a 49-year-old assistant professor of accounting at Kayseri University, says no one has been able to shed light on his son's final moments. He thinks Furkan may have drawn the Israelis soldiers' attention with the video camera he took with him to document the voyage.

"He thought his American passport would protect him—he thought the Israelis wouldn't harm an American," said Mr. Dogan, interviewed in the yard behind the family's apartment block as his elder son, Mustafa, stood behind his chair and stroked his hair.

The Dogans are a conservative family living in a relatively conservative town in central Anatolia. As friends and relatives gathered Friday to offer condolences, the men were outside in the yard. The women were in the apartment, which the family asked journalists not to enter.

The were no evident signs of radicalism or political diatribes just hours after the Dogan family had traveled to a cemetary six miles from town to bury their young son.

According to friends and relatives, Furkan was the smart kid of the family—a freshly minted high-school graduate with good enough marks to study medicine at university. He subscribed to "Young Brains," a Turkish magazine with puzzles and articles on new technology, and liked to play chess.

"He only had an American passport, and it was very important to him," said Mr. Dogan. "After medical school, he said he wanted to go work in the United States for a while."

It was online that Furkan saw an advertisement for volunteers to deliver aid to Gaza, on the website of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or IHH.

The trip's goal, according to an English-language page on IHH's site, was "to support the Palestinian people, to show we do not recognize the arbitrary Israeli siege, to prove that the embargo/blockade can be legally broken."

Furkan applied first and told his parents later.

"We told him it was too dangerous," said Mr. Dogan. "But I said he could go if he really wanted to."

None of the Dogan family were members of the IHH, Mr. Dogan said, though they had donated to an IHH charity project in Africa. IHH allotted 10 slots on the Mavi Marmara to Kayseri, to be determined by a random lottery. From among 30 applicants, Furkan Dogan won a slot, according to a local IHH representative. Participants, according to the IHH site, were told to bring a sleeping bag and clothes appropriate for stormy weather.

Furkan's family says he wasn't interested in politics. He played soccer online, and also played a decent midfield in the scratch games he and his brother played on weekends, said a friend, Murab Ergunes. He liked to stream American movies and music on his computer.

But he also talked about going to Africa to treat people once he qualified as a doctor. Stories about how people in Gaza were suffering made him want to get involved, said Mr. Dogan.

His apparent disinterest in politics hasn't stopped Furkan and others who died on the Mavi Marmara from becoming potent political symbols in Turkey. As his coffin, draped with a Turkish flag, made its way to the cemetery outside town, the accompanying crowd chanted "Down with Israel," and "There is only one God."

The funeral took place on a sunbaked hillside outside Kayseri. "Don't be like the Israelis. Don't kill anyone," the Imam conducting the rites said before choking up. "Murderer Israel must go to Hell."

At a word from the imam, the crowd dispersed in silence, leaving friends and relatives to push roses into the loose soil over the grave.

Mr. Dogan, calm though visibly distressed, seemed mainly confused and upset by the role the U.S. has played so far. Mr. Dogan said he studied in New York, at the University at Albany-SUNY and at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, returning with his family in 1993.

He said the cautious U.S. response, in which it has avoided criticizing Israel over the incident, has made him begin to think: Had Furkan been a Christian living stateside, what would the U.S. response have been? "I lived in the U.S. I know what people do there when a cat gets stuck in a tree," he said.

The State Department said Friday it was doing everything in its power to aid the family in resolving his case. A senior U.S. official said they'd only learned from his parents that Furkan Dogan had U.S. citizenship. He didn't have any paperwork indicating his citizenship on his person, the official said, adding that once Mr. Dogan's nationality was confirmed, the State Department sent consular officers to meet with his family. The U.S. ambassador to Turkey also contacted Mr. Dogan's parents, the official said.

"We remain open to anything the family wants us to do on their behalf," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.

Write to Marc Champion at marc.champion@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704080104575286912377868890.html?mod=WSJ_World_MIDDLENews