Tuesday, November 21, 2023
Elder of ZiyonApproximately 1,000 boats will gather in Turkey on Wednesday before heading toward Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade and disrupt maritime trade coming into Israel during the war with Hamas, in an apparent repeat of similar attempts from over a decade ago.In an interview with Turkish news website Haber7, Volkan Okçu, one of the organizers of the protest, indicated the boats will carry 4,500 people from 40 countries, “including anti-Zionist Jews.”Among the 1,000 vessels would be 313 boats filled with Russian activists, and 104 filled with Spanish activists, he said. Only 12 Turkish vessels will join the flotilla, he told Haber7.However, Okçu said in a later tweet that he expected the number of Turkish vessels to be much higher, at least 1,000, and insisted that the initiative is not associated with the Turkish government. He did not explain the discrepancy in numbers.
This is all the crazed fantasy of one guy.
Volkan Okçu's Twitter account indicates that he is not the leader of anything, everything he talks about is disorganized and this is all wishful thinking:
Friends, many people call and ask, God bless me, I am organizing an event quietly on my own, there is no special situation...The idea has already been formed from abroad, so I am not a leader or anything, I am just someone in my own way...I can't spare time here because I'm busy...There are a lot of people asking for a boat to rent, but I don't know if I can arrange a captain or a boat and stuff. If there is a company that does this job professionally, I would appreciate it if they could contact me. After all, I'm going with my own vehicle, I don't know the rental methods...Apart from that, there are more than 70,000 sea vessels registered in our country, even if 10,000 of them were only suitable, frankly, I would expect many more people who want to participate...Our country's capacity alone should have been at least 1,000 boats...So far, there have been many boats coming and going in parts, we are all organizing individual events. I wish a completely reliable NGO had taken over and organized this work, it would have been a much more systematic work...
My only request from all of you is that this should not turn into a personal show while there are babies being killed by bombs there, it's a shame... If anyone wants to organize it, I'm willing to help out, no problem...
In Turkish media, Okçu portrays himself as the mastermind who has thought of everything. The "plan" is to create a blockade in international waters with private boats to stop all shipping to Ashdod and cripple Israel's economy.
It sounds like Okçu had the idea, floated it past some people, they said, sure, sounds great dude, he interpreted that to mean that everyone will join in, and suddenly a fantasy 1000 strong flotilla appeared out of nowhere. Then when people started asking him logistical questions, he quickly backtracked as he realized he has no clue of how to organize something like this.
His own map of the planned journey is an improbable straight line that goes overland a bit in Cyprus:
No one is organizing this fictional flotilla.
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