 |
Hijacked ship drops anchor at Somali port
Turkish navy frigates the TCG Gediz and the TCG Gaziantep, which have been in the region as part of a UN-led force to prevent pirates from hijacking foreign ships off the Somali coast, have still been closely following the Turkish ship Horizon I, Anatolia reported, while noting that there had been no contact with the ship as of Thursday afternoon.
As of Wednesday morning the pirates first surrounded the Horizon I in speedboats before boarding the ship, which was carrying sulfate from Saudi Arabia to Jordan. Anatolia reiterated in its article posted from Ankara that there were five armed pirates on the ship, citing anonymous sources.
Several pirate attacks occur off Somalia's lawless coast each week despite poor weather and the presence of international warships in the Gulf of Aden. At least 11 ships are currently being held.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, and the clan militias and insurgent groups who control the coastline have little incentive to rein in pirates, who make multi-million-dollar ransoms.
As of the end of 2008 some 15 ships, three of them Turkish, had been hijacked, along with more than 300 crew members, 37 of whom were Turkish.
In earlier hijacking cases ships were taken to the port of Eyl in Somalia, and pirates had asked for ransoms by getting in contact with the lawyers of the related shipping company, Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım told reporters at a press conference held on Wednesday evening in İstanbul. He added that he expected the Horizon I to eventually be taken to that port as well.
“Our getting in contact with the pirates is out of the question. There is no such procedure,” Yıldırım said in response to a question. “When conditions are ripe, the necessary steps will be taken.”
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| BERİL DEDEOĞLU |  |
||
| Yemen and beyond | |||
| ABDULLAH BOZKURT |  |
||
| Turkey and Mexico: Distant yet so close | |||
| ABDÜLHAMİT BİLİCİ |  |
||
| Google kidnaps Gül! | |||
| MARKAR ESAYAN |  |
||
| There is need for a new initiative | |||
| EMRE USLU |  |
||
| Operational errors | |||
| İHSAN YILMAZ |  |
||
| The Egyptian elections, Islam and Islamists | |||
| HASAN KANBOLAT |  |
||
| Are Russian tourists being discouraged from visiting Turkey? | |||
| CHARLOTTE MCPHERSON |  |
||
| The modern ‘Great Game’: women’s role and status | |||
| KLAUS JURGENS |  |
||
| Back to the ’80s | |||
| KATHY HAMILTON |  |
||
| Random acts of violence | |||
| MERVE BÜŞRA ÖZTÜRK |  |
||
| Adding insult to injury in Uludere | |||
| NICOLE POPE |  |
||
| Shifting responsibility | |||
| YAVUZ BAYDAR |  |
||
| ‘Errorism’ | |||
| ORHAN MİROĞLU |  |
||
| ‘Strategic vision’ | |||
| ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ |  |
||
| Turkey through Amnesty International’s eyes | |||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
