Scimitar-wielding Turkey governor takes retirement
A Turkish regional governor who declared while wielding a double-bladed scimitar above his head that Turkey's forces would soon march into Mosul and Jerusalem has gone into retirement, reports said on Thursday. Necati Senturk, the government-appointed governor of the Kirsehir province, raised eyebrows with a speech from the balcony of the governor's office at the weekend as Turkish troops were poised to take the Syrian city of Afrin from Kurdish militia. "God willing, we will take Afrin. We will take Manbij," he said in videos posted on Turkish news websites, referring to another Kurdish-held city in Syria. Waving a sword known as a zulfiqar above his head with one hand and holding a megaphone in another, he added: "We will also go to Mosul, and we will go to Jerusalem!... God is Greatest!" The Turkish sultans controlled both the Iraqi city of Mosul and the holy city of Jerusalem for long periods during the Ottoman Empire. The zulfiqar is a double bladed scimitar of the kind used by Islamic warriors in the early conquests. Such a sword is said to have been given by the prophet Mohammed to his son-in-law the prophet Ali. It was not immediately clear to what extent Senturk's retirement on age grounds had been pre-planned or forced by his incendiary speech. But Senturk, Kirsehir governor for the last three and a half years, said he was unrepentant. "In terms of fatherland and language, I have no fear," he was quoted as saying by the Dogan news agency. "All good things must come to an end. When a person is at the top, they must know how to step down. "And going out at the peak is most auspicious."
