IHH (Insani Yardim Vakfi) - Turkey

Funding

• In 2022, total income was 2.2 billion Turkish lira (~$110 million); total expenses were 1.8 billion Turkish lira (~$94.8 million).
• In 2023, IHH spent $5.7 million on 67 projects in “Palestine.”
• According to the New York Times (June 1, 2010): “The organization is funded entirely on donations…money that comes from Turkey’s religious merchant class, an affluent section of Turkish society that has brought the party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to power.” Another Times report expanded on IHH’s “extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite,” and cited a Turkish paper’s editorial that referred to IHH as a “governmental-nongovernmental-organization” (GNGO).

Ties to Terrorism

• IHH is a member of the Union of the Good, an umbrella of 50+ Islamic organizations, which was designated by the US government as “an organization created by Hamas leadership to transfer funds to the terrorist organization.”
• According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), during the IDF’s 2002 Operation Defensive Shield, the Union of the Good transferred money, via Hamas charities, to families of suicide bombers.
• According to a December 2021 article by the  Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), “The IHH transferred to the Hamas military wing, systematically and for years, funds that served to strengthen Hamas militarily” and “Mehmet Kaya, head of the IHH branch in Gaza, [] transferred to Hamas senior officials Ismail Haniyeh and Raed Saad cash that had come from Turkey and was designated for the Hamas military wing. These funds served, among other things, to build a naval-training facility at a Hamas base in Gaza and to purchase equipment and weapons.”
• According to German media, the German branch of IHH had a close relationship with Milli Görüs (IGMG), a “pan-European organization, which the German domestic intelligence agency claims is responsible for promoting extremist ideas and propagating antisemitic conspiracy theories.” 
• According to a Danish research institute, the Turkish authorities investigated IHH in 1997 after receiving info that senior figures had purchased weapons from Islamic radicals. A police raid on an IHH building in Istanbul found weapons, explosives, and instructions for making improvised explosive devices (IEDs)
• French counter-terrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere claimed that IHH maintained contact with Al-Qaeda in Milan and Algerian terrorists in Europe; recruited militants for fighting in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan; and played a “central role” in the Al Qaida bomb plot targeting LAX airport.
• In 2008, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak signed an order outlawing IHH.

Activities

• In December 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack, IHH organized a march against “Occupied Israel, which has been committing genocide in Gaza.” At the march, IHH President Bülent Yildirim stated that “America and Israel aim to first remove Muslims from Gaza and then divide Turkey. America is an occupied country. Zionists rule the USA. People of the United States, march! Cleanse your administrations of Zionists. We are fighting this fight both for Palestine and for our own country.”
• In June 2022, IHH organized a march for the 12th anniversary of the Israeli attack on Mavi Marmara. At the march, IHH President Bülent Yildirim urged Turkey to end normalization with Israel, stating, “There can never be normalization with Israel. There can never be peace with Israel. We do not like Israel, and we do not like Zionism. We are declaring this to the entire world.”
• In May 2021, IHH organized a protest outside the Israeli Consulate General in Istanbul. At the protest, Yildirim professed that “We have marked the freedom of Al-Quds with our blood. We will never submit Al-Quds to the Zionists. We will lose our lives, but don’t think we are satisfied with death alone. We will place our foreheads in Masjid al-Aqsa in prostration. Only then will we submit our souls. But you will not be there to witness our prostrations. You will be driven out!”
• In May 2021, IHH tweeted not to use the language of “CLASH, CONFLICT, WAR” but rather employ “ETHNIC CLEANSING, TERROR, GENOCIDE, OCCUPATION, BRUTALITY, MASSACRE, APARTHEID” when describing “#GenocideinGaza.”
• In December 2019, IHH called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to “step in” as the ICC “must fulfill its function of serving justice and the international law and stay true to its fundamental roots.”
• In May 2018, IHH President Bülent Yildirim spoke at a protest march. According to IHH’s account of the event, he stated that “Israel is a muderer (sic), a lier (sic)…We will tell everyone that Israel is a murderer. We know that Israel is the cause of all persecutions in the world. Israel supposes that the people are tired now and will not stand by Jerusalem. If God lets, we will, if necessary, organize the whole world and throw the Zionism out of the Palestinian lands.”
• In May 2018, Yildirim chanted at a rally “Down with America, down with Israel. Israel is a terrorist state.”
• Yildirim has alleged that “Zionism” controls the pharmaceutical, food, arms, and media industries.

Gaza Flotilla

• In 2010, IHH organized a six-ship flotilla, which set out carrying more than 700 passengers to “challenge” Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Israeli commandos boarded the largest ship, the “Mavi Marmara,” and were met with severe and extreme violence by forty IHH activists. The activists were “equipped with gas masks, night vision goggles, and life vests,” and the IDF said that “the passengers also seized a commando’s side arm.” The soldiers were attacked with chains, clubs, iron rods, “knives, broken glass bottles, and sling shots.” After this armed struggle, nine activists were dead and nine Israeli soldiers were injured, several critically. During searches of the ships following the operation, no humanitarian supplies were found aboard the Marmara and two other boats.
• IHH purchased three of the “Free Gaza” ships, and was one of the leaders of the flotilla. IHH members said that the boats carried supplies worth about $10 million. IHH also helped Hamas prepare the Gaza harbor to receive the ships.
• On April 7, 2010 Bulent Yildirim stated that the “flotilla will serve as a test of sincerity for Israel. If it fires at our ships, it will be interpreted as declaration of war on our countries.”