'Mavi Marmara to be turned into a museum'

Senior member of the IHH says Turkish vessel to be turned in to museum to commemorate the 9 activists killed, Channel 10 reports.

By JPOST.COM STAFF, YAAKOV KATZ, BEN HARTMAN
The 'Mavi Marmara' 311 (R) (photo credit: Reuters/Emrah Dalkaya)
The 'Mavi Marmara' 311 (R)
(photo credit: Reuters/Emrah Dalkaya)
The Mavi Marmara will be turned into a museum in order to commemorate the nine activists killed last June, a senior member of the IHH told Channel 10 news on Tuesday.
Whole parts of the ship have been destroyed and are now under construction. Bullet holes in the walls, however, will not be repaired "because we have to remember," he said.
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The Turkish NGO had originally planned to send the ship on a second Turkish aid flotilla to Gaza but backed out of the program weeks before the fleet set sail.
The message was relayed to AFP by Dror Feiler, an Israeli-Swedish artist who participated in last year's flotilla, who said that the cancellation was due to "technical reasons."
IHH organizers had originally considered postponing the flotilla as a result of regional developments, particularly the anti-government protest movement in Syria, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported in June.
“We are reconsidering our plans," flotilla spokesman and IHH board member Huseyin Oruc told Hurriyet. "The international community is talking about an intervention in Syria, a development that would affect Turkey very much, as well as Palestine and peace in the region. All the factors are inter-linked and we must be looking at all of them."
A second senior member of the IHH told Channel 10 news that the NGO eventually decided to back out of the flotilla completely, saying that they didn't want to delay the other ships.
The protest flotilla came to an end on July 7 when Greece intercepted a number of vessels and refused to allow them to sail on to Israel. Organizers decided to send more than half of the activists in Athens home.