TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: The Turkish report on the Mughrabi Gate excavation has reportedly been leaked to a Turkish publication and is highly critical.

Turkish archaeologists harshly criticised Israeli excavation: report

ANKARA (AFP) — A team of Turkish experts harshly criticised a controversial archaeological dig in Jerusalem undertaken by Israel, according to a report published Friday in the Turkish daily Today's Zaman.

Turkish experts visited the site because the Ayyubid, Mameluke and Ottoman dynasties ruled in the area successively between the 12th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

According to the Turkish team, "the ongoing activities give the impression that they are a planned and systematically implemented effort which aims to destroy the values associated with cultural assets and the sources of information of these cultures," the English-language daily said, citing the actual report.

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Background here.

UPDATE: Here's the Today's Zaman article, which is long and detailed:

Report: Israeli work risks destroying Jerusalem’s Islamic assets
A Turkish technical mission sent to Jerusalem to inspect Israeli archaeological work near the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque has criticized the excavations and called on Israel to consult with Palestinian and international authorities on a final plan, the mission's report, obtained by Today's Zaman, revealed.

The Turkish mission visited Jerusalem in March to inspect the archeological work being carried out by the Israeli authorities at the Mughrabi ramp, which climbs to the southwestern gate of the Haram al-Sharif complex, amid international concerns over the excavations. Its report, which was completed in the summer but not released to the public, observed that the excavations are unacceptable by legal and scientific standards and suggested that the excavation goes beyond scientific purposes. It said even if there is no actual excavation at Haram Al-Sharif, there are enough indications to give the impression that it is only a matter of time.

"The archaeological excavation at the Mughrabi pathway, which involves various traces of the Umayyad, Ayyubid, Mameluke and Ottoman periods, must be discontinued immediately," the report said, echoing an earlier report by UNESCO in March. For future reconstruction efforts in the area, the report recommended a competition open to Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian architects and the joint work of Israeli and Palestinian experts supervised by organizations such as UNESCO and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

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"The tunneling and excavation work and the large amount of soil extraction shown to our mission along the Wailing Wall give the impression that this is an intervention of great scale and depth and that this intervention goes beyond scientific purpose, even if there is no excavation toward Haram al-Sharif," it said.

While not openly adopting the Palestinian position labeling Israeli archeology as a mode of the "Judaization" or "Israelization" of Jerusalem, the report observed that the ongoing activities are a part of a planned and systematically implemented effort to destroy values associated with cultural assets of the Ayyubid, Mameluke and Ottoman periods.

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It identified "distortion of Jerusalem's history by means of highlighting the Judaic aspect or identifying with being of Arab origin" as the source of current problems and emphasized Jerusalem was a city where Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Armenian communities constituted a "heterogeneous population" living in peace.

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Then there's this:

A special section in the report was dedicated to the Wailing Wall. It claimed that the importance of the area for the Jews is a fairly new phenomenon as it had no religious connotations in the period of King Herod (first century B.C.), when the courtyard was a market, and that it had no religious importance until the end of the Mameluke period (early 16th century). ...

If this is what the report actually says, and not some misunderstanding, it is disturbingly tendentious. The Wailing Wall or Western Wall is part of the Platform of the Temple Mount. Although it was not part of the Temple itself, the Temple stood on the Platform and the whole area was considered sacred. It is simply not true that "it had no religious connotations in the period of King Herod." I have discussed the Herodian Temple Mount Platform in greater detail here.