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Just under half of Turks favor President Erdogan’s conspiracy theory that the failed coup attempt was the work of Imam Gulen of the Poconos, while almost a third think Erdogan did it himself. Only a tenth favor the kind of theory that polite society in the West prefers: “A small group within the Army.”
Erdogan’s new palace gives him plenty of room for making plans
I wrote about false flag operations in Taki’s Magazine in 2014:
With murky foreign affairs much in the news, it’s worth trying to figure out how to think about the notion of “false flag” operations—would, say, a counterterrorism agency stage an act of terrorism to make its political enemies look bad or perhaps just to drum up support for preserving its budget? This possibility is attractive to some personalities and deeply irritating to others because it is close to the ne plus ultra of conspiracy theorizing.
I tend toward the latter prejudice against believing in false flag operations because it’s easy to disappear down the rabbit hole as soon as you start to say, “Well, maybe it was all just a hoax to make us blame somebody 180 degrees in the wrong direction.” Popperian falsification becomes practically impossible as we allow ourselves to consider Mission: Impossible-style layers of deception.
Yet that doesn’t mean they never happen. …
I recount some known historical examples of false flag operations.
I also bring up the blurrier categories of moles and/or agents provocateurs, which I wouldn’t be terribly surprised might turn out to apply in the latest Byzantine intrigue:
On the other hand, it’s not uncommon for those arrested for politics-related crimes to have been egged on by agents provocateurs on the government payroll. Here in America, for instance, Hal Turner, arrested for making far-right threats against federal judges, turned out to have been a paid FBI informant.
In 2008, Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein called for the government to implement “cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories,” because what could go wrong when the taxpayers subsidize crackpottery? In 2009, Mr. Sunstein was made White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Mrs. Sunstein, Samantha Power, is the current UN Ambassador.
Russian history is full of antigovernment protestors and rebels who were also collecting a stipend from the secret police, such as Georgy Gapon, who led the tragic Bloody Sunday march of 1905.
Read the whole thing there.
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I just can’t get over Erdogan’s thousand room, three million square foot palace.
Plenty of room for intrigues there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Complex
Thanks!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3696037/She-silk-wallpaper-bathroom-2-000-roll-Super-spending-habits-Turkey-tyrant-s-shopaholic-wife-laid-bare-two-million-coup-hit-country-earn-3-day.html
Let them eat...Turkish delight?
If Erdogan was behind this coup, why was it such a spectacularly successful operation, whereas his Syria policy over the last 5 years has been so spectacularly unsuccessful? Did he suddenly get vastly more competent?
Trump in 5 minutes.
https://twitter.com/Sonnnnnnnnnnnny/status/755562813397934080
DM treatment of it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3696037/She-silk-wallpaper-bathroom-2-000-roll-Super-spending-habits-Turkey-tyrant-s-shopaholic-wife-laid-bare-two-million-coup-hit-country-earn-3-day.html
Let them eat…Turkish delight?
Gulen supposedly controls most of the Turkish police force. However, from what I read, the police fought back against the coup.
Why is that?
Conspiracy in the lay sense (as opposed to technical, legal sense) is just another name for a plan between two or more participants the existence and means of which are kept secret from those who might oppose its ends. In other words, conspiracies are near ubiquitous in life. Nowhere are they more ubiquitous than in politics, where individuals and groups within a single party are often jockeying for power and position. It just stands to reason that this mindset would work its way up the hierarchy of government and be expressed at the highest levels in what most people would consider “conspiracy.”
One example I’d give is President Clinton’s apparent efforts to disguise a likely terrorist attack or errant missile test on TWA 800 as a mechanical failure a few months before his 1996 reelection campaign (July 17, 1996). As a rule when Democrats are talking about national security they’re losing, and I think the motive to massage the facts was present. Add to this the poor character and facility with untruths of Mr. Clinton and I think we have a compelling basis for further inquiry and to scrutinize the official government account.
Several credible persons (i.e., retired Naval Officer) witnessed a ballistic event leading to the slashdown. Pierre Salinger went to his deathbed trying to present the evidence refuting the government’s story to the public.
On the whole I think that assuming that people with tremendous power are motivated to lie to the public in order to preserve or further their quest for power is a good and healthy thing.
Our friend Graham Fuller defends Gulen:
“The Public Trial of Fethullah Gulen
The Pennsylvania-based cleric is a leading reformer of moderate Islam — either that, or the head of a dangerous terrorist organization.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/18/the-public-trial-of-fethullah-gulen/
Is there a way the victims of the Boston Bomb Brothers can sue Fuller? Why is such a man allowed in polite company still and to write in Foreign Policy?Replies: @DCThrowback, @Chuck
http://www.globalresearch.ca/behind-the-cia-desperate-turkey-coup-attempt-huge-geopolitical-shift/5536494
Islam WAS BORN AS a weaponized political colonialist movement with an imperative to take over the entire globe.
Judaism was born as a tribal cult to justify the tribe's control over a land area about the size (at its largest) of New Jersey
Christianity was born as a non-political adoration cult.
Try asking the Berbers & the Copts, if Islam was born as a "religion of peace".
Raise your hand if you think that Ivy League professors are made of the stuff it takes to seize control of Muslim minds........
OT: NAMs outraged that there aren’t more NAM Republican interns
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3695505/Why-white-Paul-Ryan-mocked-taking-selfie-100-Republican-interns-not-one-minority.html
How many NAMs are on the NYT editorial board? Or the Huffington Post's?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqdUmgE1JN4
How many NAMs live in Hillary's "home town" Chappaqua?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaqua,_New_York
How many NAMs did Barack have on his campaign?
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/05/obama-campaign-office-staff-lacks.html
How many regressives actually practice what they preach? And if very few do, what conclusions can we draw about their motives?
It’s like with Trump:
Did Clinton plan from the start to have Trump swerve and turn on his supporters by selecting Cuck Pence? Or did she only recently buy him off? Or was he just made an offer he couldn’t refuse by the cucks and lefties en masse?
Wheels within wheels of delicious fodder for future historians. Why did Trump signal so clearly right before the convention that he wouldn’t be following through on his promises?
because he didn't want to be a "limousine white nationalist", like the guys here.
I was scratching my head at the “White Knight vs. Evil Knievel” rubric for a second until I scrolled up & saw this came from a Lyndon LaRouche site. Who could probably be the Turkish Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
The Global Research site isn’t a LaRouche site. It’s run by a Canadian economist and professor at the University of Ottawa.
"The Public Trial of Fethullah Gulen
The Pennsylvania-based cleric is a leading reformer of moderate Islam — either that, or the head of a dangerous terrorist organization."
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/18/the-public-trial-of-fethullah-gulen/Replies: @Lot, @Simon in London
Fuller helped false asylum applications for people perfectly safe and allied with the ruling junta, who then committed mass murder.
Is there a way the victims of the Boston Bomb Brothers can sue Fuller? Why is such a man allowed in polite company still and to write in Foreign Policy?
Did Clinton plan from the start to have Trump swerve and turn on his supporters by selecting Cuck Pence? Or did she only recently buy him off? Or was he just made an offer he couldn't refuse by the cucks and lefties en masse?
Wheels within wheels of delicious fodder for future historians. Why did Trump signal so clearly right before the convention that he wouldn't be following through on his promises?Replies: @reiner Tor, @Karl
He didn’t signal it clearly. It’s not a very strong signal. And I think he needed to do that to get the nomination, he only got maybe twenty votes more than the minimum needed.
It didn’t feel to me like Erdogan did it. He looked silly on that phone calling the TV station. I don’t see how he could have masterminded it. Although an insider/instigator is just about possible I suspect not.
I don’t know if Gulenists were involved but it seems possible. It could equally well have been secular nationalists without ties to Gulen though. Given that the coup came immediately after Erdogan began to normalise relations with Russia, and even backtrack on regime change in Syria (he’s getting seriously worried about the Kurds) it seems to me that US CIA/State Dept may well have at least encouraged the coup attempt. Initial US reactions on Friday night were neutral.
Probably like how Hitler knew the communists (or at least some individual communists) would do something stupid against him in the early days of 1933, and when van der Lubbe did do something, he grabbed the opportunity to start martial law and destroy the opposition.
While he has gutted as much as possible Kemalists/secularists from the military, putting his people (and, yes, in the past some Gulenists as well) in higher-ranking positions, there are still a few secularists and perhaps they were sincerely following orders to go through with what they thought was a real coup. That's the only part that looks real here.
If that whodunnit chart were to be broken up by who respondents politically support, we would likely see all that those blaming Gulen are Erdogan/AKP supporters, and those saying Erdogan staged the coup attempt are Kemalists/CHP supporters. The later have groaned about Gulen for years, but since the break with Erdogan, these CHP supporters are far more concerned with Erdogan.
Now it's only Erdogan supporters who give a damn about Gulen, and how convenient now that with this "Gulen coup" they can remind John Kerry that Erdogan was, after all, democratically elected and hey since you like democracy so much and Gulen is undermining it, you'll be contradicting yourself if you don't hand him over...
I personally won't lose much sleep over Gulen being wrongfully extradited, but it would be a clear injustice.
"The Public Trial of Fethullah Gulen
The Pennsylvania-based cleric is a leading reformer of moderate Islam — either that, or the head of a dangerous terrorist organization."
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/18/the-public-trial-of-fethullah-gulen/Replies: @Lot, @Simon in London
Seems like Gulen has more power in the USA than in Turkey these days!
I don't know if Gulenists were involved but it seems possible. It could equally well have been secular nationalists without ties to Gulen though. Given that the coup came immediately after Erdogan began to normalise relations with Russia, and even backtrack on regime change in Syria (he's getting seriously worried about the Kurds) it seems to me that US CIA/State Dept may well have at least encouraged the coup attempt. Initial US reactions on Friday night were neutral.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Some Economist
What’s obvious is that he was prepared that something along these lines could and would happen, kept lists of undesirable elements within the military and the government bureaucracy (including private school teachers or something), and knew how to seize an opportunity. He also probably made sure that if something happens, it would be ineffectual because the top brass in the military and most units would not support it.
Probably like how Hitler knew the communists (or at least some individual communists) would do something stupid against him in the early days of 1933, and when van der Lubbe did do something, he grabbed the opportunity to start martial law and destroy the opposition.
The one aspect of the attempted coup that supports the false flag theory is that the troops involved didn’t shoot in a lot of cases. There are photos of unarmed men in civilian clothes capturing armed soldiers, and there are reports that coup-allied fighter planes had radar locks on Erdogan’s plane but didn’t fire.
In 2008, Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein called for the government to implement “cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories,” because what could go wrong when the taxpayers subsidize crackpottery?
This is the guy who penned an op ed about how bowling leagues can lead to fascism. Project much?
The arm of Gulen is long indeed: Hong Kong school connected to exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen.
Remember the Ghouta chemical attacks whose victims have been estimated to be in the hundreds? Journalist Seymour Hersh exposed it as the workings of Turkish agents trying to create a false flag event to provide justification for an attack on Syria. Killed were ordinary civilians including many children of which photos of their gruesome remains were being used to try to gin up anger against Assad. This is the sort of criminal swine who are running things in Turkey, capable of doing anything no matter how vile; with them nothing can be ruled out.
Who … whom? A false flag? Yes!
It wasn’t a successful coup. Indeed, it was the “keystone cops” at play. Consider:
1. Most coups (and certainly most Turkish coups) take place early in the morning when the plotters generally know the whereabouts of the leadership they are targeting (they are home in bed or having morning coffee), the TV stations and other communication nodes are minimally manned and protected, and opposition forces are not assembled much less deployed. THIS COUP occurred Friday evening when friendly police and military forces were on station and just in time for Erdogan to call his mobs into the streets to protest.
2. The senior leadership of the Turkish military were not involved in the coup. Historically, the senior leadership led the coups. Indeed, the coup leadership has historically vetted their actions with the CIA before acting to insure US support.
3. Erdogan says that the coup plotters missed him at his vacation resort by 30 minutes. In a decently lead coup, Erdogan would have been the first target.
4. Even with the alleged coup plotters having F-16 armed fighters airborne to attack the government, Erdogan arrogantly had his private jet fly him (with transponder on) to and land at Istanbul airport that was allegedly closed and under the control of the rebels. If he had not known the outcome beforehand, it would have been foolish for Erdogan to take to the skies, announce his route, and then land in rebel controlled territory. Or, this scenario might, from Erdogan’s perspective, have been calculated to enhance his image as the Big Man … brave and without fear. Indeed, two rebel F-16s were said to have shadowed Erdogan’s plane. Why didn’t they shoot? Who knows. In a real coup, they would have shot Erdogan’s plane down to secure the coup in this one action.
5. The failed coup was a pretext for Erdogan to purge all of his political opponents and their supporters. The purge is so massive that the lists and the purge had to have been preplanned. Erdogan and his supporters now have a free hand to loot Turkey in a massive transfer of wealth and power to Erdogan and his loyal cronies.
6. Erdogan has voiced that there can be no limits on his power nor any opposition to his regime because (his version of democracy) there is no such thing as a loyal opposition. Once the people have spoken, he is President for Life. Anyone opposing the will of the people or criticizing his sacred person are by definition against the people … traitors and terrorists … and they will be dealt with accordingly. Thousands upon thousands of traitors out there that have to be dealt with.
My take is that Erdogan is a narcissistic sociopath, but not a very bright one at that. He can’t even pull off a decent false flag operation because he cannot resist the temptation to have his fingerprints all over it. “See, I can run the country and launch a coup against myself … all at the same time. What power! I can save myself from myself and I hope everybody notices.”
Seems like Occam's razor is telling us that it was a last ditch effort by a small, Kemalist military elite who decided if they didn't launch a coup now, their country would be irretrievably lost to Islamism.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Parbes
Erdogan is already hard at work supporting this tradition by becoming the "Big Man" exercising dictatorial powers in the name of Islam. The alleged coup was his final opening to seize absolute power. Once he has completed seizing power and destroying any real or latent opposition, the imams will endorse him for being a good Muslim who is enforcing the Islamic way of life. At that juncture, he joins the long legacy of Islamic caliphs, kings, emirs, warlords, and strong men that have ruled Islamic countries since Mohammed. Islam is a godsend for anyone wanting dictatorial powers. What could be better, as you go about your business, than being endorsed as an agent of God (Allah) by Islamic religious authorities.
Change? There is a tinge of religious predestination in all of this. Allah, the All Knowing and All Powerful, would not let the caliphs, kings, Emirs, warlords, and strong men gain power and rule if it was not His will. A kind of fatalism ... fatal at least for Islamic societies. As they say in the Muslim world, "Insha'Allah" ... God (Allah) ... willing as an excuse for all of their social shortfalls.
Will democracy ever have a footprint in the Muslim world? "Insha'Allah ...." If it doesn't happen, God obviously is not willing it. There is another sense of "Insha'Allah" for westerners who have lived in Islamic countries. "Insha'Allah" means that individual Muslims are not responsible for whatever mess they are in. It is not their responsibility to accept responsibility for anything. This is exclusively Allah's purview. If something isn't right, it not their fault; it is God's (Allah's) will. Who can dispute that?
How does ISIL fit into all of this? By a strange turn of mind, the fact that the "Caliphate" is real in some part of Iraq and Syria is a call to arms to extend the Caliphate and Islamic way of life to all corners of the earth ... the City of God (Allah) on Earth. What better way to ensure eternal life than to become a martyr for Islam in the cause of establishing an authoritarian government that enforces, on pain of death, Islamic culture, customs, and traditions.
Interesting factoid, GR banned me from viewing their pages after I bad-mouthed them here (called the guy who runs it a nutcase, etc.) a couple times. Now that’s attention to detail.
GR guy: yep, you’re still a nutcase.
Odd, if true; no way in H-h-h-eeell I let even a controlled, phony coup get a radar lock on my plane.
I liked the article at Taki’s. Life would be easier w/o false flag operation but false flag operation clearly happened in the past and happen now. One can overdo it by seeing false flag every where, but asking a question cui bon? is not harmful. For example who benefited form Dallas and Baton Rouge cop killings?
I don't know if Gulenists were involved but it seems possible. It could equally well have been secular nationalists without ties to Gulen though. Given that the coup came immediately after Erdogan began to normalise relations with Russia, and even backtrack on regime change in Syria (he's getting seriously worried about the Kurds) it seems to me that US CIA/State Dept may well have at least encouraged the coup attempt. Initial US reactions on Friday night were neutral.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Some Economist
During that same silly FaceTime phone call with the TV reporter, however, he calmly told supporters to take to the streets and he would be landing shortly in either Ankara or Istanbul. Guess what? He did! That’s truly an accurate and bizarre call to make (pun intended) in the middle of a true coup. As a non-Turkish observer, that seemed off to me. Every action taken since Saturday further points to Erdogan staging the whole thing.
While he has gutted as much as possible Kemalists/secularists from the military, putting his people (and, yes, in the past some Gulenists as well) in higher-ranking positions, there are still a few secularists and perhaps they were sincerely following orders to go through with what they thought was a real coup. That’s the only part that looks real here.
If that whodunnit chart were to be broken up by who respondents politically support, we would likely see all that those blaming Gulen are Erdogan/AKP supporters, and those saying Erdogan staged the coup attempt are Kemalists/CHP supporters. The later have groaned about Gulen for years, but since the break with Erdogan, these CHP supporters are far more concerned with Erdogan.
Now it’s only Erdogan supporters who give a damn about Gulen, and how convenient now that with this “Gulen coup” they can remind John Kerry that Erdogan was, after all, democratically elected and hey since you like democracy so much and Gulen is undermining it, you’ll be contradicting yourself if you don’t hand him over…
I personally won’t lose much sleep over Gulen being wrongfully extradited, but it would be a clear injustice.
If I understand it right Gulen with the support of the Turkish government offered subsidized educations in foreign countries in the local language, but with Turkish courses also mandatory. The idea was to create a number of educated local people in each country with Turkish language skills to assist Turkish business and government with local problems. This does make sense as being a Turkish speaking businessman in China must be a big disadvantage without any Chinese that speak Turkish around.
Is there a way the victims of the Boston Bomb Brothers can sue Fuller? Why is such a man allowed in polite company still and to write in Foreign Policy?Replies: @DCThrowback, @Chuck
Because there are no *real* victims of the Boston “Bombing”?
I shared this with a Turkish friend, and she got a chuckle out of it, but confirmed that the vast majority of people she knows consume what is fed to them by the media. No surprise there. She was a bit puzzled by the Western Obsession with the Palace, but I pointed out it was largely funded by money extorted from the West, to which she smiled and said we could go ahead and handle our own problems then.
If you want to get a sense of the amount of strange stuff that has gone on with the Deep State in Turkey, check out the below article:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/12/the-deep-state
This article is dated but provides an interesting set of facts relating to the past.
The Turks are, of course, inherently prone to conspiracy theorising. My former girlfriend’s husband (both are Turks) believes that this was a conspiracy in which Erdogan, Gulen and the CIA were together!
On a more serious note, there are some serious problems with the Turkish Government’s version of events. Erdogan gave a TV interview in Istanbul about one hour before the coup’s soldiers started rappelling down their ropes into the Marmaris Hotel where he was supposedly staying. The fact that he wasn’t there was already public knowledge.
All I can say is that the law of unintended consequences applies here and that needs to be carefully considered. I personally doubt very much that Erdogan himself believes too deeply in the Islamist stuff. He is utterly corrupt as hell, loves money and his sons have pilfered billions from various sectors of the economy (including tourism). If Erdogan were to impose an Islamist state as one sees in other parts of the Middle East, the gravy train would come to a grinding halt and most of his property in Turkey will be of diminished value.
But here is the problem: Islam is like a genie in a bottle. There is a reason Ataturk created this secular regime and empowered the military to forcefully remove governments that did not adhere strictly to secular principles. Ataturk KNEW that the dangers of clerics is ever present in a society with a Muslim population exceeding 90 per cent. Once Erdogan has removed the Kemalist establishment and imprisoned/destroyed/executed it, the last effective checks on the more militant and “purist” Islamists will be removed. When some clerics start demanding imposition of Sharia law, how is he going to resist that? He might succeed in the short term but by waging a war on the secular establishment, he has already handed all the cards to the hard-core Islamists.
Where does this end? If you want to know, read about General Zia and Pakistan and see what it has become. I have never been to Pakistan but I have numerous friends who have. And I have spent plenty of time in Turkey. For all its faults, Turkey is a prosperous middle income country. if the clerics become ascendant, it is a matter of time before it turns into Pakistan.
Is there a way the victims of the Boston Bomb Brothers can sue Fuller? Why is such a man allowed in polite company still and to write in Foreign Policy?Replies: @DCThrowback, @Chuck
You know why.
Are the rank and file “real” Turks?
Read what I wrote again, carefully. I didn’t say it was a successful coup, I said if Erdogan did it, then it was a successful false flag operation. Whatever implausibilities you think there were, it seemed like, if it was a false flag, a pretty complex scheme, given that the Parliament building was bombed, helicopters shot out of the sky, etc. Probably many places where it could have gone horribly wrong for Erdogan. How did he pull it off? Did he get much, much smarter in the last few weeks? Was it sheer dumb luck?
Seems like Occam’s razor is telling us that it was a last ditch effort by a small, Kemalist military elite who decided if they didn’t launch a coup now, their country would be irretrievably lost to Islamism.
No it doesn’t. They were conscripts who were ordered into the streets as a show of force, not to gun down civilians. It’s not the conscripts that failed. It’s the officers and security personnel who were supposed to locate and secure Erdogan that failed.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/12/the-deep-state
This article is dated but provides an interesting set of facts relating to the past.
The Turks are, of course, inherently prone to conspiracy theorising. My former girlfriend's husband (both are Turks) believes that this was a conspiracy in which Erdogan, Gulen and the CIA were together!
On a more serious note, there are some serious problems with the Turkish Government's version of events. Erdogan gave a TV interview in Istanbul about one hour before the coup's soldiers started rappelling down their ropes into the Marmaris Hotel where he was supposedly staying. The fact that he wasn't there was already public knowledge.
All I can say is that the law of unintended consequences applies here and that needs to be carefully considered. I personally doubt very much that Erdogan himself believes too deeply in the Islamist stuff. He is utterly corrupt as hell, loves money and his sons have pilfered billions from various sectors of the economy (including tourism). If Erdogan were to impose an Islamist state as one sees in other parts of the Middle East, the gravy train would come to a grinding halt and most of his property in Turkey will be of diminished value.
But here is the problem: Islam is like a genie in a bottle. There is a reason Ataturk created this secular regime and empowered the military to forcefully remove governments that did not adhere strictly to secular principles. Ataturk KNEW that the dangers of clerics is ever present in a society with a Muslim population exceeding 90 per cent. Once Erdogan has removed the Kemalist establishment and imprisoned/destroyed/executed it, the last effective checks on the more militant and "purist" Islamists will be removed. When some clerics start demanding imposition of Sharia law, how is he going to resist that? He might succeed in the short term but by waging a war on the secular establishment, he has already handed all the cards to the hard-core Islamists.
Where does this end? If you want to know, read about General Zia and Pakistan and see what it has become. I have never been to Pakistan but I have numerous friends who have. And I have spent plenty of time in Turkey. For all its faults, Turkey is a prosperous middle income country. if the clerics become ascendant, it is a matter of time before it turns into Pakistan.Replies: @Anonymous
Ataturk wasn’t into secularism because he was worried about clerics and Sharia. Political Islam was not a significant force then. He was into secularism because the Ottoman Empire was an old, declining empire by then and he believed secularism would help maintain Turkey’s position, power, and prestige and succeed in the Great Game.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3695505/Why-white-Paul-Ryan-mocked-taking-selfie-100-Republican-interns-not-one-minority.htmlReplies: @Divine Right
“OT: NAMs outraged that there aren’t more NAM Republican interns”
How many NAMs are on the NYT editorial board? Or the Huffington Post’s?
How many NAMs live in Hillary’s “home town” Chappaqua?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaqua,_New_York
How many NAMs did Barack have on his campaign?
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/05/obama-campaign-office-staff-lacks.html
How many regressives actually practice what they preach? And if very few do, what conclusions can we draw about their motives?
Regardless of whether the coup was fake or not, there are other consequences worth thinking about.
Erdogan is blackmailing Obama. No question about this.
The biggest pawn in this game is not the size of the refugee population that Erdogan could unleash on the West (which he could and that is a consideration) or the fact that so many oil and gas pipelines run through Turkey (including pipelines carrying Kazakh and Azerbaijani oil).
The biggest pawn in this game is the INCIRLIK Air Base which houses 50 H-BOMBS.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/turkey-military-coup/incirlik-air-base-post-coup-power-cut-remains-u-s-n613086
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/18/americas-nukes-arent-safe-in-turkey-anymore/
Erdogan has, it seems in all but name, put that base into lockdown and not let the Americans there out or let American servicemen from outside Turkey IN. And the ransom is the exiled cleric Fetullah Gulen.
What is Obama going to do?
It seems this will be the icing on the cake for Obama’s “achievements” – it is perhaps fitting that after all the disasters we have seen in his administration, this should come at the end. This is by far the worst.
To add a bit. It is clear that Erdogan is using the word “democracy” as a sop for the western MSM. Turkey is democratic in no sense of the word. It never has been. The concept of the “Deep State” ruling incognito behind the facade of democracy is Turkish.
Erdogan is already hard at work supporting this tradition by becoming the “Big Man” exercising dictatorial powers in the name of Islam. The alleged coup was his final opening to seize absolute power. Once he has completed seizing power and destroying any real or latent opposition, the imams will endorse him for being a good Muslim who is enforcing the Islamic way of life. At that juncture, he joins the long legacy of Islamic caliphs, kings, emirs, warlords, and strong men that have ruled Islamic countries since Mohammed. Islam is a godsend for anyone wanting dictatorial powers. What could be better, as you go about your business, than being endorsed as an agent of God (Allah) by Islamic religious authorities.
Change? There is a tinge of religious predestination in all of this. Allah, the All Knowing and All Powerful, would not let the caliphs, kings, Emirs, warlords, and strong men gain power and rule if it was not His will. A kind of fatalism … fatal at least for Islamic societies. As they say in the Muslim world, “Insha’Allah” … God (Allah) … willing as an excuse for all of their social shortfalls.
Will democracy ever have a footprint in the Muslim world? “Insha’Allah ….” If it doesn’t happen, God obviously is not willing it. There is another sense of “Insha’Allah” for westerners who have lived in Islamic countries. “Insha’Allah” means that individual Muslims are not responsible for whatever mess they are in. It is not their responsibility to accept responsibility for anything. This is exclusively Allah’s purview. If something isn’t right, it not their fault; it is God’s (Allah’s) will. Who can dispute that?
How does ISIL fit into all of this? By a strange turn of mind, the fact that the “Caliphate” is real in some part of Iraq and Syria is a call to arms to extend the Caliphate and Islamic way of life to all corners of the earth … the City of God (Allah) on Earth. What better way to ensure eternal life than to become a martyr for Islam in the cause of establishing an authoritarian government that enforces, on pain of death, Islamic culture, customs, and traditions.
Doesn’t a “small group withing the army’ need to be involved? Whether if gulen, or erdogan was the head, don’tthey need a certain amount of support from within the army. As someone who has lived in there third world , don’t under estimate the power held within the army. It’s not like America where they are glorified bureaucrats. Especially where guns are illegal. They are important.
Seems like Occam's razor is telling us that it was a last ditch effort by a small, Kemalist military elite who decided if they didn't launch a coup now, their country would be irretrievably lost to Islamism.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Parbes
But only 10% of Turks believe the Occamite theory of the coup being the work of a small faction in the Army.
As far as I can tell, they’re wrong.
I mean the 90% of Turks, not the 10%. (I’m also not 100% ruling out a role by Gülen, so that ~50% may yet be vindicated.)
The number who believe it was the Generals is interesting given that it has been no secret that Erdogan has been purging the General Staff over the past few years. My money is on this having been a US supported coup that Erdogan et al used to work their pre-planned purge lists … according to the Chicago school, never let a good crisis go to waste. Its not such a stretch to believe that Erdogan and the US agencies were in cahoots.
If it’s true that Gulen is a major Hillary donor, perhaps this is a Hail Mary play to get the Obama administration to extradite him before President Hillary can designate a Gulenist government-in-waiting.
The most interesting development in the Battle of Conspiracy theories is that the mainstream western narrative is blaming Erdogan for the coup instead of Putin.
Seems like Occam's razor is telling us that it was a last ditch effort by a small, Kemalist military elite who decided if they didn't launch a coup now, their country would be irretrievably lost to Islamism.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Parbes
Exactly! And the pathetic thing is that many “smart” pundits still go on accepting as inalienable fact the conspiracy theories put forward by either the ultra-honest and reliable (!) Erdogan government itself, or by others with agendas or simply insufficient understanding. Well, I guess as an outsider, conspiracy theories are always more “fun” to discuss and opine endlessly about, than facing the true situation squarely…
> mad project of the CIA to weaponize political Islam
Islam WAS BORN AS a weaponized political colonialist movement with an imperative to take over the entire globe.
Judaism was born as a tribal cult to justify the tribe’s control over a land area about the size (at its largest) of New Jersey
Christianity was born as a non-political adoration cult.
Try asking the Berbers & the Copts, if Islam was born as a “religion of peace”.
Raise your hand if you think that Ivy League professors are made of the stuff it takes to seize control of Muslim minds……..
Did Clinton plan from the start to have Trump swerve and turn on his supporters by selecting Cuck Pence? Or did she only recently buy him off? Or was he just made an offer he couldn't refuse by the cucks and lefties en masse?
Wheels within wheels of delicious fodder for future historians. Why did Trump signal so clearly right before the convention that he wouldn't be following through on his promises?Replies: @reiner Tor, @Karl
> Why did Trump signal so clearly right before the convention that he wouldn’t be following through on his promises?
because he didn’t want to be a “limousine white nationalist”, like the guys here.