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Turkey’s Erdogan to US General: ‘Know Your Place’

July 31, 2016

Turkey’s Erdogan to US General: ‘Know Your Place’, Clarion Project, William Reed, July 31, 2016

Turkey-Erdogan-Gulen-IP_0Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan (left) shown with his nemesis Fethullah Gulen, who he accuses of being behind the coup. (Photo: © Reuters)

The U.S. still maintains the false view that Turkey is absolutely necessary for the U.S. because Turkey provides an access to a land base to the Middle East.

They refuse to believe that the U.S. or the West can be just as effective without Turkey. The old anti Soviet fears are still there, and it seems that the U.S. will not budge from the opinion that the U.S. should support Turkey, no matter what Turkey does.

***********************

U.S. Central Command Commander General Joseph Votel said on July 28 that a number of the U.S. military’s closest allies in the Turkish military have been placed in jail following the July 15 attempted coup.

“We’ve certainly had relationships with a lot of Turkish leaders, military leaders in particular,” General Votel said at the Aspen Security Forum meeting in Colorado. “I’m concerned about what the impact is on those relationships as we continue.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also echoed General Votel’s statements.

The failed coup and the government’s backlash have “affected all segments of the national security apparatus in Turkey,” Clapper stated. “Many of our interlocutors have been purged or arrested.”

Referring to the U.S.’s Middle East strategy, Clapper added, “There’s no question that this is going to set back and make more difficult.”

On July 29, in a public statement in Ankara caught on video, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan lashed out against Votel’s comments. “A human is supposed to feel embarrassed a little bit. How dare you make this decision?” he railed. “Who are you? First, you will know your place. You will know yourself. When you – in the name of democracy – need to thank this state that has repelled this coup attempt in my country, on the contrary, you side with coup plotters. After all, the coup plotter [Fethullah Gulen] is in your country. You are feeding the coup plotter in your country. This is obvious.”

Erdogan continued, “You can never convince my nation. My nation knows who is involved in this trick now. They very well know [through] such statements who is behind this act and who the mastermind is. You reveal yourselves with these statements. You expose yourselves. Turkey will not fall for these games.”

 

Turkey Crackdown after Failed Coup

Amnesty International has issued some statistics on the situation following the failed coup in Turkey:

  • 131 media outlets and publishing houses have been shut down including 3 news agencies, 16 TV channels, 23 radio stations, 45 newspapers, 15 journals and 29 publishing houses.
  • At least 89 arrest warrants were issued for journalists. More than 40 have been detained.
  • At least 260 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured amid the failed coup attempt in Istanbul and Ankara, according to government accounts.
  • More than 15,000 people have been detained since the failed coup.
  • More than 45,000 people have been suspended or removed from their jobs, including police, judges and prosecutors, and others.
  • More than 1,000 private schools and educational institutions have been closed and 138,000 school children will have to be transferred to state schools.
  • Turkish police in Ankara and Istanbul have reportedly been holding detainees in stress positions for 48 hours. Detainees have been denied food, water and medical treatment, and been verbally abused and threatened. Some have been subjected to severe beatings and torture, including rape.
  • No independent human rights monitors have been provided with access to detention facilities in Turkey after its National Human Rights Institution was abolished in April 2016.

In addition:

  • Turkey has also cancelled the passports of 50,000 people the Islamist government suspects of being dissidents.
  • 63 teenage boys aged 14-17 who attended a top military high school have been arrested and prevented from being in touch with their parents. A lawyer for the boys said that they were duped into coming to school the night of the coup after being promised they would be meeting famous soccer players. They were then given camouflage uniforms and guns with empty magazines.

 

“Traitors’ Cemetery”

A “Traitors’ Cemetery” has recently been created in Istanbul to hold the bodies of coup plotters who died in the failed coup attempt.

Government officials have branded people allegedly involved in the attempted coup as “traitors” and “terrorists” undeserving of a proper burial. Turkey’s state-funded Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) also issued a directive denying funeral prayers and services for them.

Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbas said: “May every passer-by curse them and let them not rest in their tombs.”

 

U.S.-Turkey Relations

The U.S. still maintains the false view that Turkey is absolutely necessary for the U.S. because Turkey provides an access to a land base to the Middle East.

They refuse to believe that the U.S. or the West can be just as effective without Turkey. The old anti Soviet fears are still there, and it seems that the U.S. will not budge from the opinion that the U.S. should support Turkey, no matter what Turkey does.

To many who hold this view, Turkish crimes are not important or relevant to the geopolitical considerations of the U.S. and its military goals.

Even Turkey’s documented facilitation of the Islamic State fighters through its territory or the rising dictatorship of  Erdogan have not change the Western considerations of support.

It seems that Turkey can slaughter its Kurds en-masse (which they have) or Turkey-supported terror groups can massacre Alevis and Christians in Iraq and Syria daily with no reaction from the U.S.

Turkey has seen that it has suffered no consequences for its invasion and occupation of Cyprus for decades.

With blessings from the West, Turkey has been able to devastate the Hellenic and Armenian cultural heritage of Anatolia, systematically attack and destroy historic churches and other Christian sites, ban the Alevi faith and the Kurdish language and oppress all non-Turkish cultures in a tyrannical manner.

Turkey is still allowed to deny, whitewash and even take pride in the 1915 Armenian genocide.

Tragically, it seems that what Western powers are mostly interested is to keep their monetary and other interests in Turkey for as long as it lasts.

And while that happens, the thousands of victims of Turkey’s brutality will lie in their graves or prison cells and be damned.

 

Categories: Erdogan, Fethullah Gülen, Turkey and human rights, Turkey's failed coup, U.S. - Turkey relationship, U.S. Military
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Turkey: Good News, Bad News

July 28, 2016

Turkey: Good News, Bad News, Gatestone Institute, Burak Bekdil, July 28, 2016

♦ Turkish prosecutors are investigating people who allege on social media that the coup attempt was in fact a hoax.

♦ In a massive purge, the government sacked more than 60,000 civil servants from the military, judiciary, police, schools and academia, including 1,577 faculty deans who were suspended. More than 10,000 people have been arrested and there are serious allegations of torture.

♦ Witnesses told Amnesty International that captured military officers were raped by police, hundreds of soldiers were beaten, some detainees were denied food and water and access to lawyers for days. Turkish authorities also arrested 62 children and accused them of treason.

♦ The good news is that the coup attempt failed and Turkey is not a third world dictatorship run by an unpredictable military general who loves to crush dissent. The bad news is that Turkey is run by an unpredictable, elected president who loves to crush dissent.

In 1853, John Russell quoted Tsar Nicholas I of Russia as saying that the Ottoman Empire was “a sick man — a very sick man,” in reference to the ailing empire’s fall into a state of decrepitude. Some 163 years after that, the modern Turkish state follows in the Ottoman steps.

Turkey, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule, was staggering between a hybrid democracy and bitter authoritarianism. After the failed putsch of July 15, it is being dragged into worse darkness. The silly attempt gives Erdogan what he wanted: a pretext to go after every dissident Turk. A witch-hunt is badly shattering the democratic foundations of the country.

Taking advantage of the putsch attempt, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency that will run for a period of three months, with an option to extend it for another quarter of a year. Erdogan, declaring the state of emergency, promised to “clean out the cancer viruses like metastasis” in the body called Turkey. With the move for a state of emergency, Turkey also suspended the European Convention on Human Rights, citing Article 15 of the Convention, which stipulates:

“In time of war or other public emergencies threatening the life of the nation, any High Contracting Party may take measures derogating from its obligations under this Convention to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with its other obligations under international law.”

Before July 15, civil liberties in Turkey were de facto in the deep freeze. Now they are de jure in the deep freeze.

On July 27, the Turkish military purged 1,684 officers, including 149 generals, on suspicion that they had links with Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Muslim cleric who once was Erdogan’s staunchest political ally but is now his biggest nemesis and the suspected mastermind of the coup attempt. On the same day, the government closed down three news agencies, 16 television stations, 23 radio stations, 45 newspapers, 15 magazines and 29 publishers on the same charges. Two days before those actions, warrants were issued for 42 journalists, as a part of an investigation against members of the “Fethullah [Gulen] terrorist organization.”

1726Turkish police escort dozens of handcuffed soldiers, who are accused of participating in the failed July 15 coup d’état. (Image source: Reuters video screenshot)

Under the state of emergency, it is dangerous in Turkey even to question whether July 15 was a fake coup orchestrated or tolerated by Erdogan for longer-term political gains. Turkish prosecutors are investigating people who allege on social media that the coup attempt was in fact a hoax. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said that: “Anyone who suggests the coup attempt was staged ‘likely had a role’ in the insurrection.” But there is more.

In a massive purge, the government sacked more than 60,000 civil servants from the military, judiciary, police, schools and academia, including 1,577 faculty deans who were suspended. More than 10,000 people have been arrested, and there are serious allegations of torture. Witnesses told Amnesty International that captured military officers were raped by police, hundreds of soldiers were beaten, and some detainees were denied food, water and access to lawyers for days. Turkish authorities also arrested 62 children and accused them of treason. The youngsters, aged 14 to 17, were from Kuleli Military School in Istanbul. The students have reportedly been thrown in jail and are not allowed to speak to their parents.

The witch-hunt is not in the governmental sector only. Several Turkish companies have fired hundreds of personnel suspected of having links with Gulen. Turkish Airlines, Turkey’s national airline, fired 211 employees, including a vice-general manager and a number of cabin crew members.

Sadly, Turks had to choose between two unpleasant options: military dictatorship and elected dictatorship. The good news is that the coup attempt failed and Turkey is not a third-world dictatorship run by an unpredictable military general who loves to crush dissent. The bad news is that Turkey is run by an unpredictable, elected president who loves to crush dissent.

Categories: Erdogan, Turkey and human rights, Turkey's failed coup, Turkish democracy
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Turkey: Systematic Torture, Rape of Political Prisoners

July 24, 2016

Turkey: Systematic Torture, Rape of Political Prisoners, Clarion Project, William Reed, July 24, 2016

torture

Will the diplomats in Brussels who advocate and push for the membership of Turkey in the EU please speak out in defense of political prisoners raped and tortured in Turkish police stations and jails?

Will the United States, which supports and finances Turkey, also turn a blind eye to these abuses?

**********************

Following the failed July 15th coup d’état in Turkey, the world witnessed how thousands of Turks dealt with their own Turkish soldiers who put down their arms and surrendered. Pro-government Turks beat, tortured and lynched their own soldiers in the streets – before the eyes of the entire world.

But torturing is nothing new in Turkey. It is an old political tradition. Kurdish political prisoners have for decades been exposed to appalling sexual and physical torture in Turkish jails and police stations.

The day before the coup, human rights organizations in Turkey announced in a press conference that many Kurds who have been recently arrested and jailed in the city of Sanliurfa, or Urfa, have been tortured and raped while in detention. [i]

Atilla Yazar, the head of the Urfa branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD), said that they have received complaints of torture from Urfa since 2015. “The detainees are first taken to the anti-terror branch (TEM) of the Urfa police directorate,” said Yazar. “Then they are taken to a cave. They say that they have been tortured heavily. Five of them are women. And they are still in prison now.”

Eren Keskin, the vice-president of the Human Rights Association (IHD), said, “A long time ago, Tayyip Erdogan, who was then prime minister, said that ‘There would be zero tolerance to torture.’ But I think there is boundless tolerance to torture.”

“The stories we heard from the detainees were horrible,” Keskin continued.

“I have been working in the field of torture for the last 20 years. But I did not hear some of those torture methods even in the 1990s, when torture and rapes were very commonplace.

“We see that torture is a state policy and it is systematic. It is not just Turkish soldiers or police officers who are involved, [but also] the prosecutors who do not question them, the doctors who do no not give them medical reports about torture, and the forensic medicine institute all carry this [torture] out together.”

Keskin explained, “Most of the people we talked to were civilian politicians who are members of the legal Democratic Peoples’ Party (DBP).  A detainee called Mazlum Dagtekin said that there is a cave of torture filled with tools of torture in the town of Ceylanpinar. He said that they [the police] torture people under the control and supervision of the prosecutor. First, they blindfold them. Then they put a sack on their heads. And they blindfold them again on those sacks. Stripping detainees naked is one of their primary methods.

“Mazlum also said: ‘They put my head in a well. They raped me. They stripped me naked. They inserted a nightstick in my anus. They made me sit on an armchair. They tied my feet with construction wires. They shackled my hands to the armchair. They hit my stomach and chest cavity with nightsticks and punches. Later they tied my hands with a wire and made me swing into a well. They urinated on me. One of the police officers took out his penis and told me to lick it. While all of these things were done to me, the prosecutor was there.’

“At night, they took Mazlum outside. They tied his feet and put a gun to his head. Then they gave him the gun and told him to kill himself. Mazlum told us that at that moment he wanted to die so much that he pulled the trigger without thinking about it at all, but the gun was empty. To bring a person to a point where he wants nothing else but to die is the worst of all tortures.

“Five women that we spoke to were exposed to heavy sexual torture,” added Keskin. “All of them were frisked bare-naked. They touched their bodies. They applied methods of torture that I cannot verbalize here. The women do not want us to express these things. For women who are exposed to sexual torture express what they have experienced with much difficulty. Due to the certain understanding of honor that is exposed on us, they are ashamed, scared and timid. We understand them. But we will write what they have told us in our report and present it to the United Nations.

“This is what all the detainees were told. ‘We are a special team. We came here from Ankara for you. We will commit all kinds of torture to make you speak.’”

Keskin also said that they were planning to file a complaint to the Turkish medical association about the doctors involved in rights violations. “When prisoners are brought to the hospital by the Turkish police, the doctors stick their heads in the vehicle and ask ‘Is there anybody hurt in here?’ The police say, ‘No,’ Then the doctors sign a report which states that there was nobody hurt in the vehicle. This is a clear violation.

“The doctors turn a blind eye to torture or they are forced to. For example, Inci Korkmaz, one of the victims we spoke to, had felt faint. They suspected that she was having a heart attack and took her to hospital. The doctor first told the police ‘not to take her back like that.’ But when the police insisted, the doctor gave her an injection and [let the police take] her back. This is against the Hippocratic Oath.

“The Urfa anti-terror branch is a place where people are openly exposed to sexual torture. We need to make a call to the states that Turkey has signed international treaties with since Turkey is openly violating these treaties,” Keskin said.

Currently in Turkey, the minister of justice has given an order forbidding political prisoners from talking to their lawyers. In addition to the numerous Kurdish political prisoners being tortured and grossly abused by the Turkish authorities, there are now thousands who have been arrested in the wake of the failed coup.

They now have nobody to speak for them.

Will the diplomats in Brussels who advocate and push for the membership of Turkey in the EU please speak out in defense of political prisoners raped and tortured in Turkish police stations and jails?

Will the United States, which supports and finances Turkey, also turn a blind eye to these abuses?

Categories: Erdogan, Obama and Turkey, Torture, Turkey and human rights, Turkey's failed coup
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Obama administration mum as Turkey’s post-coup crackdown expands

July 23, 2016

Obama administration mum as Turkey’s post-coup crackdown expands, Fox News, Christiana Licata, July 23, 2016

Turkey festersVan Hipp: Turkey had been festering, but Obama admin asleep

The Obama administration’s relative silence on Turkey’s alarming crackdown following last week’s failed coup attempt is tantamount to a green light for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to continue his assault on democracy in the NATO nation, experts said.

Questioned about Erdogan’s ongoing roundup of some 50,000 academics, judges, teachers, soldiers and civil servants, and the declaration Wednesday of a state of emergency, a State Department official earlier this week meekly warned against “overreach.”

“I cannot overstate the sense of the Turkish government and the Turkish people right now that they truly felt and truly feel under threat,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told an Associated Press reporter at a department briefing. “We support completely the efforts to bring the perpetrators of the coup to justice. We just also caution against any kind of overreach that goes beyond that.”

But when pressed, Toner declined to characterize the arrest, firing or suspension of the tens of thousands of Turkish government workers as “overreach.”

Erdogan’s government, which blames U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen for inciting the coup attempt, in which more than 200 people were killed and members of the military briefly commandeered tanks, aircraft and communications channels, has reacted with a vengeance.

The state of emergency gives Erdogan and his cabinet new powers to implement laws without parliamentary approval. It also allows Ankara to censor media broadcasts, search citizens, impose curfews and restrict gatherings both public and private.

Erdogan has simultaneously demanded the U.S. hand over Gulen, a onetime Erdogan ally who lives in a Pennsylvania mountain compound and runs a profitable chain of Islamic charter schools. Secretary of State John Kerry has said the department is considering the request, but it remains unclear what evidence Erdogan’s administration has provided.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said the crackdown shows Erdogan is taking advantage of the failed coup to further strengthen his grip on power. The strongman, who has ruled Turkey as either president or prime minister since 2001, has been steadily stripping the long proudly secular nation of its constitutional freedoms and increasingly adopted Islamist rhetoric.

“When he was mayor of Istanbul 20 years ago, he said democracy is like a street car — you ride it to the stop you want and then you get off,” Bolton said of Erdogan. “This will enable him to pursue his objective of Islamisizing the Turkish government and overturning the secular constitution. That’s what’s underway. I don’t think there’s much question about it.”

Bolton said that the Obama administration appears to have done “very little” to pressure Turkey to ease up on its people, either publicly or behind the scenes. That gives Erdogan all the encouragement he needs, Bolton said.

“The situation will continue to deteriorate as Erdogan arrests more people and puts them in jail,” he said.

The European Union has more aggressively sought to rein in the crackdown, with two EU officials warning Thursday that Turkey’s declaration of a state of emergency had led to “unacceptable decisions on the education system, judiciary and the media.”

“We call on Turkish authorities to respect under any circumstances the rule of law, human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right of all individuals concerned to a fair trial,” EU high representative Federica Mogherini and commissioner Johannes Hahn said in a statement.

Ahmet Yayla, who was chairman of the sociology department at Harran University and a former police chief in Turkey, said many of those being rounded up in Turkey include the Muslim nation’s bulwark against terrorism.  Police, soldiers and judges deemed disloyal to Erdogan have been detained, leaving a diminished human infrastructure to deal with security threats, he said.

“Those are the people who were fighting against terrorism in Turkey,” said Yayla, who fled to the U.S.  eight months ago when ISIS threatened his life for interrogating terrorist defectors.

Yayla said Erdogan’s dangerous dance with ISIS – tacitly supporting the terror group and allowing foreign fighters to pass through Turkey on their way to the terrorist army’s caliphate – could combine with the post-coup unrest to threaten the nation’s stability.

“In the near future, Turkey will face a lot of danger coming from terrorism because the newly appointed officers in the military and police are not going to be able to fight or deal with terrorism threats that exist in the country, especially by Erdogan’s allowing the terrorists inside the country,” he said.

 

Categories: Erdogan, European Union, Turkey and human rights, Turkey and Islamic State, Turkey's failed coup
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After 10,000 Arrested, it’s Time for the US to End Backing for Islamist Regime

July 23, 2016

After 10,000 Arrested, it’s Time for the US to End Backing for Islamist Regime, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 22, 2016

Erdogan Hitler

It’s funny how the media was far more outraged by the supposed attempt by the Turkish military to restore the republic than by the Islamist tyrant’s escalating crackdown which has now seen 10,000 arrested. That’s war crime level detentions. If the Turkish military had done this, they would be screaming their heads off. Yet 10,000 arrests by Islamists, just like the Muslim Brotherhood’s torture and abuses in Egypt, get a pass.

And that has to change.

Turkey is swiftly turning into an actual totalitarian regime with no holds barred.

Turkey entered its second day under a state of emergency as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled that the three-month period approved by parliament may not be enough to complete a purge of those responsible for last week’s failed coup.

Erdogan told Reuters that there’s no obstacle to extending emergency rule, which took effect at 1 a.m. on Thursday and was later endorsed by parliament. It allows the government to issue decrees with the force of law, and detain suspects for longer periods without trial.

And then the emergency rule will just be made permanent and Erdogan will declare himself a sultan. All of this is happening with the complicity of the US and the EU. And I don’t just mean the radical left.

Too few, even Republicans, were willing to come out against the Arab Spring or to back the Egyptian military’s restoration of the government. That’s why Trump’s mention of it in his acceptance speech was important. We should have backed the Turkish military to the hilt. And by “us” I don’t mean Obama, who has never met an Islamist Jihadist he didn’t love, but Republicans and conservatives.

Categories: Democrats, Erdogan, Obama and Turkey, Republicans, Turkey, Turkey and human rights, Turkey's failed coup
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Turkey – Roger Out

July 22, 2016

Turkey – Roger Out, Front Page Magazine, Caroline Glick, July 22, 2016

turkey roger out

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

On Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg insisted that the purge of thousands in the Turkish military – including a third of the serving generals – did not weaken the military.

Stoltenberg told Reuters, “Turkey has a large armed force, professional armed forces and… I am certain they will continue as a committed and strong NATO ally.”

It would be interesting to know whether the 1,500 US soldiers who have been locked down at Incirlik Air Base along with several hundred soldiers from other NATO countries since the failed coup Friday night would agree with him.

Following the failed coup, the Erdogan regime cut off the base’s external electricity supply and temporarily suspended all flights from the base.

The base commander Gen. Bekir Ercan Van and 11 other service members from the base and a police officer were placed under arrest.

Incirlik is the center of NATO air operations against Islamic State in Syria. It also reportedly houses 50 nuclear warheads. The atomic bombs belong to the US. They deployed to Turkey – under US control – as a relic of the Cold War.

It took US President Barack Obama two years of pleading to convince Turkish President Recep Erdogan to allow NATO forces to use the base at Incirlik. It was only after the Kurdish political party secured unprecedented gains in Turkey’s parliamentary elections last year, and Tayyip Erdogan decided to expand his operations against the Kurds of Iraq and Syria to dampen domestic support for the Kurds, that he agreed to allow NATO forces to use the base.

His condition was that the US support his war against the Kurds – the most effective ground force in the war against Islamic State.

Stoltenberg’s statement of support for Turkey is particularly troubling because Erdogan’s post-coup behavior makes it impossible to continue to sweep his hostility under the rug.

For nearly 14 years, since his AK Party first won the national elections in late 2002, Erdogan and his followers have made clear that they are ideologically – and therefore permanently – hostile to the West. And for nearly 14 years, Western leaders have pretended this reality under the rug.

Just weeks after AKP’s first electoral triumph, the Turkish parliament shocked Washington when it voted to reject the US’s request to deploy Iraq invasion forces along the Turkish border with Iraq. Turkey’s refusal to permit US operations from its territory are a big reason the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was able to organize.

It took the US some two months to take over northern Iraq. By that time, the Ba’athists had organized the paramilitary militias that later morphed into al-Qaida in Iraq and then, following the US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, Islamic State.

Ever since then, Erdogan has paid lip service, and even assisted NATO and the EU from time to time, when it served his momentary interests to do so. But the consistent trend of his behavior has been negative.

Since taking power, Erdogan has galvanized the organs of state propaganda – from the media to the entertainment industry to the book world – to indoctrinate the citizens of Turkey to hate Jews and Americans and to view terrorists supportively.

This induced hatred has been expressed as well in his foreign policy. Erdogan was the first major leader to embrace Hamas after its electoral victory in the 2006 Palestinian Authority elections. He treated Hamas terror chief Ismail Haniyeh like a visiting monarch when he hosted him shortly after those elections.

During Hezbollah’s 2006 war against Israel, Turkey was caught red-handed as it allowed Iran to move weapons systems to Hezbollah through Turkish territory.

Erdogan has turned a blind eye to al-Qaida. And he has permitted ISIS to use Turkey as its logistical base, economic headquarters and recruitment center. Earlier this year the State Department claimed that all of the 25,000 foreign recruits to ISIS have entered Syria through Turkey.

As for Iran, until Obama engineered the lifting of UN sanctions against Iran through his nuclear deal with the ayatollahs, Turkey was Iran’s conduit to the international market. Turkey was Iran’s partner in evading sanctions and so ensuring the economic viability of the regime. According to a series of investigative reports by Turkish and foreign reporters, Erdogan’s family was directly involved in this illicit trade.

Then there is Europe. For ISIS, Turkey has been a two-way street. Fighters have entered Syria through Turkey, and returned to Europe through Turkey. Turkey is behind the massive inflow of Syrian refugees to Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to cut a deal with Erdogan that would stem the flow. Erdogan pocketed her economic concessions and did nothing to stop the hemorrhage of refugees to Europe.

As for the US, the years of anti-American incitement and indoctrination of Turkish society are now coming into full flower in the aftermath of the coup. Even before the dust had settled, Erdogan was pointing an accusatory finger at Washington.

Insisting that the failed coup was the brainchild of exiled Islamic cleric – and erstwhile ally of Erdogan – Fetullah Gulen, who took up residence in Pennsylvania’s Poconos Mountains 16 years ago – Erdogan demanded that the US immediately put Gulen on an airplane with a one-stop ticket to Turkey.

In the days that followed, the Erdogan regime’s accusations against the US became more and more unhinged. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that failure to comply with Erdogan’s extradition demand would be viewed as a hostile act by the US.

And Turkish Labor Minister Suleyman Soylu flat out said that “America is behind the coup,” in a media interview.

In other words, after arresting the base commander and other forces at Incirlik, and while effectively holding US-led NATO forces and 50 nuclear warheads prisoner for the past six days, Turkey is accusing the US of engineering the coup attempt.

But apparently, NATO has decided to try to again sweep reality under the rug, once more. Hence, Stoltenberg’s soothing insistence that there is no cause for worry. Turkey remains a trusted member of the alliance.

This isn’t merely irresponsible. It is dangerous, for several reasons.

First of all, Stoltenberg’s claim that the Turkish military is as strong as ever is simply ridiculous.

A third of the serving generals are behind bars along with thousands of commanders and soldiers, educators, police officers, jurists and judges.

Who exactly can be willing to take the initiative in this climate? Amid at best mixed messages from the regime regarding the war against ISIS, and with the generals who coordinated the campaign with NATO now behind bars, who will maintain the alliance with NATO ? No one will.

The implications of this passivity will be felt on the ground in Turkey as well as in Syria and Iraq.

Thanks to Erdogan’s passive support, ISIS has operatives seeded throughout Turkey. Who can guarantee that they will leave the nuclear weapons at Incirlik alone? Is the US really planning to leave those bombs in Turkey when its own forces are effective prisoners of the regime? And what are the implications of removing them? How can such a necessary move be made at the same time that NATO pretends that all is well with Turkey? Then there is the problem of chemical weapons.

In recent months, ISIS has used chemical weapons in Syria and Iraq. In February, James Clapper, the director of US national intelligence, warned that ISIS is developing a chemical arsenal and intends to use chemical weapons against the US and Europe.

In May it was reported that ISIS is conducting experiments with chemical weapons on dogs and prisoners in labs located in residential neighborhoods in Mosul.

Turkey is a NATO member with open borders to Europe, and the only thing that has prevented ISIS terrorists from bringing chemical weapons to Europe has been the Turkish military and police force. They are now being purged.

Moreover, as Soner Cagaptay reported in The Wall Street Journal this week, Erdogan used out and out jihadists to put down the coup on Friday night and Saturday. He has continued to embrace them in the days that have passed since then.

In so doing, Erdogan signaled that he may well use the post-coup state of emergency to dismantle what is left of Turkey’s secular state apparatus and transform the NATO member into an Islamist state, along the lines of the short-lived Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt, which Erdogan enthusiastically supported.

In this climate, it is difficult, if not as a practical matter impossible, to imagine that the military and police will work particularly hard to prevent ISIS terrorists from transporting weapons of mass destruction from Syria to Europe through Turkey.

The Obama administration is partly responsible for the current crisis. Secretary of State John Kerry just agreed to subordinate the US-led anti-ISIS campaign to Russia. In so doing, he made clear that the US will not protect Turkey from Russia. This gives Erdogan little choice other than to strike out a new, far more radical course.

To Erdogan’s own Islamist convictions and US incompetence must be added a third reason to assume the situation in Turkey will only get worse.

As David Goldman has reported in the Asia Times, Turkey is on the brink of economic collapse. Its currency has been devalued by 7 percent just since the failed coup. “With about $300 billion in foreign currency liabilities, Turkish corporations’ debt service costs rise as the currency falls. Stocks have lost more than half their value in dollar terms since 2013,” Goldman warned.

In the current climate, it is hard to imagine Erdogan instituting austerity measures to pay down the debt. So he needs a scapegoat for his failure. The chosen scapegoat is clearly the US.

To make a long story short then, the Turkish military is no longer capable of cooperating in any meaningful way with the US or NATO . Erdogan, never a reliable ally, is now openly hostile.

He is in the midst of committing aggression against NATO forces at Incirlik. And he is embracing Turkish jihadists who are ideologically indistinguishable from ISIS.

The US surrender to Russia means that America cannot protect Turkey from Russia. And Erdogan has chosen to blame American for Turkey’s fast approaching economic doomsday.

Under the circumstances, if NATO takes its job of protecting the free world seriously, it has no choice but to quit with the business as usual routine and kick Turkey out of the alliance, withdraw its personnel and either remove or disable the nuclear weapons it fields in the country.

As for anti-ISIS operations, the US will have to move its bases to Iraqi Kurdistan and embrace the Kurds as the strategic allies they have clearly become.

In the aftermath of the failed coup, Turkey is a time bomb. It cannot be defused. It will go off. The only way to protect the free world from the aftershocks is by closing the border and battening down the hatches.

Categories: Erdogan, Europe, Foreign policy, NATO, Obama and Turkey, Obama's America, Turkey, Turkey and Europe, Turkey and human rights, Turkey and Islamic State, Turkey's failed coup
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Erdogan ally: Coup attempt will tighten Israel-Turkey ties

July 21, 2016

Erdogan ally: Coup attempt will tighten Israel-Turkey ties Ilnur Cevik tells Israeli TV that Ankara expects Israeli intel in fight against IS, says US must ‘think very clearly’ about request to extradite cleric

By Stuart Winer

July 20, 2016, 11:40 pm

Source: Erdogan ally: Coup attempt will tighten Israel-Turkey ties | The Times of Israel

 

The failed putsch attempt by members of the Turkish military will serve to deepen Turkey’s newly restored ties with Israel, a senior adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Channel 2 television.

Mutual security fears will act as a spur to reinforce the reconciliation agreement between Jerusalem and Ankara that was signed last month, said Ilnur Cevik in an interview aired on Wednesday night.

 “It will maybe speed up the normalization process,” Cevik told the Israeli news channel in a meeting at the presidential palace in Ankara. The interview was conducted in the palace courtyard for security reasons, Cevik said.

“We feel Israel has always helped us in intelligence gathering. We need that in our fight against Daesh,” he said, calling the Islamic State by its Arabic acronym. “We need that in putting some order into Syria.”

The Jewish state, the aide said, “is starting to see the dangers of Daesh as well.”

He made it clear that Turkey expects to receive information about IS from Israel.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) and former Turkish president Abdullah Gul (C) react after attending the funeral of a victim of the coup attempt in Istanbul on July 17, 2016. (AFP PHOTO/BULENT KILIC)

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) and former Turkish president Abdullah Gul (C) react after attending the funeral of a victim of the coup attempt in Istanbul on July 17, 2016. (AFP Photo/Bulent Kilic)

Like Erdogan, Cevik also said the Turkish people were instrumental in resisting those behind the attempted coup. He recalled that he arrived at the palace on Friday night as the rebellion was already underway, and there was a large crowd of civilians outside defending the compound.

He insisted that there was no doubt that the plotters were guilty, and suggested that Israel would have had a similar response to Erdogan’s massive round-up of judicial officials, security officers and even educationalists, something that has raised eyebrows internationally, even as Erdogan’s Western allies hailed the triumph of the rule of law and democracy.

“For God’s sake think of it in Israel, some group of policemen, judges, are just going to go over to Mossad [domestic intelligence agency] and trying to capture the head of Mossad,” Cevik said. “I mean this is incredible. This is a coup.”

Turkish cleric and opponent to the Erdogan regime Fethullah Gülen addresses at his residence in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania on July 18, 2016 allegations by the Turkish government about his involvement in the attempted July 15 coup. (AFP/Thomas URBAIN)

Turkish cleric and opponent to the Erdogan regime Fethullah Gulen addresses at his residence in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania on July 18, 2016 allegations by the Turkish government about his involvement in the attempted July 15 coup. (AFP/Thomas Urbain)

Cevik also had pointed words for the US, which is taking a cautious stance on Turkey’s demand for the extradition of a long-term Erdogan adversary, the Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey accuses of orchestrating the coup.

“The United State needs us as much as much as we need the United States,” he said of the NATO ally currently using Turkey as a staging point for attacks on IS fighters in Syria and Iraq. “The United States has to sit down and think very, very clearly.”

President Barack Obama “needs to think very clearly,” he continued. “Turkey says extradite this man.”

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Turkey Set for Emergency Measures to Quell Post-Coup Turmoil

July 20, 2016

Turkey Set for Emergency Measures to Quell Post-Coup Turmoil

BY:
July 20, 2016 10:39 am

Source: Turkey Set for Emergency Measures to Quell Post-Coup Turmoil

By Humeyra Pamuk and Nick Tattersall

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey will announce emergency measures on Wednesday to try to shore up stability and prevent damage to the economy as it purges thousands of members of the security forces, judiciary, civil service and academia after an abortive coup.

Around 50,000 soldiers, police, judges, civil servants and teachers have been suspended or detained since the military coup attempt, raising tensions across the country of 80 million which borders Syria’s chaos and is a Western ally against Islamic State.

Academics were banned from traveling abroad on Wednesday in what a Turkish official said was a temporary measure to prevent the risk of alleged coup plotters in universities from fleeing. State TRT television said 95 academics had been removed from their posts at Istanbul University alone.

“Universities have always been crucial for military juntas in Turkey and certain individuals are believed to be in contact with cells within the military,” the official said.

President Tayyip Erdogan blames the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen for Friday night’s attempted coup, in which more than 230 people were killed as soldiers commandeered fighters jets, military helicopters and tanks to try to overthrow the government.

Erdogan has vowed to clean the “virus” responsible for the plot from all state institutions. The depth and scale of the purges have raised concern among Western allies that Erdogan is trying to suppress all dissent, and that opponents unconnected with the plot will be caught in the net.

He will chair meetings in his palace on Wednesday of the cabinet and the National Security Council, after which a series of emergency measures are expected to be announced.

In a sign of how shaken Turkey’s leadership has been by the coup attempt, with dozens of generals arrested as well as Erdogan’s aide de camp, government ministers and top officials have not been briefed in advance of the meetings.

“The cabinet meeting is classified at the highest level for national security reasons. The palace will give ministers a dossier just beforehand,” one senior official told Reuters.

“Ministers do not yet know what is going to be discussed.”

Around a third of Turkey’s roughly 360 serving generals have been detained since the coup bid, a second senior official said, with 99 charged pending trial and 14 more being held.

The threat of prolonged instability in a NATO member country, which had not seen a violent military coup for more than three decades, has shaken investors’ confidence.

The lira hit a 10-month low in early trade on Wednesday, touching 3.063 to the dollar. The Istanbul stock index is down 8 percent so far this week, its worst three-day performance since 2013. The cost of insuring Turkish debt against default rose to its highest in nearly a month, according to data from Markit.

Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek told Reuters a priority in the measures to be discussed on Wednesday would be preventing damage to the economy. He also said on Twitter they would be “market-friendly” and would prioritize structural reform.

MILITARY CHIEF REFUSED TO BACK COUP BID

Around 1,400 people were wounded as soldiers commandeered tanks, attack helicopters and warplanes, strafing parliament and the intelligence headquarters and trying to seize the main airport and bridges in Istanbul.

At the height of the abortive coup, the rebel pilots of two F-16 fighter jets had Erdogan’s plane in their sights as he returned to Istanbul from a holiday on the coast. Erdogan said he was almost killed or captured by the mutineers.

In testimony published by the Hurriyet newspaper and corroborated by a Turkish official, an infantry lieutenant-colonel said the coup plotters had tried to persuade military chief Hulusi Akar, who was being held hostage, to join the effort to overthrow Erdogan but that he had refused.

“When he refused, they couldn’t convince the senior commanders either. Akar’s refusal to be a part of this paved the way for the failure of the coup attempt,” the written transcript published by the newspaper said.

Erdogan, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, ministers, senior commanders and generals had been due to be taken one by one during the night of the coup bid, the testimony said.

Turkey’s Western allies have expressed solidarity with the government over the coup attempt but have also voiced increasing alarm at the scale and swiftness of the response, urging it to adhere to democratic values.

On Tuesday, authorities shut down media outlets deemed to be supportive of Gulen and said 15,000 people had been suspended from the education ministry along with 100 intelligence officials. A further 492 people were removed from duty at the Religious Affairs Directorate, 257 at the prime minister’s office and 300 at the energy ministry.

Those moves come after the detention of more than 6,000 members of the armed forces, from foot soldiers to commanders, and the suspension of close to 3,000 judges and prosecutors. About 8,000 police officers, including in the capital Ankara and the biggest city Istanbul, have also been removed.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, voiced “serious alarm” on Tuesday at the mass suspension of judges and prosecutors and urged Turkey to allow independent monitors to visit those who have been detained.

The foreign ministry has said criticism of the government’s response amounts to backing the coup.

TENSIONS WITH U.S.

Erdogan’s spokesman said on Tuesday the government was preparing a formal request to the United States for the extradition of Gulen. U.S. President Barack Obama discussed the status of Gulen in a telephone call with Erdogan on Tuesday, the White House said, urging Ankara to show restraint as it pursues those responsible for the coup attempt.

Seventy-five-year-old Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania but has a network of supporters within Turkey, has condemned the abortive coup and denied any role in it.

A former ally-turned critic of Erdogan, he suggested the president staged it as an excuse for a crackdown after a steady accumulation of control during 14 years in power.

Prime Minister Yildirim accused Washington, which has said it will consider Gulen’s extradition only if clear evidence is provided, of double standards in its fight against terrorism.

Yildirim said the justice ministry had sent a dossier to U.S. authorities on Gulen, whose religious movement blends conservative Islamic values with a pro-Western outlook and who has a network of supporters within Turkey.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest confirmed Ankara had filed materials in electronic form with the U.S. government, which officials were reviewing. Any extradition request from Turkey, once submitted, would be evaluated under the terms of a treaty between the two countries, he added.

Such a request would face legal and political hurdles in the United States. Even if approved by a judge, it would still have to go to Secretary of State John Kerry, who can consider non-legal factors, such as humanitarian arguments.

“I urge the U.S. government to reject any effort to abuse the extradition process to carry out political vendettas,” Gulen said on Tuesday in a statement issued by the Alliance for Shared Values, a group associated with the cleric.

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Did Erdogan Stage the Coup?

July 20, 2016

Did Erdogan Stage the Coup?, Clarion Project, Meira Svirsky and William Reed, July 20, 2016

turkey coup busA leader of the ‘coup’ is arrested by Erdogan’s intelligence agency. (Photo: Video screenshot)

The European Union commissioner in charge of Turkey’s bid, Johannes Hahn, to join the EU echoed these sentiments, saying, “It looks at least as if something has been prepared. The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage,” Hahn said. “I’m very concerned. It is exactly what we feared.”

[M]ost Syrian asylum seekers in Turkey of which there are 2.7 million, are sympathizers of ISIS. “As opposed to what is thought,” Gezici said, “60 percent of the Syrian asylum seekers in Turkey have come to Turkey fleeing Syrian head of state Bashar al-Assad. And a large majority of this group sees ISIS as a savior; they have sympathy for it.”

*********************

In the aftermath of the attempted coup in Turkey Friday night, thousands of teachers as well as police, military personnel, judges, governors and more have been dismissed.  The list includes:

  • 21,000 private teachers have licenses removed
  • 15,000 suspended from education ministry
  • 8,000 police officers detained or suspended
  • 6,000 soldiers detained
  • 1,500 staff at Ministry of Finance dismissed
  • 2,745 judges dismissed
  • 1,577 deans – Education board demands resignation
  • 492 sacked from Religious Affairs Directorate
  • 399 from Ministry of Family and Social Policies stripped of responsibilities
  • 257 fired from the prime minister’s office
  • 100 intelligence officials sacked
  • 47 district governors dismissed
  • 30 provincial governors dismissed
  • 20 news websites blocked

In addition, public sector employees have reportedly been forbidden from leaving the country.

The alacrity with which the above thousands  were either arrested or purged from their position, has led many to assume that Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan had prepared the lists before the coup.

The European Union commissioner in charge of Turkey’s bid, Johannes Hahn, to join the EU echoed these sentiments, saying, “It looks at least as if something has been prepared. The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage,” Hahn said. “I’m very concerned. It is exactly what we feared.”

Moreover, many dubious circumstances surrounding the coup have led others to question whether the coup was, in fact staged, to allow Erdogan to execute these purges and declare a state of emergency where authoritarian rule will be imposed on the country.

These circumstances include the fact that the coup’s plotters:

Failed to seize power

  • Neither Erdogan nor any members of the cabinet or high-ranking officials of Erdogan’s Islamist AK party were detained or killed.
  • Sent commandos to the hotel where Erdogan was staying after he had already left.
  • Erdogan’s $600 million presidential palace was not attacked or occupied.
  • Erdogan’s plane was not intercepted or shot down as he flew back to Istanbul, despite the fact that top generals in the Air Force were involved in the plot.
  • Coup plotters occupied Ataturk International Airport but left before Erdogan’s plane landed.
  • Attacked the parliament building, which was all but empty at the time.

Failed to seize control of media

  • After initially taking control of the state’s TRT station and CNN Turk, the plotters immediately relinquished control of these news outlets back to the government, which allowed Erdogan to leverage appeal to his followers to take to the streets in support of the government.

Whether the coup was staged or Erdogan received a tip-off about it, as other have suggested, he was able to bring the Islamist “street” out in force to support him. The fact that the Turkish public seems to be becoming increasingly radicalized is borne out by a recent poll taken in Turkey in May of this year.

According to a May poll of the Gezici Research Company, close to 1 in 5 people in Turkey (19.7 percent) support the Islamic State and over 23 percent have sympathy for it.

The poll, which was conducted face-to-face with 2,455 Turkish citizens in 24 cities,  also indicates that Turkish support for ISIS has increased 100 % in the last 2 years.

The owner of the research company that conducted the poll, Murat Gezici, explained the surprising results. “95 percent of Turkey’s population is Muslim. And a large majority of them are pious and conservative,” Gezici said.

“At the Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul, a German tourist group was targeted. In Suruc, leftists were targeted. The attack at the Istanbul Ataturk Airport took place at its international terminal,” he added. “The conservatives in Turkey see that Muslims are not targeted in the attacks that are told by official sources to have been carried out by ISIS.”

Gezici also said that most Syrian asylum seekers in Turkey of which there are 2.7 million, are sympathizers of ISIS. “As opposed to what is thought,” Gezici said, “60 percent of the Syrian asylum seekers in Turkey have come to Turkey fleeing Syrian head of state Bashar al-Assad. And a large majority of this group sees ISIS as a savior; they have sympathy for it.”

In 2015, the Gezici Research Company was raided by government inspectors after releasing an opinion poll and its pollsters were detained after releasing results of an opinion poll showing that Turkey’s ruling party would losing votes in an upcoming election.

“Police told our surveyors that they were not authorized for the field study. In reality, we have had all licenses for political, economic and market studies since 2011,” said Gezici at the time.

Meanwhile, jihadi propaganda is becoming more and more common in the Turkish Islamist media. In just one example, Misvak, an Islamist “humor” magazine known to be close to the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party), recently published a cartoon praising the Islamic State.

These current statistics as well as recent events challenge the myth that Turkey is a secular, democratic state worthy of Western support, NATO membership and an appropriate candidate for EU membership.

In truth, the history of Turkey is not foreign to Islamic State-like atrocities  and has witnessed tremendous persecution of religious minorities – including the Yazidis, Christians, Alevis, Jews and others.

From the 1915 Armenian genocide, to the 1937 Dersim Alevi massacres, the 1955 anti-Greek pogroms in Istanbul, the 1978 massacre of Alevis in Maras and the 1980 massacre of Alevis in Corum, among others, many Turkish governments and a considerable part of the Turkish society have carried out brutal crimes against their minority citizens.

Religious violence is largely endemic to political Islam. Doubtlessly, the Islamic State is a huge threat to human rights and liberties worldwide, but Islamist crimes should not be restricted to this terror group only.

Analyzing the history of Islamist crimes against non-Muslims – both in Turkey and the rest of the Muslim world – as well as the Islamic doctrine of jihad would give us a better insight into why many Muslims can so easily feel sympathy for a horrific group like ISIS and why many pious Muslims can even see ISIS as a source of humor.

Categories: Erdogan, Islam in Turkey, Islamic refugees, Islamic State, Turkey's failed coup
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Erdogan locks US airmen, nuclear arms in Incirlik

July 20, 2016

Erdogan locks US airmen, nuclear arms in Incirlik

DEBKAfile Special Report July 20, 2016, 11:29 AM (IDT)

Source: Erdogan locks US airmen, nuclear arms in Incirlik

 

Some 1,500 US airmen and their families have been locked in the southern Turkish air base of Incirlik together with a stock if tactical nuclear bombs since President Reccep Erdogan crushed an attempted coup on Saturday, July 16. In the four days up until Wednesday, July 20, therefore, no air strikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq have been staged that Turkish base.
This extraordinary situation, reported here by debkafile’s military sources, whereby a large group of American military personnel are held virtual captive by an allied government, was almost certainly raised in the phone call that took place Tuesday between President Barack Obama and Erdogan.  But the most outlandish aspect of this affair is that no American official has raised it in public – nor even by the administrations most vocal critics at the Republican convention which nominated Donald Trump as presidential candidate.
The situation only rated a brief mention in some Russian publications under the heading: “Turkish investigators enter & search Incirlik air base where US nukes are housed.”
Our military sources report that deep bunkers located near the base’s running strips house B61 tactical nuclear gravity bombs.
In the course of the massive sweep-cum-purge Erdogan is conducting in every corner of the country, hundreds of police officers accompanied by Ministry of Justice and Attorney General Office investigators are the only people permitted to enter the strategic air base, and only emergency cases may leave, after coordinating with the Turkish authorities.
The base is under virtual siege by large police contingents, cut off from electric power for several days except for local generators which will soon run out of fuel. This pressure appears to be Erdogan’s method of turning hundreds of Americans on the base into hostages to force Washington into extraditing Fethullah Gulen, whom he accuses of orchestrating the failed coup from his place of asylum in Pennsylvania.
The victims of Erdogan’s strategy of extortion are several US units deployed in Incirlik under squadron command. They include engineering, communication, logistics, air control, a military hospital with medical and operational facilities, air transportation and more.
The Turkish squadron and base commander, Brigadier Gen. Bekir Ercan, is under arrest, suspected of a senior role in planning and executing the coup, by assigning the aircraft and helicopters to support it, responsibility for the disappearance of a large number of aircraft and aiding the defection of air crews to Greece.
He is one of the more than 6,000 military personnel including fellow generals arrested on suspicion of active complicity in the coup plot.

By Wednesday, more than 50,000 people had been rounded up, sacked or suspended from their jobs by Turkey’s government in the wake of last week’s failed coup, including 9,000 police officers, the suspension of about 3,000 judges and widening Tuesday to include teachers, university deans and the media who are accused of links with Gulen.
However, fears for the fate of the US airmen trapped in Incirlik and the tactical nukes were exacerbated by the comments of two top officials of the Erdogan regime Tuesday.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim insinuated that the Americans may be viewed as partners, at least passive ones, in the conspiracy, in view of the use the plotters made of Incirlik for sending aircraft based there and arming them for the missions of intercepting the President’s airplane (which was never realized) and  bombing the Parliament building in Ankara (which was).
The Turkish Labor Minister, Süleyman Soylu, was more explicit: “This coup has America behind,” he twitted in his Twitter account.
The Obama administration’s caution over the scary Incirlik impasse appears to derive from trepidation, shared by Riyadh, Cairo and Jerusalem, that the autocratic Turkish ruler’s Stalinist purge reaching into all branches of government and all walks of Turkish society is part and parcel of a comprehensive Muslim revolution underway in Turkey. An incautious word from Washington may quicken the process.

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