Hidden Ultra-Right Wing Network in Turkey?

[Truth4Youth]

Mystery of a killer elite fuels unrest in Turkey
Arrest of 47 people over alleged coup plot sparks fears of hidden ultra-right network

Jason Burke in Istanbul The Observer, Sunday May 4 2008

It has the elements of a thriller: a shadowy group of right-wing former soldiers, a mafia don, extremist lawyers and politicians; hand-grenades in a rucksack; plots to kill the Prime Minister and a Nobel-prize winning writer; allegedly planted evidence and falsified wire taps.

Even the name of the villains - the Ergenekon network - has an airport paperback flavour, and the stakes involved are high: the stability of one of the world's most strategically important countries. This highly charged political reality is splitting Turkey.

In the coming days the Ergenekon investigation will reach its climax. According to newspaper reports, a long-awaited indictment will be issued by the state prosecutor. After successive waves of arrests, 47 people are in custody. They include senior figures in the ultra-right-wing Workers' Party, a dozen retired senior army officers, journalists and a lawyer accused of launching legal attacks that drove Nobel award-winning writer Orhan Pamuk from his homeland.

Crimes being blamed on Ergenekon include a series of murderous bomb blasts, a grenade attack on a newspaper, the murder of an Italian bishop and the killing last year of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink - all aimed, investigators believe, at creating a climate of terror and chaos propitious to a military coup that would depose Turkey's moderate Islamist government.

The coup attempt has revealed deep divisions in Turkey's 73 million-strong population over the country's identity: pro-European or anti-European, fiercely nationalist, ethnically homogeneous and militaristic, or globalised and pro-Western, more or less Islamic, more or less sunk in historical bitterness and dark conspiracy theories.

'The cleavage is deep: every institution, every social class, everybody is divided,' said Professor Murat Belge of Bigli University, Istanbul, an analyst. 'I am deeply apprehensive about what is going on now and what might happen.'

But for Mehmet Demirlek, a lawyer defending a colleague accused of being a key member of Ergenekon, the allegations are 'imaginary'. 'There is not a shred of truth in them,' he said. 'This is 100 per cent political. It has all been cooked up by the government and by the imperialist powers, the CIA, Mossad and the Jewish lobby and the European Union to eliminate Turkish nationalism. There is no such thing as Ergenekon.' His imprisoned client, Kemal Kerincsiz, told The Observer in an interview prior to his arrest he was a 'patriot fighting the disintegration of the nation'.

For Fethiye Cetin, a lawyer representing Hrant Dink's family, Ergenekon has 'existed for years'. 'A small part of what has been previously hidden is being exposed. Call it the "deep state".'

An investigation was launched by state prosecutors after 27 hand-grenades, said to be the make used by the military, were found in a home in a rundown part of Istanbul last June. Investigators claim that they later uncovered an underground network dedicated to extremist nationalist agitation.

Wire taps led to further finds of explosives, weapons and documents listing security arrangements of senior political and military figures and death lists. The papers supposedly proving Ergenekon - the name of a mythic mountain in Asia where the ancestors of the Turkic peoples escaped the Mongols - was set up in 1999 as a clandestine and violent organisation aimed of maintaining a reactionary, purist vision of a strong, militaristic Turkey, the heritage, the extremists believed, of the founder of the nation, Kemal Ataturk.

The plotters tap 'into a psyche that is based on a new and extreme nationalism', said Cengiz Candar, one of Turkey's most prominent journalists. 'The idea is that to preserve Turkey it is necessary and legitimate to resist in any way. And anyone who is pro-European, liberal, who argues for increased rights for minorities and so on is a traitor.'

According to Candar, this new nationalism is the result of a coincidence of factors: the difficulties of Turkey's accession to the European Union, soul-searching over nation identity generated by the debate on Europe, the emergence of a strong, semi-autonomous Kurdish state in post-Saddam Iraq with all the potential implications that has for Turkey's large Kurdish population, and, perhaps most importantly, the continuing electoral success of the AKP, the Justice and Development party, the moderate Islamist party led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan to power in 2002. 'With no way of ousting them through democratic means, other means become attractive to the extremist nationalists. This country has a long tradition of such actions,' said Candar.

Turkey's political history has been marked by interventions by the army, each preceded by a period of violent instability and each justified by the need to preserve the constitution and the nation. The repeated electoral success of the AKP, its social and economic policies, its pro-European, pro-free market stance, the growth of newly wealthy, religiously conservative middle classes who vote for Erdogan and his colleagues and the party's break with Turkey's fiercely secular ideology - all threaten the nation's powerful military and bureaucratic establishment.

A legal bid to ban the party - on the grounds that it wants to impose Sharia law on Turkey and thus overturn the constitution - is one tactic, AKP party loyalists say. Violence and the activities of Ergenekon is another. 'How long are these people going to keep their power when it is incompatible with a European, fully democratic Turkey?' asked Belge. 'And how big is Ergenekon? Who are they? How high does it go?'

No official military spokesman would comment but General Haldu Somazturk, who retired three years ago, told The Observer 'the Ergenekon group is trivial, barely worthy of attention', saying that though 'it was possible' a few military officers might have become involved in the group, the vast majority of Turkish soldiers were 'committed to maintaining democracy'.

Somazturk, who said that his own views 'reflected those of most senior soldiers', insisted 'there are far more grave problems facing Turkey than a handful of right-wing crazies'. Instead, he said, it was the government that worried him. 'The AKP are a concern. There is no such thing as moderate Islam. Either a government is influenced by religion or it isn't. And if it is, then it is not secular and not democratic,' he said. 'We want to move democracy forward, they want to move it back and we are approaching a point of no return.'

In a rundown working-class suburb of Istanbul, far from the tourist sights of the historic centre, the deputy chairman of the Nationalist Action Party in the city, Nazmi Celenk, made an effort to show his party's moderate side. 'In Turkey we are on the front line of the clash of civilisations,' he said. 'We are the natural allies of America and Britain in this region. Our future is in Europe - but not necessarily in the European Union.'

Yet Celenk was critical of last week's reform of Turkey's strict rules on 'insulting Turkishness', pushed through parliament in the face of fierce resistance from the 70 deputies from his own party. If he was in power, Celenk said, the tight laws on freedom of expression would be maintained. And, if he had the power, he would invade Syria and split the state between Turkey and Iraq. The violent Kurdish activism in the south-east of his country would be solved 'in 24 hours'.

A street away, a group of mechanics and local shopkeepers played backgammon. They said they were worried by rising crime, drug use and low wages, but would not vote for the nationalists. 'They try and cause fights between us to get votes,' Hikmet, a bus owner, said.

Fethiye Cetin, the Dink family lawyer, is still optimistic despite the tensions. She discovered her own minority roots - an Armenian grandmother - at the age of 25. 'This period is the peak of aggressive nationalism in Turkey, but there is still peace,' she said in her small office on a hill above the blue waters of the Sea of Marmara. 'But everyone always focuses on the negative side and never on the tens of millions who live together without any trouble at all.'

Victim of the plot?
Hrant Dink was a 52-year-old journalist, assassinated in January 2007. As co-founder of Agos, a newspaper published in both Turkish and Armenian, he became a prominent member of the Armenian minority in Turkey and pushed for Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and human rights.

Dink was shot in Istanbul by Ogün Samast, a 17-year old Turkish nationalist. 100,000 mourners turned out to Dink's funeral to chant: 'We are all Armenians'.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/ma ... hefarright

[American Dream]

http://www.newint.org/columns/worldbeat ... tionalist/

Devlet Bahçeli
The most recent wave of this nationalism gathers around the Grey Wolves youth movement and the Turkish Nationalist Party (MHP)

Turkey has long been haunted by the spectre of a fascist-tinged nationalism peculiar for a largely Muslim country. The politics of the nationalist Right claim legitimacy and roots in the legacy of Ataturk’s Young Turkey movement that united the country under a secular modernizing but authoritarian élite back in the 19th century. The most recent wave of this nationalism gathers around the Grey Wolves youth movement and the Turkish Nationalist Party (MHP). The current leader of the MHP (which re-entered parliament in the 2007 elections) is Devlet Bahçeli, a long-time activist in ‘The Great Idealist Cause’. Bahçeli is a leading champion of a return to the death penalty in Turkey, despite the participation of his party in the government that was forced to abolish it under European pressure.

The ‘Cause’ encompasses the full panoply of what has been traditionally regarded as classic fascist belief – the purity of the blood of the Turkish race, the belief in Turan (a greater Turkish empire which spreads across Asia as far as Xinjiang Province in northwestern China), a sanitized, heroic version of Turkish history that denies the Armenian holocaust and the suppression of the Kurdish minority. It also holds that dissent and democratic rights (particularly Kurdish rights) weaken Turkish civilization.

To realize this programme, the Turkish Right has followed a policy of murder and mayhem against its opponents both in the country and outside it. The main victims have been either Kurds or leftists but the violence is by no means restricted to them. Sympathizers in the military and security apparatus have allowed this policy to be carried out with a degree of impunity, often involving their own personnel in clandestine provocation and killing. After the coup of 1980 the military turned on the MHP, charging 220 of its members with some 694 murders. They were offered leniency, however, if they agreed to restrict their activities to fighting against the PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party) and the Armenian Secret Army.

We are not talking here about a lunatic fringe of a couple of hundred fanatics. At the time of the 1980 military coup the Grey Wolves were estimated to have 200,000 registered members and a million sympathizers. In recent elections the MHP passed the fairly rigorous 10 per cent threshold of electoral support to re-enter the national stage. Bahçeli ran an unabashedly nationalist campaign based on fierce xenophobic rhetoric and a recognizable fascist hand gesture. In other words, there is a strong base for this authoritarian nationalism amongst sectors of the Turkish people.

The three shots fired into the head and neck of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink on 19 January 2007 outside his Istanbul office provided a stark reminder of the ‘permission-giving’ atmosphere that the nationalists have been able to create to deal with anyone considered to have ‘insulted the nation’. His young assassin claimed Dink had ‘insulted Turkish blood’. Dink’s was only the latest in a series of murders and lesser threats to suppress an emerging self-critical civil society. Writers and musicians, including Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, have all come under threat.

The most brutal assaults, however, have been on the Kurds, including a series of ‘false-flag attacks’ where militants kill and rape in Kurdish towns and villages while pretending to be PKK guerrillas. Such attacks are often in collaboration with security forces. After one 2005 attack on a bookstore in the Kurdish town of Semdinli, two NCOs in the Turkish armed forces were arrested.

The Wolves and the MEP are active in a series of international causes as befits their pan-Turkic ambitions. One, Mehmet Ali Agca, tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981. Others have engaged in clandestine action from Cyprus to Chechnya, with special attention to Azerbaijan, where they sided with the forces fighting the Armenians during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Will the electoral avalanche that brought Turkey’s Islamic-inspired Justice and Development Party (AKP) back to power earlier this year put an end to the threat of military intervention and the periodic murders that until recently have punctured Turkey’s democratic reputation? In an odd alignment of forces, Turkey today is divided between authoritarian secular nationalists, both military and civilian, on the one side and a liberal pro-Europe Islamic government on the other. The Islamic groups are the ones defending human rights and democratic norms, but how far can they go in challenging the nationalists and the military apparatus that supports them? The case against the murderers of Hrant Dink is not encouraging in this respect – several police officers and security officials from the northern city of Trabzon with advanced knowledge of the plot have not been charged. Charges also continue to be brought against those who violate Turkey’s notorious section 301 of the penal code which prohibits ‘insults against Turkishness’.

But the strength of the AKP shown in their election victory has caused a shake-up in the Turkish nationalist camp. The mainstream Republican People’s Party has become more nationalist, with a political stance similar to the crude rightwing populism of the MHP. In the meantime other groups such as the ultra-nationalist Kuvayi Milliye Association (KMD) have been associated with violent attacks on journalists, media outlets and lawyers associated with human rights advocacy. Bahçeli and his sympathizers continue to have a worrying impact.

Name:
Devlet Bahçeli
Job:
Leader of the Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)
Reputation:
Crude rightwing shoot-from-hip populist, militant defender against all ‘insults’ to the Turkish nation
Sense of humour:
In a debate in the Turkish Parliament on who was to blame for the failure to execute Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Öcalan, Bahçeli produced a rope that he recommended be used to hang Öcalan. He then tossed it into the crowd.
Low cunning:
The nationalist military are dressing themselves in the clothes of George Bush’s War on Terror. According to General Yasar Büyükanit, Chief of General Staff: ‘No other country has been so obstructed in their practices… against terrorism.’ He went on to proclaim ominously that the Turkish nation ‘would never forgive those [critics] which talk with nice-sounding slogans’.
Sources:
BBC Online: BIA Newscentre, Istanbul, www.bianet.org; Wikipedia; IfEX; Der Spiegel.

[smiths]

from the 'moon of alabama'

The Deep State, of which the CÇG is the silent lobbying part, is alleged to have prepared another coup in 2004 when the AK Party won local elections. But the plotters were not put on trial. Instead the editor of the magazine that published proof in form of a diary of one of the plotting generals was investigated and the magazine temporarily shut down.

The reappearance of the group points to new activities and is seen as the direct threat to the government.

The mildly Islamic AKP of Prime Minister Erdogan is already in trouble. It passed a constitutional amendment to allow for headscarves to be worn in universities. The Turkish Constitutional Court, in a 9 to 2 vote, declared the amendment unconstitutional and a "threat" to the country's secular order.

With this vote the court put itself firmly into the Deep State camp of the conflict and against the popular government. Additionally public prosecutors are trying to ban the AKP.

The party won 48% of the popular vote in the last election and it is ruling quite successfully. It is now considering another snap election to confirm that it has the support of the people.

While the Deep State is secular and nominally liberal, it is also rightwing and anti-democratic. Internationally it has support from the neocon AEI and Israel. AEI's Michael Rubin a few day's ago called Erdogan Turkey's Putin and demanded his prosecution.

A coup against Erdogan, with guns or by partisan judges, would likely lead to a radicalisation of the followers of his party.

That again would heat up the cauldron in the Middle East by several hundred degrees.

An entity established by a former military general has been working to influence the political and social atmosphere in Turkey, the Taraf daily reported in its weekend editions.

Called the Republican Work Group (CÇG), the organization is similar to the Western Work Group, which was known to be active in most of the events that led up to the unarmed military intervention of Feb. 28, 1997 that overthrew the government. According to Taraf's report, the CÇG was founded by retired Gen. Şener Eruygur, who currently heads the Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD). The daily noted that its source is an individual in the military who provided a CD on which information about the CÇG is stored in slide shows and text documents.

The CÇG, according to information on the CD, has no legal standing and is not shown as being a part of the official organizational structure of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK). It was established by Gen. Eruygur -- who was promoted to commander of the gendarmerie forces -- in 2002, when the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) was elected to power with a parliamentary majority sufficient to change the Constitution. The CÇG was founded as part of the gendarmerie command, but its scope of authority and responsibilities far exceed those of the gendarmerie force's duties as defined in the law.

http://www.worldbulletin.net/news_detail.php?id=23561

[compared2what?]

I'm not sure what to make of that article. It describes what I think of as the pretty much the Turkish sociopolitical status quo in the twenty-first century, which is kind of a compound domestic strategy of tension. You just don't usually hear that much about it. But if there's really been a significant disturbance of it, that's pretty alarming.

Among other things, it would almost have to mean that the global power of the United States as anything other than bomb-dropping threat must be not merely in low water, but practically extinct. Which would not be such a bad thing, if we didn't still have that particular power as our last resort. But we do.

[AlicetheKurious]

This was written in 2002, and pretty much describes the extremely close relationship between the Turkish government and Israel (and of course its agents in the U.S.) BEFORE the AKP was elected, an election that apparently threatened some very important and longstanding plans:


Turkey, Israel and the U.S.

By Jason Vest

August 23, 2002

In a 1996 Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies paper prepared for Binyamin Netanyahu, the authors---including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, now, respectively, chair of the Defense Policy Board and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy---advised Israel to "shape its strategic environment by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria," and to "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq--an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." It's all heady stuff, but perhaps the most interesting parts are references to realizing the "new strategy for securing the realm" by "working closely with" or working "in cooperation" with Turkey.

Not only have the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP) been enthusiastic boosters in the service of assuring a constant flow of US military aid to Turkey, but JINSA/CSP advisers Perle and Feith have spent the past fifteen years--in governmental and private capacities--working quietly and deftly to keep the US arms sluice to Turkey open, as well as drawing both Turkey and Israel and their respective American lobbies closer together.

To Perle, Feith and other hawks, the importance of Turkey not just to the United States but to Israel is self-evident. As a secular Muslim state, Turkey has always been an attractive political and military ally to the Israelis; respectful of the close relationship between the US and Israel, over a decade ago the Turks began to appreciate the value for Turkish-US relations in being close with Israel, and have also grown to appreciate how useful an ally the American Jewish lobby can be against the Greek- and Armenian-American lobbies.

In fact, the idea of a strong Turkey-Israeli-US trifecta is nothing new. It was a cherished idea of Perle mentor and Committee on the Present Danger principal Albert Wohlstetter, the University of Chicago mathematician and RAND consultant who was key in drawing up the Pentagon's strategic and nuclear blueprints during the cold war.

In classified studies written at the Pentagon's behest over the years, Wohlstetter was a serious Turkey booster; when Perle ascended to his post in the Reagan-era Pentagon, he began implementing Wohlstetter's vision, conducting regular meetings in Ankara and, in 1986, closing a deal for a five-year Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement with Turkey which the Financial Times characterized as "something of a personal triumph" for Perle. It wasn't so bad for Turkey, either: After Israel and Egypt, Turkey became the third-largest recipient of US military aid, and got a nice break on debts owed to the United States.

Perle left government service in 1987. In 1989, various Turkish press outlets reported that he had quietly started lobbying in Washington on behalf of Turkey. In short order, the Wall Street Journal confirmed it, reporting that he had "sold the idea for the new [lobbying] company to Turgut Ozal, Turkey's prime minister, at a meeting in New York last May," but that Perle wouldn't be registering as a foreign agent because Perle was merely "chairman of the firm's advisory board," which, the Journal noted, only consisted of one person: Perle.

Perle responded to the Journal revelation with a bizarre letter, on the one hand claiming that--despite years of media reporting on his Pentagon Turkey initiatives--he had had no responsibility for Turkey while he was a Pentagon official, but that he had, nonetheless, advocated for Turkey in the Pentagon; now in private life, he was going to do something about it--but only so much, as Doug Feith would be taking point, and Perle would simply be in the "advice business."

According to Foreign Agent Registration Act filings, Perle's advice counted for a lot--a total of $231,000 between 1990 and 1994. To help out Turkey, Feith also deployed legal associate Michael Mobbs--now a Pentagon adviser, most recently in the news after a federal judge decided his memo making the case for the detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi as an "enemy combatant" was insufficient. Feith also hired Morris Amitay, former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and current head of the pro-Israel Washington lobby, who took aim earlier this year at the Bush-appointed Jewish-American US ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, for Kurtzer's circumspect public criticism of Israel's settlements policy.

International Advisors, Inc. hit the ground running in 1989, flexing its lobbying muscle immediately by securing the defeat of Congressional efforts to keep Turkey's US military aid at a level lower than that of neighboring Greece. In addition to cementing the US-Turkey military-to-military relationship, IAI was also part of a joint 1989 Turkish-Israeli effort to quash a US Senate resolution marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks. "Quietly, Israeli diplomats and some American Jewish activists have agreed to help Turkey even as other Jewish leaders have complained they have no business intervening in such a sensitive matter," reported Wolf Blitzer, then the Jerusalem Post's Washington correspondent. Blitzer went on to quote a source who explained that "as a people which was itself a victim of genocide, we feel natural sympathy for the Armenians. But Israel wants to foster its relations with Turkey, which it views with great importance."

With the Pentagon's hawks girding for war with Iraq yet again, Perle and his ilk have been both wooing and talking up Turkey, which, at the moment, is on shaky economic and political ground--despite previous efforts of the Bush Administration, including an arranged $16 billion IMF bailout and a pending $228 million US aid package.

In response to Turkish concerns about the potential for further political and economic destabilization in the wake of an attack on Iraq, Perle and others have proposed an expansive free-trade agreement between Turkey and the United States; a first step in that direction is already evident in the form of a Senate bill, sponsored by Senators John Breaux and John McCain and boosted by the recently formed, three-dozen-strong bipartisan American-Turkish Caucus on Capitol Hill, that would let Turkish textiles into the United States duty-free via Israel. According to a Pentagon source briefed on Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's recent trip to Ankara, the Turks have also indicated that they might be amenable to supporting an Iraq invasion in exchange for another military debt write-off to the tune of $5 million, as well as a free Patriot missile defense system.

But even with such measures--and despite the ministrations of Perle and Feith over the years--it's unclear what the future holds for US-Turkish relations. Turkish elections are scheduled for November, and right now the moderately pro-Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party appears to be leading at the polls, a situation causing handwringing in both Washington and Ankara. And, according to diplomatic sources in Washington, while the Turks have indicated a certain potential willingness to back a US invasion and restructuring of Iraq, they continue to voice serious concerns about overall regional destabilization, the financial cost to Turkey of war and the establishment of a Kurdish province in a post-Saddam, federal-style Iraq, which could mark the first step in a reinvigorated military campaign by Turkey's Kurds for total Kurdish independence--an effort that might be made easier if Kirkuk, an oil town in northern Iraq, comes under Kurdish control. "It's not exactly a volatile situation yet," says one Washington-based diplomat, "but let's just say a lot of people are keeping a very watchful eye on Turkey."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020902/vest20020823

[compared2what?]

This was written in 2002, and pretty much describes the extremely close relationship between the Turkish government and Israel (and of course its agents in the U.S.) BEFORE the AKP was elected, an election that apparently threatened some very important and longstanding plans:


Turkey, Israel and the U.S.

By Jason Vest

August 23, 2002

In a 1996 Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies paper prepared for Binyamin Netanyahu, the authors---including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, now, respectively, chair of the Defense Policy Board and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy---advised Israel to "shape its strategic environment by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria," and to "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq--an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." It's all heady stuff, but perhaps the most interesting parts are references to realizing the "new strategy for securing the realm" by "working closely with" or working "in cooperation" with Turkey.

Not only have the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP) been enthusiastic boosters in the service of assuring a constant flow of US military aid to Turkey, but JINSA/CSP advisers Perle and Feith have spent the past fifteen years--in governmental and private capacities--working quietly and deftly to keep the US arms sluice to Turkey open, as well as drawing both Turkey and Israel and their respective American lobbies closer together.

To Perle, Feith and other hawks, the importance of Turkey not just to the United States but to Israel is self-evident. As a secular Muslim state, Turkey has always been an attractive political and military ally to the Israelis; respectful of the close relationship between the US and Israel, over a decade ago the Turks began to appreciate the value for Turkish-US relations in being close with Israel, and have also grown to appreciate how useful an ally the American Jewish lobby can be against the Greek- and Armenian-American lobbies.

In fact, the idea of a strong Turkey-Israeli-US trifecta is nothing new. It was a cherished idea of Perle mentor and Committee on the Present Danger principal Albert Wohlstetter, the University of Chicago mathematician and RAND consultant who was key in drawing up the Pentagon's strategic and nuclear blueprints during the cold war.

In classified studies written at the Pentagon's behest over the years, Wohlstetter was a serious Turkey booster; when Perle ascended to his post in the Reagan-era Pentagon, he began implementing Wohlstetter's vision, conducting regular meetings in Ankara and, in 1986, closing a deal for a five-year Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement with Turkey which the Financial Times characterized as "something of a personal triumph" for Perle. It wasn't so bad for Turkey, either: After Israel and Egypt, Turkey became the third-largest recipient of US military aid, and got a nice break on debts owed to the United States.

Perle left government service in 1987. In 1989, various Turkish press outlets reported that he had quietly started lobbying in Washington on behalf of Turkey. In short order, the Wall Street Journal confirmed it, reporting that he had "sold the idea for the new [lobbying] company to Turgut Ozal, Turkey's prime minister, at a meeting in New York last May," but that Perle wouldn't be registering as a foreign agent because Perle was merely "chairman of the firm's advisory board," which, the Journal noted, only consisted of one person: Perle.

Perle responded to the Journal revelation with a bizarre letter, on the one hand claiming that--despite years of media reporting on his Pentagon Turkey initiatives--he had had no responsibility for Turkey while he was a Pentagon official, but that he had, nonetheless, advocated for Turkey in the Pentagon; now in private life, he was going to do something about it--but only so much, as Doug Feith would be taking point, and Perle would simply be in the "advice business."

According to Foreign Agent Registration Act filings, Perle's advice counted for a lot--a total of $231,000 between 1990 and 1994. To help out Turkey, Feith also deployed legal associate Michael Mobbs--now a Pentagon adviser, most recently in the news after a federal judge decided his memo making the case for the detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi as an "enemy combatant" was insufficient. Feith also hired Morris Amitay, former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and current head of the pro-Israel Washington lobby, who took aim earlier this year at the Bush-appointed Jewish-American US ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, for Kurtzer's circumspect public criticism of Israel's settlements policy.

International Advisors, Inc. hit the ground running in 1989, flexing its lobbying muscle immediately by securing the defeat of Congressional efforts to keep Turkey's US military aid at a level lower than that of neighboring Greece. In addition to cementing the US-Turkey military-to-military relationship, IAI was also part of a joint 1989 Turkish-Israeli effort to quash a US Senate resolution marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks. "Quietly, Israeli diplomats and some American Jewish activists have agreed to help Turkey even as other Jewish leaders have complained they have no business intervening in such a sensitive matter," reported Wolf Blitzer, then the Jerusalem Post's Washington correspondent. Blitzer went on to quote a source who explained that "as a people which was itself a victim of genocide, we feel natural sympathy for the Armenians. But Israel wants to foster its relations with Turkey, which it views with great importance."

With the Pentagon's hawks girding for war with Iraq yet again, Perle and his ilk have been both wooing and talking up Turkey, which, at the moment, is on shaky economic and political ground--despite previous efforts of the Bush Administration, including an arranged $16 billion IMF bailout and a pending $228 million US aid package.

In response to Turkish concerns about the potential for further political and economic destabilization in the wake of an attack on Iraq, Perle and others have proposed an expansive free-trade agreement between Turkey and the United States; a first step in that direction is already evident in the form of a Senate bill, sponsored by Senators John Breaux and John McCain and boosted by the recently formed, three-dozen-strong bipartisan American-Turkish Caucus on Capitol Hill, that would let Turkish textiles into the United States duty-free via Israel. According to a Pentagon source briefed on Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's recent trip to Ankara, the Turks have also indicated that they might be amenable to supporting an Iraq invasion in exchange for another military debt write-off to the tune of $5 million, as well as a free Patriot missile defense system.

But even with such measures--and despite the ministrations of Perle and Feith over the years--it's unclear what the future holds for US-Turkish relations. Turkish elections are scheduled for November, and right now the moderately pro-Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party appears to be leading at the polls, a situation causing handwringing in both Washington and Ankara. And, according to diplomatic sources in Washington, while the Turks have indicated a certain potential willingness to back a US invasion and restructuring of Iraq, they continue to voice serious concerns about overall regional destabilization, the financial cost to Turkey of war and the establishment of a Kurdish province in a post-Saddam, federal-style Iraq, which could mark the first step in a reinvigorated military campaign by Turkey's Kurds for total Kurdish independence--an effort that might be made easier if Kirkuk, an oil town in northern Iraq, comes under Kurdish control. "It's not exactly a volatile situation yet," says one Washington-based diplomat, "but let's just say a lot of people are keeping a very watchful eye on Turkey."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020902/vest20020823

My point precisely. In one form or another, "keeping an eye on" the not exactly volatile situation in Turkey has been an essential part of practically every action launched in the northern hemisphere under the British/American global mandate since 1918. As was "keeping an eye on" the Ottoman Empire before it.

In other words, external forces have been underwriting the maintenance of a not exactly volatile situation in Turkey for almost a century. It would be so irredeemably bad for business were the situation to became either exactly volatile, or exactly not volatile that I would regard any significant change in either direction as a sign of very seriously diminished Anglo-American geopolitical capital. Do you know what I mean? Anglo-American interests can't afford to default on that mortgage figuratively speaking. So if it's really in default, it would almost have to be because we literally can't afford to continue making timely payments on it.

[seemslikeadream]

This was written in 2002, and pretty much describes the extremely close relationship between the Turkish government and Israel (and of course its agents in the U.S.) BEFORE the AKP was elected, an election that apparently threatened some very important and longstanding plans:


Turkey, Israel and the U.S.

By Jason Vest

August 23, 2002

In a 1996 Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies paper prepared for Binyamin Netanyahu, the authors---including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, now, respectively, chair of the Defense Policy Board and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy---advised Israel to "shape its strategic environment by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria," and to "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq--an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." It's all heady stuff, but perhaps the most interesting parts are references to realizing the "new strategy for securing the realm" by "working closely with" or working "in cooperation" with Turkey.

Not only have the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP) been enthusiastic boosters in the service of assuring a constant flow of US military aid to Turkey, but JINSA/CSP advisers Perle and Feith have spent the past fifteen years--in governmental and private capacities--working quietly and deftly to keep the US arms sluice to Turkey open, as well as drawing both Turkey and Israel and their respective American lobbies closer together.

To Perle, Feith and other hawks, the importance of Turkey not just to the United States but to Israel is self-evident. As a secular Muslim state, Turkey has always been an attractive political and military ally to the Israelis; respectful of the close relationship between the US and Israel, over a decade ago the Turks began to appreciate the value for Turkish-US relations in being close with Israel, and have also grown to appreciate how useful an ally the American Jewish lobby can be against the Greek- and Armenian-American lobbies.

In fact, the idea of a strong Turkey-Israeli-US trifecta is nothing new. It was a cherished idea of Perle mentor and Committee on the Present Danger principal Albert Wohlstetter, the University of Chicago mathematician and RAND consultant who was key in drawing up the Pentagon's strategic and nuclear blueprints during the cold war.

In classified studies written at the Pentagon's behest over the years, Wohlstetter was a serious Turkey booster; when Perle ascended to his post in the Reagan-era Pentagon, he began implementing Wohlstetter's vision, conducting regular meetings in Ankara and, in 1986, closing a deal for a five-year Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement with Turkey which the Financial Times characterized as "something of a personal triumph" for Perle. It wasn't so bad for Turkey, either: After Israel and Egypt, Turkey became the third-largest recipient of US military aid, and got a nice break on debts owed to the United States.

Perle left government service in 1987. In 1989, various Turkish press outlets reported that he had quietly started lobbying in Washington on behalf of Turkey. In short order, the Wall Street Journal confirmed it, reporting that he had "sold the idea for the new [lobbying] company to Turgut Ozal, Turkey's prime minister, at a meeting in New York last May," but that Perle wouldn't be registering as a foreign agent because Perle was merely "chairman of the firm's advisory board," which, the Journal noted, only consisted of one person: Perle.

Perle responded to the Journal revelation with a bizarre letter, on the one hand claiming that--despite years of media reporting on his Pentagon Turkey initiatives--he had had no responsibility for Turkey while he was a Pentagon official, but that he had, nonetheless, advocated for Turkey in the Pentagon; now in private life, he was going to do something about it--but only so much, as Doug Feith would be taking point, and Perle would simply be in the "advice business."

According to Foreign Agent Registration Act filings, Perle's advice counted for a lot--a total of $231,000 between 1990 and 1994. To help out Turkey, Feith also deployed legal associate Michael Mobbs--now a Pentagon adviser, most recently in the news after a federal judge decided his memo making the case for the detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi as an "enemy combatant" was insufficient. Feith also hired Morris Amitay, former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and current head of the pro-Israel Washington lobby, who took aim earlier this year at the Bush-appointed Jewish-American US ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, for Kurtzer's circumspect public criticism of Israel's settlements policy.

International Advisors, Inc. hit the ground running in 1989, flexing its lobbying muscle immediately by securing the defeat of Congressional efforts to keep Turkey's US military aid at a level lower than that of neighboring Greece. In addition to cementing the US-Turkey military-to-military relationship, IAI was also part of a joint 1989 Turkish-Israeli effort to quash a US Senate resolution marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks. "Quietly, Israeli diplomats and some American Jewish activists have agreed to help Turkey even as other Jewish leaders have complained they have no business intervening in such a sensitive matter," reported Wolf Blitzer, then the Jerusalem Post's Washington correspondent. Blitzer went on to quote a source who explained that "as a people which was itself a victim of genocide, we feel natural sympathy for the Armenians. But Israel wants to foster its relations with Turkey, which it views with great importance."

With the Pentagon's hawks girding for war with Iraq yet again, Perle and his ilk have been both wooing and talking up Turkey, which, at the moment, is on shaky economic and political ground--despite previous efforts of the Bush Administration, including an arranged $16 billion IMF bailout and a pending $228 million US aid package.

In response to Turkish concerns about the potential for further political and economic destabilization in the wake of an attack on Iraq, Perle and others have proposed an expansive free-trade agreement between Turkey and the United States; a first step in that direction is already evident in the form of a Senate bill, sponsored by Senators John Breaux and John McCain and boosted by the recently formed, three-dozen-strong bipartisan American-Turkish Caucus on Capitol Hill, that would let Turkish textiles into the United States duty-free via Israel. According to a Pentagon source briefed on Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's recent trip to Ankara, the Turks have also indicated that they might be amenable to supporting an Iraq invasion in exchange for another military debt write-off to the tune of $5 million, as well as a free Patriot missile defense system.

But even with such measures--and despite the ministrations of Perle and Feith over the years--it's unclear what the future holds for US-Turkish relations. Turkish elections are scheduled for November, and right now the moderately pro-Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party appears to be leading at the polls, a situation causing handwringing in both Washington and Ankara. And, according to diplomatic sources in Washington, while the Turks have indicated a certain potential willingness to back a US invasion and restructuring of Iraq, they continue to voice serious concerns about overall regional destabilization, the financial cost to Turkey of war and the establishment of a Kurdish province in a post-Saddam, federal-style Iraq, which could mark the first step in a reinvigorated military campaign by Turkey's Kurds for total Kurdish independence--an effort that might be made easier if Kirkuk, an oil town in northern Iraq, comes under Kurdish control. "It's not exactly a volatile situation yet," says one Washington-based diplomat, "but let's just say a lot of people are keeping a very watchful eye on Turkey."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020902/vest20020823

My point precisely. In one form or another, "keeping an eye on" the not exactly volatile situation in Turkey has been an essential part of practically every action launched in the northern hemisphere under the British/American global mandate since 1918. As was "keeping an eye on" the Ottoman Empire before it.

In other words, external forces have been underwriting the maintenance of a not exactly volatile situation in Turkey for almost a century. It would be so irredeemably bad for business were the situation to became either exactly volatile, or exactly not volatile that I would regard any significant change in either direction as a sign of very seriously diminished Anglo-American geopolitical capital. Do you know what I mean? Anglo-American interests can't afford to default on that mortgage figuratively speaking. So if it's really in default, it would almost have to be because we literally can't afford to continue making timely payments on it.

bump

Lucas Tomlinson
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Syrian Kurds under bombardment from Turkish jets urgently request air support from U.S. and “No fly zone” to protect civilians: SDF statement



Lincoln's Bible
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Reports now that trump has ordered our military not to help.
Where the f*ck are our joint chiefs and the generals who were in this administration, who know exactly what a compromised madman trump is?!
Damn the GOP. Damn them all to hell.
https://twitter.com/LucasFoxNews/status ... 4298590208

Sibel Edmonds in the Times
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15573

Sibel Edmonds and other Whistleblowers Group
https://www.democraticunderground.com/d ... &forum=344

trump4.jpg

You can follow the plight of the Kurds here.

https://www.hawarnews.com/en//mobile/

Nicole Gaouette
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.@realDonaldTrump knew in advance precisely what the scope of Turkey's operation against the Kurds in Syria would be, a top Erdogan adviser told @CNN's @camanpour in an exclusive interview.
11:38 AM - 9 Oct 2019
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“President Trump and President Erdogan have reached an understanding over precisely what this operation is,” Gulnur Aybet, Senior Adviser to the President of Turkey, told @camanpour from Ankara on Wednesday. Trump “knows what the scope of the scope of this operation is.”
https://twitter.com/NicoleCNN/status/11 ... 3629222915

A Betrayal Too Far


Turkish army soldiers wait near the border before entering Syria, on January 21, 2018 at Hassa, in the Turkish province of Hatay, near the Syrian border. Turkey on January 20 launched operation "Olive Branch" seeking to oust from the Afrin region of northern Syria the YPG which Ankara considers a terror group. / AFP PHOTO / BULENT KILIC (Photo credit should read BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images)
Nothing captures the moral and geopolitical bankruptcy of Donald Trump’s Hobbesian worldview better than his rank betrayal of the Kurds.

Once more, Turkey’s President Erdogan—a knave, but not a fool—demonstrated his hypnotic powers over an American president who is both. Without warning, the White House approved Turkey’s plan to invade territory in northern Syria held by the Kurds, America’s one indispensable ally on the ground in the fight against ISIS. The administration’s announcement of betrayal was bald and explicit: “Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria. The United States Armed Forces . . . having defeated the ISIS territorial ‘Caliphate,’ will no longer be in the immediate area.”

Trump’s abrupt and stunning act of dereliction startled everyone he should have consulted beforehand: our State Department, Pentagon, intelligence community, allies, key members of Congress—and the Kurds themselves. He discussed this only with the Turkey’s authoritarian, who is determined to quash a fighting force tied to Kurdish insurgents inside Turkey. In acceding to Turkish aggression on the basis of a single phone call from a crafty autocrat, Trump contemptuously ignored all advice, and abandoned a painstaking American diplomatic effort to work out an accommodation which would satisfy Turkey’s demands for border security.

Even the normally supine Republicans in the House and Senate seem sickened.

Worse, Trump paraded his strategic stupidity and precipitous treachery in all their solitary splendor. Prior to proclaiming “my great and unmatched wisdom” in mastering the situation unassisted, he remonstrated that the Kurds had been “paid massive amounts of money and equipment” to fight a brutal terrorist regime which—he failed to add—American forces could not subdue alone. With ISIS thus quelled, Trump decided it was time for America to bail out of Syria and leave “Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds . . . to figure the situation out.”

America was through, he proudly concluded, with being played for a “sucker.”

The Kurds might beg to differ. By abandoning them, Trump has left the Kurds in a killing zone between Turkey and a genocidal Syrian regime which they must now embrace at the risk of obliteration.

But perhaps the biggest sucker is Trump himself, manipulated by a self-serving authoritarian into punishing vulnerable allies who believed that America would stand behind them—and who continue to be critical in containing an ISIS threat that could well reconstitute in the wake of Trump’s incompetence.

Erdogan, the New York Timesreports, perceived that he could exploit a division between Trump and his military advisors, who wanted a residual force of American troops in Syria to serve as a safeguard for the Kurds, and against ISIS. Their reasons were compelling: according to the New York Times, ISIS still has 18,000 fighters spread across Iraq and Syria, many active in carrying out terrorist operations. Moreover, America has assigned the Kurds responsibility for supervising tens of thousands of captured ISIS members and their families currently in custody.

No more. As if the Middle East was a Monopoly board, Trump has given ISIS a “get out of jail free card.” A Kurdish official told NBC news: “The Americans are traitors. They have abandoned us to a Turkish massacre. We can no longer fight against ISIS and have to defend ourselves. This could allow ISIS to return to the region.”

Brett McGurk, formerly a principal American strategist in Syria, was equally appalled: “This looks to be another reckless decision made without deliberation or consultation following a call with a foreign leader. The White House statement bears no relation to facts on the ground. If implemented, it will significantly increase risks to our personnel, as well as hasten ISIS’s resurgence.”

It was particularly surreal, therefore, that the White House announcement of Trump’s decision treated the problem of captive ISIS fighters as a budgetary problem which Trump cleverly offloaded on the ever-helpful Turks: “The United States Government has pressed France, Germany, and other European nations, from which many captured ISIS fighters came, to take them back, but they did not want them and refused. The United States will not hold them for what could be many years and great cost to the United States taxpayer. Turkey will now be responsible for all ISIS fighters in the area captured over the past two years.”

But of course the United States isn’t holding these detainees—the Kurds are. Now they can’t. As for Turkey, McGurk says, “It has neither the intent, desire, nor capacity to manage” ISIS prisoners who could form “the nucleus for a resurgent ISIS.” In short, Trump has licensed the potential release some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists—and at the same time given the Turks freedom to attack our one essential ally. As McGurk writes, “Donald Trump is not a Commander-in-Chief. He makes impulsive decisions with no knowledge or deliberation. . . . He blusters and then leaves our allies exposed when adversaries call his bluff or he confronts a hard phone call.”

This terrible decision confirms the zombie-like persistence of Trump’s worst notions. In 2018, McGurk notes, “Trump made a similarly impulsive decision when I was managing the policy.” Then, as now, Trump decided to withdraw American forces from Syria based on a single phone call from Erdogan—precipitating the resignations of both McGurk and Secretary of Defense James Mattis. After a tsunami of protest, Trump allowed a residual American force to remain. But the crisis sparked an exodus of principled advisors and left only spineless enablers in place, such as Mike Pompeo. A man without principles will not resign over principle. Or stop Trump from doing his worst the next time Erdogan calls.

But the consequences mistake transcend empowering ISIS. Or even Erdogan and Assad. With U.S. forces gone, the Iranians can more easily supply the Hezbollah militia it uses to empower the Assad regime, and menace Israel. And the Russians in Syria can act with total impunity, while continuing to manipulate the Turks in their effort to weaken NATO.

All of which underscores Trump’s total obliviousness to geopolitical consequences. Thus unimpeded, the Iranians will be able to thwart U.S. sanctions by taking control of oil fields in eastern Syria, undermining Trumps’ stated policy of “maximum pressure.” Most insidiously, perhaps, Trump has abetted Russia by further undermining American alliances and American credibility, continuing his unbroken record of assisting the one man, himself aside, he seems to admire most—Vladimir Putin.

The greatest tragedy, however, is how deeply Trump has invested American foreign policy with the solipsistic inhumanity of a leader who cares for nothing and no one but himself.

Not his country. Nor its allies. Nor the thousands of human beings who stand to be slaughtered by the Turks and, in time, by ISIS.

God help America—and the world that Trump, acting in our name, is abandoning to its most malignant actors.

Richard North Patterson is a lawyer, political commentator and best-selling novelist. He is a former chairman of Common Cause, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the board of the Renew Democracy Initiative, a bipartisan group dedicated to defending the principles of liberal democracy at home and abroad.
https://thebulwark.com/a-betrayal-too-far/