Coup Underway in Turkey

[Peter Lemkin]

Turkey still hasn't requested Gulen's extradition according to US State Department.

Erdogan spoke for an hour talking about nothing but......I don't think he could back down now. It does take time to prepare a formal extradition request. The US will not honor it and the Turks know it. All shadow boxing and theater.

If I understand Edmonds correctly, she even predicted and still thinks this was a 'CIA' job to rough Erdogan up for some geo-political reasons. They may have tried to stage a real coup, but it hardly looks like more than a 'warning'. What color will it be called? MOST suspicious is it seems to have had its major nexus at the air force base that the USAF uses in Turkey....hmmm......and its Turkish commander has been arrested.

[Peter Lemkin]

Turkey still hasn't requested Gulen's extradition according to US State Department.

Erdogan spoke for an hour talking about nothing but......I don't think he could back down now. It does take time to prepare a formal extradition request. The US will not honor it and the Turks know it. All shadow boxing and theater.

If I understand Edmonds correctly, she even predicted and still thinks this was a 'CIA' job to rough Erdogan up for some geo-political reasons. They may have tried to stage a real coup, but it hardly looks like more than a 'warning'. What color will it be called? MOST suspicious is it seems to have had its major nexus at the air force base that the USAF uses in Turkey....hmmm......and its Turkish commander has been arrested.

addendum.....Erdogan just spoke again and said Turkey will make a formal extradition request. This is NOT my area of expertise, but I sense that while Gulan may be friends with those who were involved with the failed 'coup', he was not Mr. Big in the equation [at all].....but Edmonds would know much, much more about that than I....

Turkey is now considering re-instating the death penalty [for all involved in the coup - which total now over 7000 and includes Erdogan's Chief Military Aide!]...which will forever seal their fate vis-a-vis the EU..... "the times they are a change'in". A document has surfaced naming the 'new' leaders of Turkey after the 'coup'...whether real or invented not known and may never be known.....::bowtie::

[Paul Rigby]

F William Engdahl:

For this letter I have decided to share with you another excerpt from my book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy. It is a section dealing with the man behind the recent failed coup d' etat attempt in Turkey to depose President Recep Erdogan. The man behind the coup is Fetullah Gülen who has been under CIA protection and running his empire in Turkey from Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania since 1998. I think this will give a useful insight into how USA "deep politics" actually works today. Notable is the utter failure of the CIA coup attempt, initiated against Erdogan just days after the Turkish President announced plans to seek a political rapprochement with Russia and Israel and even with Bashar al Assad in Syria, a mammoth geopolitical power shift in the entire Middle East that would deal a devastating blow to the faltering US position there.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES...urasia.pdf

[Paul Rigby]

"Why They Didn't Fire Is A Mystery" - Coup Pilots Had Erdogan's Plane In Their Sights And Did Nothing

Jul 17, 2016 2:18 PM

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-17...d-did-noth

Looking back at the failed Turkish coup, one question that nobody has been able to answer is why, if the coup was indeed a serious attempt at government overthrow, did the organizers not do the first thing that military coups have done since time immemorial: either capture, or simply eliminate the existing ruler, the vacationing president Erdogan?

The following brief story will only add to the confusion (or maybe not).

As Reuters reports, at the height of the attempt to overthrow Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the rebel pilots of two F-16 fighter jets had Erdogan's plane in their sights. And yet he was able to fly on.

The government narrative, completely fabricated as it may be, is the following:

Erdogan said as the coup unfolded that the plotters had tried to attack him in the resort town of Marmaris and had bombed places he had been at shortly after he left. He "evaded death by minutes", the second official said. Around 25 soldiers in helicopters descended on a hotel in Marmaris on ropes, shooting, just after Erdogan had left in an apparent attempt to seize him, pro-government broadcaster CNN Turk said. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim had also been directly targeted in Istanbul during the coup bid and had narrowly escaped, the official said, without giving details.

Flight tracker websites showed a Gulfstream IV aircraft, a type of business jet owned by the Turkish government, take off from Dalaman airport, which is about an hour and a quarter's drive from Marmaris, at about 2240 GMT on Friday. It later circled in what appeared to be a holding pattern just south of Istanbul, around the time when a Reuters witness in the airport was still hearing bursts of gunfire, before finally coming in to land.

View image on Twitter
https://twitter.com/cencio4/status/75409...04/photo/1
David Cenciotti @cencio4
This is probably Erdogan's plane: Turkish Government GIV TC-ATA circling now @avischarf
12:28 AM - 16 Jul 2016
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It is what happened during Erdogan's trip that is confusing. Again from Reuters:

The Turkish leader was returning to Istanbul from a holiday near the coastal resort of Marmaris after a faction in the military launched the coup attempt on Friday night, sealing off a bridge across the Bosphorus, trying to capture Istanbul's main airport and sending tanks to parliament in Ankara.

A senior Turkish official confirmed to Reuters that Erdogan's business jet had been harassed while flying from the airport that serves Marmaris by two F-16s commandeered by the coup plotters but that he had managed to reach Istanbul safely.

"At least two F-16s harassed Erdogan's plane while it was in the air and en route to Istanbul. They locked their radars on his plane and on two other F-16s protecting him," a former military officer with knowledge of the events told Reuters.

"Why they didn't fire is a mystery," he said.

Actually, now that we have seen the unprecedented crack down on all political opponents including the start of what is set to be a historic witch hunt, it is no mystery at all.

[Paul Rigby]

One interpretation of the puzzling nature of the attempted coup that can reconcile the inconsistencies is this - that the real target of its US sponsors was not Erdogan, but the Turkish military. In allowing Erodgan to survive, vengeance against the military, the historic guarantor of the nation's increasingly imperiled secularism, was guaranteed and is duly in train.

The cloaked objective of Washington's deep state, therefore, is the collapse of the Turkish nation-state, presumably in favour of a pseudo-Caliphate.

[David Guyatt]

F William Engdahl:

For this letter I have decided to share with you another excerpt from my book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy. It is a section dealing with the man behind the recent failed coup d' etat attempt in Turkey to depose President Recep Erdogan. The man behind the coup is Fetullah Gülen who has been under CIA protection and running his empire in Turkey from Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania since 1998. I think this will give a useful insight into how USA "deep politics" actually works today. Notable is the utter failure of the CIA coup attempt, initiated against Erdogan just days after the Turkish President announced plans to seek a political rapprochement with Russia and Israel and even with Bashar al Assad in Syria, a mammoth geopolitical power shift in the entire Middle East that would deal a devastating blow to the faltering US position there.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES...urasia.pdf

This makes complete sense to me. The US fingers are all over it, I think, and I said before you could see the signs manifesting just a week ago. My guess also, is that Erdogan saw it coming, but didn't know the when or how, but the hostility and blanking by other leaders at the NATO meeting must've triggered suspicion on the part of someone who already is somewhat paranoid.

[David Guyatt]

Below is Pepe Escobar's take on the coup. The US and CIA were behind it; Erdogan knew about it advance and planned accordingly - and Erdogan is now realigning himself with Russia and Israel as well as turning his face away from Syria. Ergo, the US Neocons strategy of regime change in Syria just died.

[B]Hell Hath No Fury Like a Teflon Sultan[/B]

© Sputnik/ STR

COLUMNISTS15:38 17.07.2016(updated 15:39 17.07.2016) Get short URL
Pepe Escobar
Topic:
Military Coup Attempt in Turkey (165)

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When Turkish President/aspiring Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan landed at Istanbul's Ataturk airport early Saturday morning, he declared the attempted coup against his government a failure, and a "gift from God."

© AFP 2016/ STR / TURKISH PRESIDENTIAL PRESS OFFICE

Erdogan Blames Gulenist Network, Calls on Public to Fight Against Coup in Public Squares

God apparently uses Face Time. It was via that iconic iPhone footage from an undisclosed location shown live on CNN Turk by a bewildered female anchor that Erdogan managed to call his legion of followers to hit the streets, unleash People Power and defeat the military faction that had taken over state TV and proclaimed to be in charge.So God does work in mysterious mobile ways. Erdogan's call was heeded even by young Turks who had fiercely protested against him in Gezi Park; were tear-gassed or water-cannoned by his police; think the AKP governing party is disgusting; but would support them against a "fascist military coup." Not to mention that virtually every mosque across Turkey relayed Erdogan's call.
Ankara's official version is that the coup was perpetrated by a small military faction remote-controlled by exiled-in-Pennsylvania cleric Fethullah Gulen, himself a CIA asset. As much as responsibility remains debatable, what's clear is the coup was a Turk remix of The Three Stooges; the actual stooges in fact may have been the already detained 2nd Army Commander Gen. Adem Huduti; 3rd Army Commander Erdal Ozturk; and former Chief of Air Staff Akin Ozturk.
As over-excited former CIA ops were blaring on US networks and they do know a thing or two about regime change rule number one in a coup is to aim at, and isolate, the head of the snake. Yet the wily Turkish snake, in this case, was nowhere to be seen. Not to mention that no top generals sounding convincingly patriotic went on the TRT state network to fully explain the reasons for the coup.

(Erdogan) love is in the air

© REUTERS/ MURAD SEZER

Turkish Public Broadcaster Under Heavy Gunfire From Helicopters

The coup plotters did aim at the intel services whose top positions are at Istanbul's airport, the presidential palace in Ankara and near the ministries. They used Cobra helicopters with pilots trained in the US against these targets. They also aimed at the army's high command which for the past 8 years is designated by Erdogan and is not trusted by many a mid-ranking officer.As they occupied the Bosphorus bridges in Istanbul they seemed to be in touch with military police which is spread out all over Turkey and have a solid esprit de corps. But in the end they did not have the numbers and the necessary preparation. All key ministries seemed to be communicating among themselves as the plot developed, as well as the intel services. And as far as Turkish police as a whole is concerned, they are now a sort of AKP pretorian guard.
Meanwhile, Erdogan's Gulfstream 4, flight number TK8456, took off from Bodrum's airport at 1:43 A.M. and flew for hours over Turkey's northwest with its transponder on, undisturbed. It was from the presidential plane, while still landed, that Erdogan had gone on Face Time, and then, on the air, managed to control the countercoup. The plane never left Turkish airspace and was totally visible to civil and military radars. The coup plotters' F-16s could have easily tracked and/or incinerated it. Instead they sent military choppers to bomb the presidential abode in Bodrum a long time after he had left the building.
The head of the snake must have been 100% sure that to board his plane and stay on Turkish airspace was as safe as eating a baklava. What's even more startling is that the Gulfstream managed to land in Istanbul in absolute safety in the early hours of Saturday morning despite the prevailing notion that the airport was occupied by the "rebels".

© AP PHOTO/ EMRAH GUREL

Turkey Detains Several Incirlik Air Base Servicemen on Coup Attempt Links - Foreign Minister

In Ankara, the "rebels" used a mechanized division and two commandos. Around Istanbul there was a whole army; the 3rd command is actually integrated with NATO's rapid reaction forces. They supplied the Leopards positioned in Istanbul's key spots which by the way did not open fire.And yet the two key armies positioned in the Syrian and Iranian borders remained on "wait and see" mode. And then, at 2 A.M., the command of the also key 7th army based in Diyarbakir in charge of fighting the PKK guerrillas proclaimed his loyalty to Erdogan. That was the exact, crucial moment when Prime Minister Binali Yildırım announced a no-fly zone over Ankara.
That meant Erdogan controlled the skies. And the game was over. History does move in mysterious ways; the no-fly zone dreamed by Erdogan for so long over Aleppo or the Syrian-Turkish border in the end materialized over his own capital.

Round up the usual suspects
The US position was extremely ambiguous from the start. As the coup took over, the American embassy in Turkey called it "Turkish uprising". Secretary of State John Kerry, in Moscow to discuss Syria, also hedged his bets. NATO was royally mute. Only when it became clear the coup was in fact smashed President Obama and the "NATO allies" officially proclaimed their "support for the democratically elected government".
The Sultan went back to the game with a vengeance. He immediately went live on CNN Turk demanding Washington hands over Gulen even without any evidence he masterminded the coup. And that came with an inbuilt threat; "If you want to keep access to Incirlik air base you will have to give me Gulen". It's hard not to be reminded of recent history when the Cheney regime in 2001 demanded the Taliban hand Osama bin Laden over to the US without offering proof he was responsible for 9/11.

© REUTERS/ REUTERS

Kerry Blasts Turkey for Insinuating that Washington Plotted Coup of Erdogan

So the number one eyebrow-raising possibility is a go; Erdogan's intel services knew a coup was brewing; and the wily Sultan let it happen knowing it would fail as the plotters had very limited support. He also arguably knew in advance even the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), whose members Erdogan is trying to expel from parliament, would support the government in the name of democracy.Two extra facts add to the credibility of this hypothesis. Earlier last week Erdogan signed a bill giving soldiers immunity from prosecution while taking part in domestic security ops as in anti-PKK; that spells out improved relations between the AKP government and the army. And then Turkey's top judicial body HSYK laid off no less than 2,745 judges after an extraordinary meeting post-coup. This can only mean the list was more than ready in advance.
The major, immediate post-coup geopolitical consequence is that Erdogan now seems to have miraculously reconquered his "strategic depth" as former, sidelined Prime Minister Davutoglu would have it. Not only externally after the miserable collapse of both his Middle East and Kurdish "policies" but also internally. For all practical purposes Erdogan now controls the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary and is taking no prisoners to purge the military for good. Ladies and gentlemen, the Sultan is in da house.
This means the neo-Ottoman project is still on but now under massive tactical reorientation. The real "enemy" now is Syrian Kurds not Russia and Israel (and not ISIS/ISIL/Daesh; but they never were in the first place). Erdogan is going after the YPG, which for him is a mere extension of the PKK. His order of the day is to prevent by all means an autonomous state entity in northeast Syria a "Kurdistan" set up like a second Israel supported by the US. For that he needs some sort of entente cordiale with Damascus as in insisting that Syria must preserve its territorial integrity. And that also means, of course, renewed dialogue with Russia.
So what's the CIA been up to?
Needless to add Ankara and Washington are now on a certified collision course. If there is an Empire of Chaos hidden hand in the coup no smoking gun yet that certainly comes from the Beltway neocon/CIA axis, not the lame duck Obama administration. For the moment Erdogan's leverage only amounts to access to Incirlik. But his paranoia is ballooning; for him Washington is doubly suspicious because they harbor Gulen and support the YPG.

© AP PHOTO/ ANDREW HARNIK

Turkey Normalizing Ties With Russia, Israel to Benefit Entire Region - FM

Hell hath no fury as an underestimated Sultan as well. For all his recent geopolitical follies, Erdogan's simultaneous ballet of reconnecting with Israel and Russia is eminently pragmatic. He knows he needs Russia for the Turkish Stream and to build nuclear plants; and he needs Israeli gas to consolidate Turkey's role as a key East-West energy crossroads.When we learn, crucially, that Iran supported Turkey's "brave defense of democracy", as tweeted by Foreign Minister Zarif, it's clear how Erdogan, in a mater of only a few weeks, reconfigured the whole regional picture. And that spells out Eurasia integration and Turkey deeply connected to the New Silk Roads not NATO. No wonder the Beltway for whom, overwhelmingly, Erdogan is the proverbial "erratic and unreliable ally" is freaking out. That dream of Turkish colonels under direct CIA orders is over at least for the foreseeable future.
So what about Europe? Yildirim already said that Turkey might reinstate the death penalty to be applied to the coup plotters. This means, in essence, bye bye EU. And bye bye to the European Parliament approving visa-free travel for Turks visiting Europe. Erdogan after all already got what he wanted from chancellor Merkel; those 6 billion euros to contain the refugee crisis that he essentially unleashed. Merkel bet the farm on Erdogan. Now she's talking to herself while the Sultan is able to dial God on Face Time.

Source

[Peter Lemkin]

Sybel really takes off the gloves here and comes out swinging!

[David Guyatt]

Sybel really takes off the gloves here and comes out swinging!

I've covered that report and today's report by Pepe Escobar HERE. It clearly was a CIA backed coup. But typically I see that our beloved media are spinning it in their own usual inimitable way and now warning that Turkey may be suspended from NATO. Were it me I would beg them to do it, but I imagine this threat is primarily meant for the ears of the upper echelons in Turkey's military, political and business elite. Whether this warning of bank accounts becoming empty does the trick I don't know.

Watch this space.

[Peter Lemkin]

It clearly was a CIA backed coup.

Dave, come on!....when has the CIA ever backed or fomented a coup?!::

Whoever plotted the coup [such as the CIA and that ilk] will NOT put up with 6-7000 of their best boys being executed or put in prison for life.....I think Sybel is correct and this was just testing the waters for the 'BIG ONE' which will be soon....before people get executed or put in prison and tortured. Sadly, as usual, it is the average Turkish citizen that looses in the end no matter how this plays out. Those that came out into the streets [and many of whom died] did NOT do it for Erdogan, but for Turkey.....

I see on the MSM now they are really playing up the danger of nukes in Turkey and removal of them ASAP. This is the beginning of a very bad series of events....AND this will mean things in Syria will only get worse - yes Turkey played both sides of the 'war', but they were also the only means of access for aide workers and food, etc. All that will soon end. The consequences of this will be HUGE and effect all of NATO and Europe and the World. IMHO.