Coup Underway in Turkey

[Drew Phipps]

I note that Mr. Peter's map and plan to redraw the Middle-east date back to 2006, the GW Bush years. I strongly suspect that there are earlier such plans, based on Gen. Wesley Clark's story of "7 countries in 5 years" planning documents in the 2001 Pentagon. I doubt that Erdogan was unaware of such stories until 2016.


As far as the fast-tracking of Gulenist army officers, that strikes me as more of a motive for Erdogan to fake a "coup attempt" and giving him cassis belli to arrest them, than an actual "coup" (at least at the current time). Maybe the US had plans eventually to replace Erdogan loyalists with Gulen loyalists. (Maybe they didn't, and it just so happens that the more well educated officers did better than the less well educated ones.) That still strikes me as grounds for Erdogan to move presumptively against them, rather than wait for whatever they may have planned to occur in the fullness of time.


It seems to be true that the US has always been willing to sacrifice the Kurdish desire for self determination (and there are likely other such examples) for its own economic interests. I doubt that will be different this time around.

[Magda Hassan]

It seems to be true that the US has always been willing to sacrifice the Kurdish desire for self determination (and there are likely other such examples) for its own economic interests. I doubt that will be different this time around.

Every one has been willing to sacrifice the Kurds.

[David Guyatt]

I note that Mr. Peter's map and plan to redraw the Middle-east date back to 2006, the GW Bush years. I strongly suspect that there are earlier such plans, based on Gen. Wesley Clark's story of "7 countries in 5 years" planning documents in the 2001 Pentagon. I doubt that Erdogan was unaware of such stories until 2016.


As far as the fast-tracking of Gulenist army officers, that strikes me as more of a motive for Erdogan to fake a "coup attempt" and giving him cassis belli to arrest them, than an actual "coup" (at least at the current time). Maybe the US had plans eventually to replace Erdogan loyalists with Gulen loyalists. (Maybe they didn't, and it just so happens that the more well educated officers did better than the less well educated ones.) That still strikes me as grounds for Erdogan to move presumptively against them, rather than wait for whatever they may have planned to occur in the fullness of time.


It seems to be true that the US has always been willing to sacrifice the Kurdish desire for self determination (and there are likely other such examples) for its own economic interests. I doubt that will be different this time around.

Indeed, the map dates to 2006. The Wolfowitz Doctrine dates to 1992-6 and still is the governing strategy of the Neocons who control Washington and foreign policy decisions there. Years and decades flow by but big geopolitical strategy decisions last an awful long time. For example the British strategy that lasted well over 100 years to divide the main European powers by starting wars there to ensure no other nation could effectively compete or join together in an alliance to the detriment of Britain. The US have simply adapted that same strategy in Europe against Russia, particularly to ensure that Germany and Russia do not form an alliance as that would be the end of American influence on that continent - and would also impact heavily on their wider global ambitions too.

The problem with the US and the Kurds is that they have made an enemy of Erdogan in adopting their current strategy. Erdogan certainly cannot be trusted, but he clearly is breaking away from the US and pivoting to Russia.

I'm afraid I simply cannot see any common sense validity to your argument about a fake coup attempt (this remains for me nothing other than a flimsy and in-credible fig-leaf argument developed by Washington in event of failure of the coup), because it necessarily has to ignore all the recent build up events that led to the pivot to Russia.

It is far more sensible to look at those events from the prism of the impact they would have on the grand strategy of the US and a coup to ensure failure of the pivot to Russia - which was prefigured some time before the coup - is not only the obvious choice for Washington, but they have a very long history in such matters. The only thing I see that was in the offing was exactly what happened.

I consider the development of Gulenists in Turkey's military to be part of the US's usual divide and conquer policy and I believe it was put in place to keep Erdogan off balance. This is not strategy that is peculiar to Turkey but, I believe, SOP for all US allies. For example, I know that in the UK the CIA was (and probably still does) openly recruit members of the British army - and did so for decades.

From the viewpoint of the US this would be an obvious thing to do - friend and allies also need to know who the boss is and changes in long term strategic goals cannot be allowed to be threatened by up and coming politicians who may see things differently. Obviously, from the UK perspective this is not only disloyal but traitorous - but no government is going to do anything about it. The rational is a case of always being in a position to trigger a coup should it needed to keep all the shipping sailing in the same direction.

In 1970's Britain it is a matter of public record that a coup almost manifested against the duly elected prime minister, Harold Wilson. In the end he resigned and began almost immediately to investigate the circumstances of the CIA planned coup, by invoking the help of two investigative journalists.

The foregoing explains, I think, how deep politics really operates in its geopolitical manifestation and it also has the advantage of having a large number of past examples ready to hand to buttress it.

[Lauren Johnson]

David, when I went to your source @140, the link takes me to "Katehon" which is an Alexander Dugin website. Am I missing something? Dugin is using Peters as a whipping boy.

CORRECTION: Dugin did not write this. The website is just a prominent site for Dugin to publish his opinions.

[Drew Phipps]

Here's an alternative explanation offered by an anti-Turkish government journalist:

A well-known antigovernment Turkish journalist took to Twitter on Saturday to describe a related, yet more immediate, incident that led the officers to mobilize. In a string of tweets in Turkish translated by Ragip Soylu, a journalist for the pro-government newspaper Daily Sabah Ahmet Sik, citing security sources, said Turkey's prosecutor had decided to arrest the plotters for an alleged conspiracy they were planning against other officers to get higher ranks in the military. According to Sik, the coup was planned for a later date perhaps just before the August military purge but the prosecutor's decision to arrest them scared them into acting more quickly.

Indeed, Erdemir noted that the coup plotters might have been "forced to act prematurely" if an early wave of arrests was being planned for mid-July.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-turke...led-2016-7

Under this explanation, the US and Gulen are simply convenient scapegoats for Erdogan to use to justify a domestic crackdown.

One final point, and I'm done talking about this until new real evidence comes to light: Erdogan took to the skies in a Gulfstream jet while the coup was ongoing. It was tracked by radar, the flight is apparently visible on flight tracker websites. After all the suspicious plane crashes over the years that might, or might not, have been related to some military/intelligence activity, are we to think that the US MIC has lost its nerve, or its capability, to down a civilian plane?

[David Guyatt]

David, when I went to your source @140, the link takes me to "Katehon" which is an Alexander Dugin website. Am I missing something? Dugin is using Peters as a whipping boy.

CORRECTION: Dugin did not write this. The website is just a prominent site for Dugin to publish his opinions.

Correct, it does post some Dugin material, but also has some insightful analyses too.

[David Guyatt]

Here's an alternative explanation offered by an anti-Turkish government journalist:

A well-known antigovernment Turkish journalist took to Twitter on Saturday to describe a related, yet more immediate, incident that led the officers to mobilize. In a string of tweets in Turkish translated by Ragip Soylu, a journalist for the pro-government newspaper Daily Sabah Ahmet Sik, citing security sources, said Turkey's prosecutor had decided to arrest the plotters for an alleged conspiracy they were planning against other officers to get higher ranks in the military. According to Sik, the coup was planned for a later date perhaps just before the August military purge but the prosecutor's decision to arrest them scared them into acting more quickly.

Indeed, Erdemir noted that the coup plotters might have been "forced to act prematurely" if an early wave of arrests was being planned for mid-July.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-turke...led-2016-7

Under this explanation, the US and Gulen are simply convenient scapegoats for Erdogan to use to justify a domestic crackdown.

One final point, and I'm done talking about this until new real evidence comes to light: Erdogan took to the skies in a Gulfstream jet while the coup was ongoing. It was tracked by radar, the flight is apparently visible on flight tracker websites. After all the suspicious plane crashes over the years that might, or might not, have been related to some military/intelligence activity, are we to think that the US MIC has lost its nerve, or its capability, to down a civilian plane?

It seems that the transponder on his jet switched identities and this saved him from being shot down by two chasing F-16's.

So yes, it seems that on this occasion as US "backed" coup (who were Turkish pilots) failed in their mission to shoot down Erdogan's plane. See HERE and HERE. The short version is that Erdogan's jet changed its transponder call sign to appear as a Turkish commercial carrier; no one was going to shoot down a passenger jet...

I'm not sure the Business Insider aerticle you linked is accurate? It says that young officers of the rank of Colonel and conscripts - rather than more senior (thus experienced) officers of flag rank - were involved in the coup. The implication being that the coup was poorly planned and executed and thus amateur.

However, if you read this BBC report 99 officers (other reports say between 88-103) of the rank of General and Admiral have been charged with participating in the coup -- making a third of the nation's senior officer corp -- so clearly it wasn't just an amateur lower ranks affair the report tries to suggest.

[Drew Phipps]

"Charged with a crime" is not the same thing at all as "committed a crime."

[Magda Hassan]

From Pepe Escobar

Turkish diplomats are spreading this blockbuster: Erdogan proposed to Rouhani an all-embracing alliance with Putin to solve the Middle East riddle.
Get ready for coup 2.0 ahead.

That's going to upset some people.

[David Guyatt]

"Charged with a crime" is not the same thing at all as "committed a crime."

Agreed. But again I stress that we're dealing with deep politics here rather than legal matters. In the past both Turkey and the US have had between little and zero concern for legal niceties when initiating/sponsoring coups. The Ukraine being an outstanding recent example, as well as the "We came, we saw, he died" coup in Libya and what we say happening today in Syria (technically "regime change" for the last two but that's just Washington wordplay, I think, where you don't have sufficient assets inside the regime you wish to overthrow and need to parachute them in).