The failed coup is serving as an excuse for a massive round-up of members of the judiciary and army officers, far greater than anything seen in Turkey for years, and is presumably a bid to secure Erdogan’s grip on the Turkish state. So numerous are those detained that a sports stadium is being used to hold some of them, a development that has ominous similarities with mass arrests in South American coups in the last century. Some 140 out of 387 judges in the Court of Appeal have been detained along with 48 out of 156 from the Council of State.
Update – In an address to the nation late Wednesday, Erdogan announced a Cabinet decision to seek the additional powers, saying the state of emergency would give the government the tools to rid the military of the “virus” of subversion. He didn’t specify exactly what the state of emergency would entail. […] Before the vote, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said that once emergency measures are invoked, the country would suspend its participation in the European Convention of Human Rights…
More – Dark days ahead.
Along with literally tens of thousands of teachers and bureaucrats. Essentially everyone with any tie to Gulen. Erdogan has sprung the real coup.
Is this bloodbath the first step in the Neo-Ottoman Jihad?
There is an interesting book written by former (?) Yank spook William Fuller “Turkey and the Arab Spring”. He has an interesting section on Gulen and his Hizmet movement and his schools. Even if it is mostly agenda driven, the book is probably a good place to start if you are interested in trying to understand what the hell is really going on in Turkey.
Fuller hit my radar when it was revealed that the “Boston bomber’s” “Uncle Ruslan” lived with him and had been married to his daughter.
https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=ssl#q=uncle+ruslan+sibel+edmonds&start=0
Just imagine the number of files and number of secret police required to arrest so many people so quickly. I am suspicious that the coup was a put up deal to allow such a massive play to eliminate all opposition. How do you arrest 25,000 teachers from elementary to university positions in a weeks time?
Highly likely this is stealth Muslim Brotherhood move. If they could not have Egypt then take Turkey which has the military strength to do what they want. Erdogan has been selling ISIS oil for years now. In the MSNBC interview of Syria’s Assad the other day he asked why none of the ISIS oil convoys to Turkey had not been bombed by the USA airforce. When he said the Russians came in to help Syria the first thing they did was attack those convoys and stop the flow of money to ISIS. Who is fooling who here?
This is all another example of ME Sunni efforts to attack Iran and indirectly the Western world. Financial subversion through Saudi Arabia, attempted overthrow of a Allawite(?) led Syria allied with Iran and the funding of international terrorism. One has to recognize that the USA intelligence knows all this and is standing aside.
It’s certainly a lose-lose situation for democracy in Turkey.
A successful military coup would have been a clear lose.
But a triumphant Erdogan grinning like a Cheshire cat and hunting down all his political opponents is also a big lose too.
Seen from a more detached, Machiavellian perspective though, it is just the sort of situation that will doubtlessly expose our political class as they attempt to respond to it. So watch for much consternation and muddling through from the US, EU and NATO, coated in blandishments and anodyne for public consumption.
Of course, there’s no real point in concerning ourselves with how Canada might handle Turkey, not with the children’s crusade at the helm of our “Global Affairs” diplomacy in Ottawa these days.
Trudeau and Obama support this thug.
J.F.K.erry is flying to Ankharra today to LEARN about how to do this in the USA … how to impose martial law in America … the DAY AFTER Trumps election victory.
This so-called coup is looking more and more like Hitler’s “Reichstag fire”.
This makes sense IMO…
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/russia-warned-erdogan-just-hours-attempted-coup/ri15760
I’ve been reading and commenting here since 2002 or 2003 and have never seen this before. Is this a new policy?
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Seems that you haven’t posted very often. It happens time to time that filters trap your post……. so what? You move with your daily life – it is just Internet.
I’m not sure what kind of a filter Kate uses but I’ve had a few posts held and they were nothing contentious or profane and I don’t recall any of them ever being reviewed and released. You probably used a word common in spam. I’m sure your next 100 posts will be okay.
I’m sure that he’ll train Prime Minister Selfie in how to do the same here in Canada. Parliamentary democracy is such an inconvenience for progressives.
It seems that those who said that the coup key have been staged could be right.
It certainly looks like the Islamic dictator is taking full advantage of it.
Thanks guys. For any interested it was a link to a Russia insider story saying it was actually Russia that tipped Erodegan a coup was about to be staged, based on Russian military intercepts of Turkish military communications…whether or not it is related to recent reports that Turkey was going to cooperate closely with Russia and Iran on “regional stability” is an open question.
I’ve so no evidence of a staged coup, but it turn out to be quite convenient for Erodegan. BTW, with allies like Turkey, who needs enemies. Leave them to the Russians and the Europeans, NA needs to become energy self-sufficient, only now held back by the watermelon movement, so we needn’t be concerned over ME affairs, except with respect to our fellow democracy there and other events that we decide directly impact our security.
Deal with ISIS and spare us the nonsense Russia is today set to invade any of the Baltic republics. Again, where’s the evidence of an imminent threat? If so, by all means deter Russia, if and when that threat becomes valid.
Rather than now, perhaps sabre rattling should have occurred before before Putin acquired the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, and Georgia and … ?
This sounds like an expensive waste of resources which could be put to better use elsewhere; oh would that mean a “combat mission?”
What’s changed since our last line in the sand bluff? Kill ISIS and restore refugee homelands. Take a page from the Russian book and send in an “aid convoy,” this time a robust medical and rebuilding aid, properly protected by military forces including air superiority anywhere near operations, where any incursion creates a kill box for all enemy combatants, illegal or otherwise.
Oh I forgot, we’re too “nice,” more likely cowardly, for that.
Great frenzy among the media trying to find a way to stop the Trump train. They’ve worn out rant over Mrs Trump’s speech, nothing more there to flap about. Problem Trump is saying what the people who are serious about where their country is going and want take seriously the elephant in the room called Islamic terrorism and Trump is the only one with a plan.
IMO, Hillary is pale by comparison, it’s more of the same, all talk, just reaction and no action.
Canada better not be smug, we have a panty waist outfit running the good ship Canada as well. They want Hillary, there’s a reason for that.
obungles is running a “green” war against ISIS. What that means is the air farce pays $136 US for a US gallon. The fighter pilots come back with 50% of ordinance not used, they have no discretion as to targets, and they wouldn’t bomb the oil convoys going to Turkey, Iran, or to Assad because it would cause ungreen effects. Obungles is a complete idiot. As one former CIA big wig said, the USA could defeat ISIS in one month if there was the will. People like obungles are unable to understand that their approach has the exact opposite effect intended.
I HAVE noticed that the current filter takes out virtually ALL of my current euphemisms for Islam and Muslims. NOW … I have to “spell” them correctly. I suppose it is just too disrespectful to MOCK Islam. Christianity ? Mock to your hearts content. The Christian GOD can handle it. See ! I can even write GOD … in print … and not spontaneously combust … like that … other … religion.
I saw Midnight Express. I knew this was going to happen.
1st rule of computer tech. always back up your files.
If your comment is important to you, make a copy then make corrections, if Kate still doesn’t print it, I usually delete it, comment probably wasn’t worth the keystrokes anyway.
Always check the code on Captcha downstairs, if you can make sense of the code, she can probably make sense of your comment..
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Anyway…
President ‘Estrogen’ in Turkey thinks he is real smart, and has a Gift from God, by purging his military. History tells us that Russia’s Stalin and other leaders like Saddam Hussein also did the same thing.
Stalin almost had his ass handed to him by the Germans, because Hitler knew Stalin was stupid for purging his best officers;
but we also now know that Hitler was even more stupider for doing the same thing.
Stalin lucked out and had intelligence from the British Enigma code breakers, or he would have had his a$$ backhanded to him..
I think mr brilliant Estrogen will have even larger attacks in the future, and get himself suicide bombed.
The Islamics dealing with him believe that blowing themselves, and him up, is even smarter and A Greater Gift from God.
Kerry and present Obama are happy to pass this shite sandwich on to anyone that will take it..
I think you have that backwards. The AKP is trying to de-secularize Turkey. Gulen and Erdogan are different facets of the same faith based initiative. The army are trying to follow the Kamalist initiative to more broadly represent the entire Turkish population, not just the Muslim faction.
gawwd … that film still depresses and frightens the hell out of me !!
The scene of him going NUTS … while his girlfriend presses her(self) against the glass was gut wrenching
Worked for Hitler “burning down the Reichstag or that Hitler admiring ponce Pierre the Turdo with the so called “FLQ crisis”.
Turkey has always been a tough nut to crack.
Churchill found that out at Gallipoli- 46 thousand dead times 2 wounded, Australia had a third of its army sacrificed.
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Maybe I at least have the part about Obama knowing it is a crap sandwich and he can leave it for someone else to eat.
This is actually entirely unlike the Reichstag fire. The Reichstag fire was not staged by the Nazis, and had nothing to do with them. In fact it caught them completely by surprise and they panicked. They began slaughtering the Communists, not because they thought they could get away with it, but because they really thought the Communists had done this and were already at war with them. (By the time they realised that the Communists were innocent and had been also caught completely by surprise, they had also realised that they could in fact get away with slaughtering them all, and so they just kept it up.) We are looking at something rather different in Turkey, where Erdogan clearly knew what was coming.
It was widely believed in many circles that the Nazis had planned everything in advance, and of course Hitler encouraged that point of view, and did his best to discourage any awareness that, faced with the first crisis of his career, he had pretty flagrantly popped his cork. The Communists simply assumed that since Hitler was a bad guy, he must have done it. The idea that some adolescent fool did it all on his own, out of an excess of self-righteousness, never crossed anyone’s mind. And yet that seems pretty clearly to be what happened.