Turkey’s Purge

I’ve followed this closely at http://www.moonofalabama.org/ and http://russia-insider.com/en
Apparently Russia warned Erdogan, hours in advance, of the planned coup.
The U.S. did not warn Erdogan and he knows U.S.’s complicity by omission.
The sense is that Turkey will move closer to Russia; and as a NATO member, things could get far messier than the current mess.

The is a poem in that. We knew that Turkey’s ruling party would crack down. What happens after that?

As on the last comment section. The Coup Plot was leaked and the Coup was launched prematurely.

New details now coming out show essential planning documents were captured during the put down of the coup containing the names of almost all of these people who have been arrested, dismissed, and/or suspended. An aide to Erdogan himself was also arrested for being part of the coup and only a last minute tipoff allowed Erdogan to leave his resort before it was stormed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/18/military-coup-was-well-planned-and-very-nearly-succeeded-say-turkish-officials

It seems though prematurely launched, the coup was well planned and nearly succeeded.

If launched a decade earlier, it would have, but new social media platforms meant Erdogan could counter their message and his supporters could swiftly organize.

Bombing Parliament brought the opposition parties to Erdogan’s side and their supporters.

Social Media saved Turkish Democracy and the anti-democratic forces of Turkey are being swept away in a full house sweep. Such vipers can’t be allowed to hide in wait.

“As on the last comment section”, I suggest simply assuming that everything posted by Tom-Tom, the human drumbeat and propagandist for Ottoman restoration, is a lie, including “a”, “an”, and “the”.

IIRC, I owe that quip to the late Dorothy Parker.

Asterisk is correct that Western civilization is predatory.

However, so is Islamic civilization. When they were able to plunder, enslave, and kill our people, they did exactly those things, so I can’t muster much sympathy for them.

I think I will save my sympathy for the more truly innocent victims of the West, such as the Native Americans.

I am pleased that the Ottoman Empire preceded Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the Good Riddance Cemetery of History, and I don’t want that glorified mob boss Erdogan to revive it.

One of the reasons that the militant minority in the once-mighty Islamic world nurses a tremendous butthurt now is because at least since 1683, we’ve been more efficient predators than they. (Granted, they have more legitimate grievances as well.)

They could have remained the more efficient predators, but the Ottoman Empire was too successful, in a way–its authorities were able to impose an orthodoxy of thought which stifled the scientific thinking that had sprung up in medieval Islamic philosophy, and so Islamic civilization lost the scientific and technological edge it once enjoyed over our civilization through much of the Medieval, and even Early Modern, periods.

A similar unfortunate triumph of conformity befell China, which had blast furnaces, gunpowder, and a magnificent fleet of ocean-going ships before the West managed those things. Conformity of thought stifled scientific progress, and the blast furnaces were shut down, and the mighty fleet laid up to rot, at about the same time Europeans started venturing out on the high seas in force.

Either of those two civilizations could have beaten us to the punch and dominated the globe, so we should study their mistakes, to avoid repeating them. China has learned from its mistakes, as has once-isolationist Japan. They, and the other states of the Sinosphere, have done an often admirable job of catching up, and they are even pulling ahead in some areas.

Tom-Tom, is Mob Boss Erdogan paying you enough to buy back your soul?

Meanwhile, from Counterpunch:

Robert Fisk weighs in.

So does Patrick Cockburn.

I am reminded of something Hannah Arendt wrote in Origins of Totalitarianism:

“The superfluousness of secret services is nothing new; they have always been haunted by the need to prove their usefulness and keep their jobs after their original task had been completed. The methods used for this purpose have made the study of the history of revolutions a rather difficult enterprise. It appears, for example, that there was not a single antigovernment action under the reign of Louis Napoleon which had not been inspired by the police itself. Similarly, the role of secret agents in all revolutionary parties in Czarist Russia strongly suggests that without their “inspiring” provocative actions the course of the Russian revolutionary movement would have been far less successful.”

What we now call intelligence services have, historically, been up to their eyelids in provocations which they could then exploit. It is pollyannish to think that the Turkish intelligence services had not infiltrated the coup movement, knew of its activities, and were there to set it off at a time when they (and Erdogan) could best exploit it and its aftermath.

@Hugh

If you are interested there is an very good analysis of Erdogan, Turkey and the ME by Omar Kassem at Counterpunch that leaves the straw men comparisons and propaganda behind. He seems to actually know what he writes about and it is very informative.

It’s been… fascinating… watching the so-called progressive reaction to the Turkish coup attempt and its aftermath.

“Regime change” — induced internally or externally by non-democratic methods — has become so normalized apparently that it’s almost an article of faith now that a coup or an invasion or a civil war or some such will result in a preferable outcome to whatever current democratically elected government exists. Thus the celebratory hosannas when the Turkish coup against Erdogan’s government was announced, and the frantic garment rending when its failure became apparent.

The Turkish coup had to be a good thing because Erdogan was so horrible — not quite the New Hitler, but mighty close. Just as several years ago, there were “progressive” celebrations when Morsi was overthrown in Egypt, never mind that both Morsi an Erdogan were elected by the people, and their governments were installed by legitimate democratic means.

We can’t say as much about the Bush II presidency in this country. But no one apparently thought to change that regime by coup or any other anti-democratic means. Or maybe no one thought they could get away with it…

Of course any government subject to a coup and successfully repelling it is going to seek out and remove golpistas from the government. This is axiomatic, but when the Erdogan regime repelled the coup against it, immediate warnings were issued against engaging in a purge of golpistas and their allies or reinstating the death penalty as punishment.

Interestingly, in the case of Egypt, where al-Sisi’s soldiers and police shot down thousands of Egyptians who’d taken to the streets to protest the coup (far more than were shot down by Mubarak’s forces in the previous revolt), there was near-silence from the progressive moralists, and when tens of thousands, indeed perhaps hundreds of thousands of Egyptians were subsequently rounded up, many to disappear, the silence was deafening. 

Basically, the message is that when the people make the wrong choice of government, internal or external interests have the right to precipitate regime change by whatever means they choose. The government facing regime change has no right of self-defense. The people and their interests are irrelevant. Should they protest against the regime change imposed upon them, they can be and often will be subject to any amount of force the new overlords deem necessary — torture, death, and destruction are merely the tools needed to enforce the necessary change of government.

The hypocrisy is not surprising — it’s long been a feature of imperialist ideology. Nor should anyone be surprised at the blowback. What is surprising is that anyone thinks this is a sustainable or appropriate policy, or that coups and invasions and various means of destabilization of governments make for a better world.

I would also not mind a Hugh response to the article.

Peter*

You ought to quit while you’re ahead. I don’t think that this most recent comment/diatribe of yours is helpful. I found Kassem’s article to be of great interest and not in the least bit incompatible with support for Assad or Iran. In fact that article suggests that it is less Erdogan’s policy to be anti-Assad and Iran than it is his having taken temporary leave of his position as expositor of a third more Islamic inclusive way to avoid conflict with the the West’s infiltration of the Turkish shadow government – a far more interesting argument than your diatribes against those of us struggling to understand a very complex situation.

Cogent argument does much better than name calling. This is why I would really like to hear MFI, Ian and Hugh’s take on this article.

@Hugh

You’re a tough nut to crack and even though I may not be as sanguine as Kassem about Erdogan his information explains much about the actual situation in Turkey, little of which you have refuted with facts. Erdogan did try to start direct talks with the PKK and the Gulanists tried to arrest the APK officials who were involved.

You did rely on and parrot the widespread propaganda and rumors that even Putin with all his intelligence couldn’t produce actual evidence to back up after boldly stating he could. This doesn’t mean Erdogan or his son are clean just that rumors and accusations remain rumors and accusations until proven and there is a huge political component in these accusations.