Turkish Strongman Erdoğan Easily Crushes Inept Military Coup: Last Gasp of Secularism in Turkey?

Autocratic Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has quickly crushed a badly organized military coup, apparently instigated below the general staff level. The rebellious army units neglected the first rule of any successful coup- immediately neutralize the ruler you're trying to overthrow. That's Job One. Erdoğan was vacationing in southern Turkey, and it should have been easy to seize him as he was far from the capital, Ankara, or Istanbul.

Instead the coupists fired on the Parliament with tanks- not sure what the point of that was. They managed to kill about a hundred civilians, and it's reported by the regime that 105 coup troops were killed, and 1,500 taken into captivity. It's claimed that police units were able to defeat units of the coup attempt. A coup helicopter was shot down, and one flew to Greece with officers of the coup seeking asylum. (Greece and Turkey have a hostile relationship, for historical and contemporary reasons, the contemporary ones centering around the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Both are members of the U.S.-bossed military alliance, NATO, making them uncomfortable bedfellows at the same time.)

Erdoğan called on his followers to turn out in the streets and confront the coup elements, requiring them to defy coupist instructions to the population to stay indoors. Apparently thousands heeded Erdoğan's call, complicating matters for the coup side.

Erdoğan, true to his temperament, vowed that the "traitors" would "pay a heavy price." (Mass executions, anyone?)

Torture of prisoners has long been routine in Turkey, both in political and non-political cases.

Military coups have been common in Turkey since World War II. They are generally done in the name of protecting the secular nature of the Turkish Republic. [1]

Erdoğan, an Islamist who leads an Islamist party, and whose base is the religiously-oriented segment of the populace, a segment that has been growing both in numbers and in religious conservatism in Turkey, has been gradually eroding that secular aspect of the Turkish state. His rise to power represented in part the liberation of the religious from the suppression they suffered under the Ataturk legacy.

So the handy defeat of this coup may well spell the end of secular power in Turkey.

The so-called "Western democracies" all rushed to back Erdoğan, predictably, since they want to stay in his good graces for their own reasons (and they have sensitive power-sensing antennae, so they could detect which way the wind was blowing on his coup attempt). The Europeans have a deal with the regime for Turkey to act as a garbage bag for unwanted refugees from Syria and elsewhere. The U.S. is running military air operations out of Incirlik air base in Turkey. [2]

Which brings me to a second big mistake of the coup plotters. They didn't clear their plot with the U.S. first.


1]  The contemporary state of  Turkey was founded on secularist principles by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a revolutionary army officer, and first president of the new nation he is credited with founding, the Republic of Turkey, (the core of the Turkish Ottoman Empire). After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I (1914-18, during which time the Turks conducted the Armenian genocide under cover of war), Ataturk led a successful war against the Allies from 1919-22 to create the new Turkish nation.  The name "Ataturk" was bestowed on him by Parliament in 1934 and means "Father of the Turks." By law no other Turk may use the name.

Ataturk abolished the Caliphate and sharia courts in 1924. A failed assassination plot against him in 1926 provided him an opportunity to hang various political opponents.

2]  U.S. Secretaryt of State John "Skull and Bones" Kerry issued noises supporting Erdoğan, German Chancellor Angela "The Iron Mouse" Merkel did likewise, and newly-anointed British Foreign Secretary Boris "BoJo" Johnson called the Turkish Foreign Minister to give him a verbal pat on the back.

Birds of a Feather: Erdoğan and Obama, Two Ruthless Rulers.

 

High Level U.S. Apparatchik Visits Scene of a Crime 71 Years Later

In 1945, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the undefended Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For nearly three-quarters of a century, U.S. government officials have avoided those war crime scenes like the plague. [1]

Now U.S. Secretary of State John "Skull and Bones" Kerry, a made member of the U.S. nomenklatura, has visited Hiroshima (but not Nagasaki- poor Nagasaki has always played second fiddle to Hiroshima, or been forgotten entirely, in the pantheon of Atomic Bomb Victim Cities).  [2]

Kerry delivered remarks that were both anodyne and deeply cynical. (Or if you want to give Kerry "the benefit of the doubt" and assume that he truly believes the guff he bloviates, deeply hypocritical.) They are completely forgettable boilerplate, not worthy of quotation. You can look them up if you like, the U.S. State Department website archives such propaganda. (I suggest using the Tor browser and a VPN if you don't want to endanger yourself by visiting such a risky website. Who knows what kind of malign spyware will be planted on your device.)

Kerry spoke of the need to eliminate nuclear weapons. The need to eliminate nuclear weapons... .at the same time his boss has put in motion a 30, TRILLION dollar program to add NEW nuclear weapons to the U.S. arsenal! (Kerry, do you have any shame at all? I guess not. Nor do you have any respect for our intelligence, to insult us in such a blatant fashion.) [3]

It seems to me (as it would to any even semi-rational observer) that you and Obama and the U.S. are hardly serious about "eliminating nuclear weapons."

Kerry is right at home in the extremely mendacious Obama regime. Nixon and Clinton had nothing on Obama when it comes to slippery deception and con artistry. Every year for 6 years now, Obama has called a "summit" in the Empire's capital, Washington, D.C., to which he has summoned other "world leaders" (including from China and Europe) to lecture them on nuclear weapons disarmament. They listen politely and play the game. All want to con their publics about their good intentions and benign natures. All are sickening shysters.

What Obama is actually doing to building out an arsenal that includes all new weapons for all three "legs" of the U.S. nuclear "strategic triad," plus more. This "triad" consists of the U.S. Navy's nuclear strategic submarines, which carry SLBMs (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles), each missile carrying multiple warheads that can each be dropped on a separate target; and the U.S. Air Force's bomber fleet carrying nuclear bombs and cruise missiles, and the land-based ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles), which like the Navy's subs, each carrying multiple warheads.

Obama also thinks the U.S. needs something called the "long range standoff weapon," a new cruise missile with a nuclear "payload." This can be fired from hundreds of miles away, will fly low, under radar defenses, and thus is a first strike weapon. Obama wants to put new nuclear bombs in Europe, the "B-6H2" guided bomb.

There will be all kinds of new nukes, more precision ones, ones with "dial a yield" capacity, to pick the explosive force- as if this crap is necessary.

Having spend trillions on "defense" since 1945, the U.S. is committed ad infinitum to gigantic war budgets in perpetuity, for which it taxes its people, while depriving them of decent social services. Remember, this trillion is just for new nuclear weapons. There's a half trillion dollar white elephant of a new fighter jet, inferior in every respect to the planes it is replacing, the F-35, a pure boondoggle for the military-industrial complex. And much more. Not to mention "off-budget" wars that they don't count, but that someone has to pay for. (Guess who?)

It's just like the Cold War never ended!

Because you see, the "Cold War" was just a cover and an excuse for U.S. imperialism, something that began in 1789.

1] The deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime, period. And the motive for the attack is irrelevant. For decades, the U.S. propaganda line, drilled into the heads of every American, is that these war crimes caused Japan to surrender and saved 50,000, or 100,000, or 250,000, or 1,000,000 American lives. (Yes, the number kept going up over the years- all fictive.) But committing war crimes in order to try and win a war does not "legalize" the crime.

And even the claimed result, Japan's surrender, turns out to be false. Recent historiography proves conclusively that it was the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan that induced Japanese capitulation. The Japanese Emperor and military oligarchy was so deluded that they believed the Soviets could be used to broker a deal with the U.S. and UK for an end to the war on terms acceptable to Japan. Instead the Japanese rulers were completely stunned and shocked by the Soviet attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria in August. (The atomic bombings were also in August.) Before the atomic bomb attacks destroyed two cities, another 68 Japanese cities had already been largely destroyed by firebombs dropped by B-29s under the command of the psychopath General Curtis LeMay. (Who later in life, as head of the Strategic Air Command- the arm of the U.S. Air Force that controlled U.S. nuclear-armed bombers and the ICBMs, Inter-Continenal Ballistic Missiles with nuclear warheads- was straining at the leash to nuke the Soviet union, and nuke Vietnam.) The fact that two more cities were incinerated logically wouldn't have changed the attitude of the Japanese military dictators. In fact, even after the Soviet entry into the war and the atomic bombings, one member of the Emperor's war cabinet still wanted to fight on!

It's true that Japan committed many war crimes, many atrocities against civilians. But the fact that one's adversary commits war crimes does not "legalize" one's own crimes. To use a criminal law analogy, if someone murdered a member of your family, and you retaliated by murdering a member of theirs, you would still be liable to a charge of murder. Or in common sense terms, "Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right."

2] Skull and Bones is a secret society at Yale University, one of the "elite" so-called Ivy League universities, whose membership is limited to students whose families are members of the U.S. upper class. Membership is retained for life. Skull and Bones thus comprises a network within the permanent power structure of the U.S., new members of which are inducted in college. Kerry is a member, as is George Bush and his father, and his grandfather. It dates to 1832, meets in a concrete mausoleum-style building called the "Tomb," and has bizarre rituals.

Prescott Bush, grandfather of George Bush (father of George H.W. Bush), was one of four "Bonesmen," who robbed the grave of native American warrior Geronimo in 1918, spiriting away the skull and some bones to the Skull and Bones lair. Later, when Geronimo's descendants sued to get the bones returned, the FBI tried to quash the case. Jonathan Bush, H.W.'s brother, was involved in parrying the descendants in sham "negotiations." Bottom line- the "Bonesmen" retain their war trophies. See here for details.
Some, however, believe the Bonesmen just pretended to have Geronimo's bones, for example Cecil Adams. Either way, the whole thing is a minor aspect of the Skull and Bones story, the importance of which is that this secret society is a vehicle for perpetuating ruling class power by internal cohesion and forming bonds of personal and group loyalty to a power elite.

3] There is voluminous information on Obama's gargantuan, aggressive nuclear weapons buildup. Here is the result of an Internet search using duckduckgo.com.