The "coup" was a fraud?"

"Turkish prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for 140 Constitutional Court members and 48 members of the Council of State in the wake of Friday night’s attempted coup. Ten arrests have already been made, local media reported.

TrendsCoup attempt in Turkey

The ten jurists detained were all members of the Council of State, which is Turkey’s top administrative court, NTV broadcaster reported.

The arrests followed media reports that judges at other courts had been detained, as the government’s crackdown on the judiciary in the wake of the coup attempt widens.

Constitutional Court member, Alparslan Altan, has become the most senior judicial official to be arrested after the coup, CNN Turk broadcaster reported.

RT'S LIVE UPDATES on the attempted military coup in Turkey

Earlier on Saturday, Turkish authorities relieved 2,745 judges of duty.

The decision to sack the judges was made at an extraordinary meeting of Turkey’s High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), NTV broadcaster reported."  RT

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From what  I am hearing from sources in Turkey, this may have been a pre-emptive "false flag" operation in which a group of members of the armed forces were sent into the fraudulent "coup" by Erdogan loyalists among senior officers.  He has appointed many.  IOW the people in the "coup" may have been deliberately sacrificed as "props" so that Erdogan could whip up his followers and consolidate power before he changes the constitution to make himself an absolute ruler.  pl  

https://www.rt.com/news/351602-turkey-supreme-court-arrested/

Comments

[Babak Makkinejad]

Look at the positive side, Turkish people, Kemalist or non-Kemalist went against the coup.

[robt willmann]

The idea is getting around. At this time, about 8:20 p.m. central time, the headline concentrator drudgereport.com has as its headline, "Did Erdogan Stage His Own Coup?". That links to an article in the British Daily Mail newspaper website on the question--

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3693729/Did-Erdogan-STAGE-coup-based-Turkish-cleric-facing-extradition-botched-rebellion-claims-president-orchestrated-plot-justify-clampdown-civil-rights.html

At the bottom of the article is a brief video clip in which Erdogan goes to the front of a large government room and sits down to make a brief statement, and heavy irony is there, as Tayyip speaks before a large, framed photograph of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Erdogan of course says the situation is an uprising and betrayal, and refers to the "motherland". Well, at least he did not say "homeland", a term with which we are burdened.

[Fred]

Ishmael,

"if Obama and Merkel..."

Sadly, to use the American phrase, you are up the creek without a paddle on this one as Obama is a neocon who wants to use Turkey to supply the unicorns so they will destroy Syria and Merkel hasn't the backbone to stand up to Erdogan's refugee extortion. Perhaps if the Greeks keep the border sealed and sink a few refugee ferries but I wouldn't count on it.

[Allen Thomson]

https://fas.org/blogs/security/2015/09/nuclear-insecurity/

Incirlik Air Base is the largest nuclear weapons storage site in Europe with 25 underground vaults installed inside as many protective aircraft shelters (PAS) in 1998. Each vault can hold up to four bombs for a maximum total base capacity of 100 bombs. There were 90 B61 nuclear bombs in 2000, or 3-4 bombs per vault. This included 40 bombs earmarked for deliver by Turkish F-16 jets at Balikesir Air Base and Akinci Air Base. There are currently an estimated 50 bombs at the base, or an average of 2-3 bombs in each of the 21 vaults inside the new security perimeter.

[snip]

The nuclear role of Incirlik is unique in NATO’s nuclear posture in that it is the only base in Europe with nuclear weapons that doesn’t have nuclear-capable fighter-bombers permanently present. Even though the Turkish government recently has allowed the U.S. Air Force to fly strikes from Incirlik against targets in Syria, the Turks have declined U.S. requests to permanently base a fighter wing at the base. As such, there is no designated nuclear wing with squadrons of aircraft intended to employ the nuclear bombs stored at Incirlik; in a war, aircraft would have to fly in from wings at other bases to pick up and deliver the weapons.

[turcopolier]

Babak

The sultan/caliph will be your father, I am sure. pl

[Ishmael Zechariah]

Fred,

I was not counting on or asking anyone's help. The bankrupt world view and fraudulent economic 'policies' of these islamist miracle workers will consign them and their "religion" to the dung-hill of ideas sooner or later. Unfortunately it will be later for quite a few innocents.
Ishmael Zechariah

[Babak Makkinejad]

I remain on the side of the constitutional & legal order; even in the case of US - in spite of her policies & strategies in Syria.

[turcopolier]

Babak

I would think that Tayyip I will re-institute the Hanafi version of Shariah with allowances for dhimmi communities to use their religious law in ecclesiastical courts for marriage cases, etc. That was the Ottoman system. their was also a commercial code based on Swiss law. perhaps he will keep that for practical business. pl

[Ishmael Zechariah]

Fred,

BTW, this just in:
"the US FAA has blacklisted all flights between the US and Istanbul until further notice:
Per the Federal Aviation Administration’s notice to airmen (NOTAM) dated July 15, 2016, U.S. airline carriers are prohibited from flying to or from Istanbul and Ankara airports. All airline carriers, regardless of country of registry, are prohibited from flying into the United States from Turkey either directly or via third country."

Sanctions?

Ishmael Zechariah

[michael brenner]

"Turkish people?" I never saw more than a few hundred in the streets. All men. In Tunisia, there were almost as many women as men.
Also, were they demonstrating a commitment to democracy or a commitment to an authoritarian Islamist regime?

[mike]

interesting tweet from Furious Kurd regarding the Turkish soldier beheaded by Erdogan's bashi-bazouks:

https://twitter.com/Furiouskurd/status/754272619382398976

[michael brenner]

I suspect that none of the TV commentators or think tank 'experts' have any real grasp of what happened, why and at this time. Now that the putsch has failed, we'll probably never know. Those you do know will have compelling incentives to keep their mouths shut, while Erdogan and his supporters may learn the truth but only parts of it will ever come out since they have their own narrative to sell. As for the CIA and NSA, there is good reason for skepticism. The former has no assets or demonstrated competence for fomenting anything of this kind - to say the least. In addition, there is no reason to think that they foresaw it happening since they have missed everything else of consequence throughout the region for at least the past 15 years. On this latter score, the NSA is too preoccupied digging through its ever expanding haystack and attending conferences in search of the ultimate surveillance gadgetry to pay attention to what counts. Again, the record (at home as well as abroad) supports that conclusion.

[jld]

Yes, yes, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ

[jld]

More general question, how many of the hundreds of US bases around the world do not have "backup autonomy" for supplies of any kind, electricity or other and are thus under threat of whimsical idiocy from the locals?

[LondonBob]

Does seem as if a small clique were baited to do this. Just so few people involved.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview-a-1103192.html

An interesting interview with Flynn, foreign press interviews tend to be more revealing.

[turcopolier]

jld

There is back up generator power in all these places but you can run on generator power only so long. As for supplies there are always stored emergency supplies but facilities located on the territory of friendly powers of necessity depend on open lines of supply in and out of the country. In the case of INCIRLIK AFB the major port of Adana is nearby. pl

[Mark Riebling]

The history of the Game of Nations is replete with examples of shrewd statesmen creating their own opposition groups, only to roll them up in due time, neatly, like fly paper, once enough flies have stuck to the glutinous mat.

As I recall, Sun Tzu has a section on this in his Art of War. The Czar of Russia created fake revolutionary groups to flush out communists; and then the Soviets created bogus anti-communist fronts to flush out reactionaries -- "The Trust" in Russia, "WIN" in the Ukraine, and similar groups in places like Poland and Albania. One of Kim Philby’s jobs for the KGB was to assure MI6 and CIA that these groups were genuine so that we would parachute brave patriots into the monster’s laughing jaws. Chinese human rights activists say the the security organs manipulated and infiltrated the Tiananmen Square movement to create one dissident neck for one state leash for one public strangling. Francis Walsingham Papist undergrounds for Elizabeth I during the Counter-Reformation, drawing English Jesuits out of their “priest holes” for drawing, quartering, and beatification. And Adolf Hitler only discovered his talent for public speaking when he was asked to join a state-sponsored "right wing nationalist group" in 1919 Munich, for the purpose of keeping tabs on all those Volkisch nut-jubs; truly a case of the fox guarding the cuckoo's coop.

One could multiply examples. But in my experience, most Americans find the whole concept of state provocations "too complicated" and "too speculative" to credit or digest. They are like Samuel Johnson who kicks the rock and says, "Thus do I refute Berkeley." If it wouldn't happen here, it couldn't happen there.

"Reasoning across the gaps in the data" is a nice phrase. That was once the task of the humanities, and of intelligence services. Sadly, that is what most social scientists, academics, policy and intelligence analysts are now paid not to do. Our colleges and universities have essentially become inference-prevention factories.

[bth]

Not because of sanctions. The security at the airports were breached and have to be reestablished before flights can depart.

[bth]

Incirlik Turkish base commander plus ten detained.

[The Twisted Genius]

Another too convenient coincidence about the timing of the coup was that it kicked off before the Friday evening call to prayer. It couldn't have been a better opportunity for Erdogan's own to call the faithful to the streets. It worked perfectly. This whole coup reminds me of the FBI's heavy use of sting operations to arrest would-be terrorists... complete false flag set-ups.

[Bandolero]

Pat Lang

My idea would be that the coup was either real and infiltrated or the military equivalent of a sting operation.

What I mean is Erdigan did know that part of his military was illoyal to their commander in chief, ie Erdogan, and to find out who it is he let a coup attempt happen, either as the idea of illoyal parts of the military, or as a sting operation, where Erdogan loyalists kind of seduced the suspicious officers in the military to try to stage a coup. And, of course, the seducers promised the suspicious officers all kind of big support for the coup, but when the big day finally arrvied and the notice of taking power was read out on TV, surprise, surprise, the big support for the coup didn't come as promised and instead the illoyal officers - who outed themselves by taking part in a coup - got arrested. It wouldn't be a false flag op then, but the equivalent of a classical sting operation like police units do them every day all over the world.

What you think about the idea of the coup being the military equvalent of a sting operation?

[William Fitzgerald]

I'd venture to say that the way Erdogan and his party are subverting, neutering, and/or taking over state and other public institutions, on the way to control of the country, is Hitlerian.

Also, what rationale explains the storing of "50 to 90" nuclear weapons at Incirlik? Could it be simple inertia from the cold war or could the Turks have required it as a condition for continued use of the base?

WPFIII

[turcopolier]

Bandolero

I think you are playing with words. "False Flag" in the intelligence business means something that is represented as being different than it really is. For example, if I want you to work for me as a spy against your government and I tell you I am Australian when I am really something else, that is a false flag recruitment. My intelligence friends are calling this a false flag operation. You can call it what you want. pl

[turcopolier]

William Fitzgerald

I vote for "inertia." pl

[Harry]

That's not a "sultan" parallel.

What a hot mess this is turning into for those who don't like the world edging towards seriously bad outcomes