SLL has posted several articles positing various theories about the Turkish attempted coup. This article has a theory that is the most sympathetic to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, from Eric Margolis at lewrockwell.com:
September 1961. Geneva, Switzerland. A Turkish classmate of mine named Turgut burst into my room, crying, ‘those bastards just hanged my father!’
The ‘bastards’ in question were Turkey’s generals. They had overthrown the civilian government of Adnan Menderes and hanged my friend’s father. Since, then, the mighty Turkish armed forces has tried to overthrow the government about every ten years.
Last weekend’s military coup in Turkey was the fifth coup since the 1960’s. Many had believed the mighty, 610,000-man Turkish armed forces, backed by 379,000 trained reserves, NATO’s second largest forces after the US, had finally been driven back to its barracks by the popular democratic AK party government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
So it seemed until last Friday when tanks seized the two Bosphorus bridges in Istanbul, and attacks were staged against key targets, like TV stations, the intelligence HQ, and government buildings. Five very senior generals and 25 colonels were reportedly at the core of the uprising.
A special commando team was sent to capture or, more likely, kill President Erdogan who was vacationing at the seaside resort, Marmaris. He managed to escape minutes before the plotters struck. A number of his bodyguards were killed. Erdogan boarded a small plane and flew to Istanbul as two rebel F-16 jets were hunting his black-out aircraft. The president and his military loyalists rallied troops and the air force. It was all eerily similar to the 1991 coup attempt on the vacationing Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, by hardline Communists.
Turkey and its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, have been vexed by military meddling and plots since the 1600’s, notably by the elite military corps, the Janissaries.
Today’s Janissary are the modern Turkish armed forces. They have long been joined at the hip with the Pentagon. Like Latin America’s generals, Turkey’s pashas (generals) were far to the right, hidebound, and reliant on US finance and arms. Turkey’s pashas were also virulently anti-Muslim. They regarded Islam as backwards and a threat to the secular oligarchy that long ruled Turkey under successive military juntas.
The coup leaders believed they would have popular support. Far from it, throngs of Turks poured into the streets supporting Erdogan’s AK party and calling the insurgents traitors. Five Turks were run over by tanks after they sought to stop the rebel armor with their bodies.
The government squarely blamed the prominent Sufi religious leader, Fethullah Gulen, who lives, of all places, in rural Pennsylvania. Gulen runs a vast and shadowy religious-business-education empire that has a very large following across Turkey that included leading newspapers, academia and many in the military.
Gulen was a close ally of Erbakan, but they fell out and became bitter enemies. Gulen was close to the US and often sided with Israel. His exile in the US was reportedly engineered by the CIA.
This has led many Turks to accused Washington of trying to overthrow Erdogan by using the military and Gulen – which the US denies.
Adding yet more mystery, the Turkish commander of Incirlik airbase in eastern Turkey was a key coup plotter. Incirlik is used by the US Air Force for Mideast operations.
The F-16 pilot who downed a Russian SU-24 bomber last year, sparking a huge crisis with Moscow, has been arrested in the coup dragnet. Could the ambush of the Russian warplane have been part of a plot to embarrass and undermine Erdogan? Looks like it.
Furthermore, the coup reminded the world that the US keeps 50-60 B-61 thermonuclear bombs at Incirlik. These H-bombs could have fallen into the hands of the rebels. What purpose do these Cold War antiques serve today?
To continue reading: The Turkish Coup——-The Back Story
