Failed Coup in Turkey, Middle East uncertain future
Allborn Equalrights
Around the world attention was focussed today (Saturday 16 July 2016) on what might have been an attempted coup by a dissident group within the Turkish military. News agencies are now reporting that the coup failed, but there may be quite a lot going on beneath the surface of this story.
There are anonymous reports on Facebook that contradict Turkish official reports about unarmed Turkish citizens sacrificing their well-being for the sake of the Turkish Islamist State by taking to the streets and laying down in front of tanks: “People were forced from their homes to join the protestors. Another said there were no bombs, but he heard sonic booms and nothing else to suggest an attack was being carried out.”
Whether such reports are true or false, there is no doubt that a lot of research will be required before what actually happened can be verified.
Curiously, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov while the coup in Turkey was takiing place today, while yesterday John Kerry sat down for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin that lasted well into the night discussing “cooperation … that can make a difference to events in Syria.”
Canadian blogger Tony Seed wrote today:
Turkey is an ally of the Canadian government, for whom the coup attempt will have a significance. The Erdoğan government has been a principal sponsor and organizer of the terrorist intervention to destroy the Syrian Arab Republic, in which the preceding Harper government was intimately involved; the premises of the Canadian embassy in Ankara from 2011 onwards functioned as a launch pad to build and consolidate links for the “Syrian National Council” within the NATO bloc. In late August 2011, newly appointed Canadian Ambassador Mark Bailey hosted a special reception to honour and fete SNC members and introduce them as the “moderate opposition” to representatives from EU countries.
I (Tony Seed) wrote recently that “The Turkish power structure can be compared to a mafia, but a mafia somewhat independent of Washington, as evidenced by its recent gas pipeline deal with the Russian Federation (the so-called Turkish Stream).”
“Canada and the U.S. are also intriguing within Turkey with state-oriented opposition parties waiting in the wings. In November 2014 the Halifax International Security Forum (HISF) – headquartered in Washington and entirely funded by the Harper government – featured Turkey’s 11th president, Abdullah Gül (see photo with Peter MacKay below), who is on the outs with Erdoğan, as its guest of honour. (The president of the HISF, Peter Van Praagh, is former NDI country director for Turkey.) These covert arrangements between Washington, Ottawa and Ankara merit vigilance with the inauguration of the Trudeau Liberals and their dangerous policy of liberal military intervention as ‘peace mission’ and ‘responsibility to protect’.”
Sure enough, Gap Insaat, an Erdoğan family company, became a corporate sponsor or “partner” of the HISF in November 2015, personally attended by Ahmet Taçyildiz, Chairman of Gap Insaat.
(Canadian) External Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion visited Turkey in January (2016) along with a delegation from Bombardier Inc., which covets Turkey as a market for transit (airplane) stock and the C Series jet. In Istanbul Dion met with the Saudi-sponsored coalition of “moderate terrorists” formed by the US in November 2012, to whom he pledged technical support for the Geneva negotiations. No media sent a reporter to cover the visit, indicating the secret diplomacy that is the stock-in-trade of Canada and the US-NATO bloc.Furthermore, the Trudeau government has significantly expanded on Harper's military backing of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), a pro-US, pro-Israel Kurdish faction in oil-rich, northern Iraq, an entity formed in conformity with US imperialist strategic plans to balkanize Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran along religious and ethnic lines as part of Obama’s “Asia Pivot”. Falah Mustafa Bakir, the foreign affairs minister of the KRG, was also invited to attend the 2015 HISF and visited Ottawa for discussions with the Trudeau government.Most recently, Erdoğan has “normalized” relations with Zionist Israel as well as the Russian Federation. Erdoğan is offering Turkish citizenship to some 3 million Syrian refugees. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım has issued statements on normalization of relations with Syria, which were condemned by Saudi Foreign Affairs Minister, who threatened Turkey. This was the topic of a meeting he held with US National Security Adviser Susan Rice on June 12, 2016. (source)Last year Tony Seed wrote several pertinent articles on Turkish subversive operations against Syria:
23 March 2015, Revelations on the subversive operations of the Turkish intelligence agency MIT against Syria
21 May 2015, More revelations on the subversive operations of the Turkish intelligence agency MIT against Syria
Any Turkish "normalization" with Syria is bound to upset the Saudis. After Turkish Prime Minister's statements on normalization of relations with Syria, Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Joubeir said: “If Erdoğan is involved in such a mistake, it will lead his country to destruction.” The Saudis would feel the same about Turkey's normalization with the Russian Federation!
RT CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle commented “Was Erdogan behind the coup attempt? This is possible considering how badly it was executed. Whether this is true or not, Erdogan’s powers are now almost boundless”
Geopolitical analyst Andrew Korybko believes the coup was US-directed and Gulen-inspired, so he expects the aftermath of the coup to be American-improvised Hybrid War challenges - a renewed Kurdish insurgency, left-wing terrorism, a Color Revolution, Daesh attacks, maritime proxy hostility via Greece, engineered provocations with Turkey's other neighbors, a civil war, and/or another feeble coup attempt -- in order to throw the progressively Islamifying and Muslim Brotherhood-inspired state into such chaos that it becomes impossible for its new multipolar partners (Russia, China and Iran) to make any substantial use of its territory in their joint quest to dismantle the unipolar world order.
If this is the case then Israel would find itself Janus-like facing West and East at the same time. Russia and Israel have many reasons to clash on foreign policy. They differ considerably on Syria, not only regarding the conflict there. Russia’s support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad disturbs Israel in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, firstly because Israel annexed the Golan Heights which is internationally recognised as Syrian territory; secondly Russia has delivered S-300 air-defense systems to Israel’s number-one enemy Iran, and thirdly Israel staunchly opposes the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions from Iran, to which Moscow has contributed considerably.
However, as Maria Dubovikova writes, Russia has a record of establishing stable relations with counterparts from conflicting camps. This makes Moscow a negotiator whose assistance is significant in Israeli-Palestinian talks. Netanyahu’s visit on 7 June 2016 was followed by that of the Palestinian and Jordanian foreign ministers. (source) Israeli diplomats and geopolitical strategists have not contradicted the growing belief amongst Saudi and Turkish geopolitical strategists that the United States cannot be relied upon for unquestioning support for their governments.
For Russia, its relationship with Israel is important for precautions against accidental clashes of military assets, as well as to maintain a back-channel link with military chiefs in the West. Israel has a significant concentration of former Russian compatriots and Russian-speaking citizens. Given that Russia is now using these as a form of soft power, Israel fills a role as a back channel for communication with Washington policy makers who have been demonizing Russia.
Israel's growing friendship with Russia enables it to force concessions and preferential treatment from its Western allies, as a form of blackmail. Netanyahu’s statement in Moscow that Russia is a global power, while Israel is a regional one, reflects Israel’s desire to use its close ties with Moscow to pursue its geopolitical goals in the region. This includes an Israeli delusion that it can get Russia to agree to US-Israeli exploitation of Golan Heights oil and gas despite Syrian and Iranian antagonism towards Zionist Israel.
Israel is yet a long way from accepting that it would have to become like Syria, a secular state ruling over a religiously diverse population, in order to succeed in joint regional projects like exploitation of Mediterranean gas and oil field on the Golan Heights. But if China achieves the Yiwu-Tehran rail component of its overland "One Belt One Road" initiative, Israel may well have to reassess whether its ideology is in its own interests.