Could the Crisis in Turkey Impact US Policy in the Middle East?

by Jerry Gordon, NEW ENGLISH REVIEW  (January 2014)


Tayyip [Erdogan] Resign!!

Since  December 17, 2013, police in Ankara, Istanbul and other cities in Turkey have arrested more than  52 persons in a wide-ranging corruption probe. Those arrested include some prominent persons and sons of AKP cabinet ministers on charges of bribery, illicit gold trading and payoffs on tenders for construction deals. The state-run Andalou News Agency cited the range of arrests and detentions, the outgrowth of a two year investigation:

    Sixteen people, including the sons of two ministers, have been charged in connection with a sweeping corruption investigation targeting allies of the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    Suleyman Aslan, the general manager of state-owned Halkbank, was also formally arrested and charged alongside Baris Guler, the son of the Interior Minister, and Kaan Caglayan, the son of the Economy Minister, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported. The son of a third minister, a construction magnate,was freed from custody pending trial.


As 2014 dawns there were even allegations of money laundering to Al Qaeda opposition militias in neighboring war torn Syria. These allegations involve a son of Premier Erdogan, the Turkish intelligence service (MIT), the Premier’s security detail head and a shadowy Saudi billionaire. Erdogan appears determined to remain in power. The question is whether this crisis will result in bringing an end to the 11 year AKP reign in Ankara. Further, how will this crisis of confidence in the Erdogan government impact US policies in an already frayed and uncertain Middle East with both the Iran nuclear program and Syrian cease fire negotiations hanging in the balance? Let’s examine the important threads in this complicated story.

                      
Premier Erdogan/Sheikh Gulen         Gezi Park Protest Rally Istanbul June 2013

The conflict between the two Islamists allies: AKP Premier Erdogan versus Sheikh Gulen

The Turkish corruption investigations surfaced a running ideological war between two Islamists, Premier Erdogan versus shadowy Sheikh Muhammad Fethulleh Gulen, head of the multi-billion dollar Gulen Movement (GM) or Hizmat in Turkish. He lives in exile in a fortified compound in the Poconos Mountains in Eastern Pennsylvania. He fled to the US in 1999 to avoid prosecution by the then Turkish secular government. The election of an Islamist Premier in 2003, head of the Turkish AKP party and former mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan brought to the fore a competitive Islamist with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. A sweep of parliament elections for a second term by the AKP in 2007 encouraged pro-Gulen prosecutors to conduct the “Ergenekon trial”  that convicted a number of prominent Turkish secularist generals and alleged coup plotters.

The trigger for those arrests on corruption charges appeared to be Erdogan’s move to close down the dershaneprivate school system operated by the GM that produced tens of millions in fee income. Their schools espoused the GM’s cultic Hizmat, World Islamic Order achieved through commitment of personal service, education and modernization. The national police in Turkey and the judiciary had been penetrated by Gulenists facilitating the corruption arrests. The GM also controls a major national newspaper, Today’s Zaman.

A virtual war has broken out in the wake of the corruption arrests which may affect Erdogan and the AKP in upcoming March 2014 municipal elections. Further, it may imperil his quest to change the laws and powers of Turkey’s Presidency so that he might become the head of an elected Caliphate. The irony is that the incumbent Turkish President Abdullah Gul is a member of the GM. Gul could turn out to be the winner in the current tangle between Erdogan and Gulen that might see him returned as Premier, if Erdogan is blocked. The previous Ottoman Caliphate that controlled vast swaths of the Middle East and North Africa ended with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 that created the Republic of Turkey. The protests in Istanbul at Gezi Park, Ankara and other cities in June 2013 revealed vocal opposition in Turkey to Erdogan’s autocratic rule.

The International Business Times noted the rising divide between Premier Erdogan and the reclusive 70 year old cleric in Pennsylvania, “Fethullah Gulen: Is Islamic Cleric in Self-Exile Behind Turkey’s High-Profile Arrests”?:

Tensions between the reclusive Muslim cleric and Erdogan have boiled over in recent months, and ultimately exploded after the Turkish government announced plans to outlaw private schools, including those run by the Gulen movement.

From his retreat in Pennsylvania, Gulen “strongly denied” allegations that the latest Turkish probe was launched as part of a rift between the government and Hizmet (The Service) – another name for [his] movement.

“Some bureaucrats, well-known businessmen and relatives of ministers have been detained by the Istanbul chief public prosecutor in the past two days. Claims of corruption, bribery and smuggling can be seen in any country. That is why there are independent judicial bodies to investigate such claims,” said Gulen.

Over the past months, however, the cleric made veiled criticism of Erdogan’s increased authoritarian style. Following the anti-government protests that swept across [Turkey’s largest] cities in May, Gülen said:

“If you claim that protesters are not seeking their rights, then you would ignore the innocent demands of some.” The reference was to Erdogan labeling demonstrators as “looters” or “small fringe groups”.

“Underestimating negative developments reveal a problem in judgment, mind and logic,” he continued.

CONTINUE

January 1, 2014 | 29 Comments »

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29 Comments / 29 Comments

  1. @ dweller:

    Thank you for the information.
    dweller Said:

    they always try to demonize them personally and destroy them

    Saul Alinsky. I have relatives that do that to me because I have become conservative if not ibertarian. So, I surpsed them and cut them out of my life. tsk tsk

  2. @ honeybee:

    “[Ben-Gurion] hated Jabotinski; wouldn’t even let his body be brought to Israel for burial.

    B-G tried to kill Begin. He KNEW Begin was aboard the Altalena when B-G ordered Rabin (Palmach commander at the time) to fire on her & scuttle her.”

    “Why?”

    Both Begin and Jabotinski, each in his own way, represented a different vision — a rival vision — of the Jewish state from that of B-G. And Lefties (wherever they are found) have always had a characteristic way of dealing with their enemies:

    — they always try to demonize them personally and destroy them — not merely defeat, but destroy. . . . sometimes, quite literally.

    BTW, “Altalena” had been Jabotinski’s nom de plume, his pen name. That’s why the Irgun gave it that name when they acquired it.

  4. @ honeybee:

    “Looking in the Wrong Direction”

    “I always though Ben Gurion was a hero?”

    B-G hated Jabotinski; wouldn’t even let his body be brought to Israel for burial.

    B-G tried to kill Begin.

    — He KNEW Begin was aboard the Altalena when B-G ordered Rabin (Palmach commander at the time) to fire on her & scuttle her.

  7. @ bernard ross:

    what a pleasure to watch this clownish buffoon Erdogan alienate every ally he has had. an even greater pleasure is to see the detractors and enemies of Israel falling into chaos the more they attack Israel: arab, spring, Turkey, sunni shia war, egypt, ghaddafi,EU, BDS churches, anti semitic ME christians, Obama, etc. A joy to see them suffer. Detractors in a tizzy!

    I share your joy.

  8. yamit82 Said:

    Looking in the Wrong Direction

    I always though Ben Gurion was a hero? You are going give me nightmares, last I awoke poor Tx twice, by screaming. Once again the people I know, for the most part, are quite innocent of the working of the world.

  10. Da BA DA BA Do TX watched the video, he says your tongue is so hard you can’t talk. Did you watch the TXA&M game? Johnny Football was amazing!

  17. yamit82 Said:

    How could it be intended to comfort? It’s an indictment. Mida k’neged Mida (Measure for Measure

    Its not that they are unkind or anit-semitic,, it’s that they are cluless. nteresting enough the gentaies who understand are Amer. Indian friend and southeners. Those southeners who history includes the Civil War. Southerners understand family. The Holocaust makes most gentiles uncomfortable.

  26. @ bernard ross:

    Read: https://www.israpundit.org/archives/37211/comment-page-1#comment-113949

    Right and Left.. Both Enemies of Jews

    Spanish Journalist, Sebastian Villar Rodriguez wrote this:

    I was walking along Raval (Barcelona) when all of a sudden I understood that Europe died with Auschwitz.
    We assassinated 6 million Jews in order to end up bringing in 20 million Muslims!

    We burnt in Auschwitz the culture, intelligence and power to create.We burnt the people of the world, the one who is proclaimed the chosen people of God.

    Because it is the people who gave to humanity the symbolic figures who were capable of changing history (Christ, Marx, Einstein, Freud…) and who is the origin of progress and wellbeing.

    We must admit that Europe, by relaxing its borders and giving in under the pretext of tolerance to the values of a fallacious cultural relativism, opened it’s doors to 20 million Muslims, often illiterates and fanatics that we could meet, at best, in places such as Raval, the poorest of the nations and of the ghettos, and who are preparing the worst, such as the 9/11 and the Madrid bombing and who are lodged in apartment blocs provided by the social welfare.

    We also have exchanged culture with fanaticism, the capacity to create with the will to destroy, the wisdom with the superstition. We have exchanged the transcendental instinct of the Jews, who even under the worst possible conditions have always looked for a better peaceful world, for the suicide bomber. We have exchanged the pride of life for the fanatic obsession of death. Our death and that of our children.

    What a grave mistake that we made!!!

    Please allow me to say that it took 20 million Mohammedans annoying this man to make him see this! It took the bombing of that train to make him say this? 9 11? That is beyond sad!

    He uses the term “grave mistake”. It was no mistake. Europe willingly and exactingly did this with malice aforethought… first degree murder. The holocaust, the pogroms, the kicking Jews out was no mistake. A mistake is one brown sock and one black in a the dim of morning light. It was deliberate and rabid and satanic on their part. America and Britain joined in by refusing to take in Jews running from the holocaust. REFUSING! Turning them away and turning them over to monsters while today they take in millions of illegals who drain their resources and their welfare system and bring crime up in mega proportions. Europe, who would not protect it’s Jewish citizens are now inundated with aliens who use and abuse them. Gang rapes up by hundreds of percentage points in their nations, murders, robbery, their prisons bulging with these alien predators. They now replace the Jews you murdered and pushed out ..multiplied many times over.

    Instead of grave mistake try substituting grave and willful sin. And They are YOUR REWARD.
    Those 20 million are people YOU INVITED IN! Now live with it . Drink it in deeply and choke on it. This is what you preferred to Jews. Now enjoy it.Savor it..there is the main course still to come.

  27. France: The Looming Battle over Muslim Integration
    Among the long list of recommendations…the panel says that public schools in France should be taught in Arabic and African languages rather than in French.
    “It would no longer be up to French immigrants to adopt French culture, but for France to abandon its own culture, language, history and identity to adapt to other people’s cultures.” — Jean-François Copé, UMP Party.
    http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4113/france-muslim-integration

    LOL! Europe is plagued by those it intended to unleash on the Jews. What it intended for the Jews is blowing back in their face. Just like WWII!
    The detractors and swindlers are imploding with each libel and swindle of the Jews. Keep up the Quenelles, froggy.
    Chase out the Jews? Better buy your prayer rugs.
    BRAVO! HAPPY EID, EUROPE!

  28. what a pleasure to watch this clownish buffoon Erdogan alienate every ally he has had. an even greater pleasure is to see the detractors and enemies of Israel falling into chaos the more they attack Israel: arab, spring, Turkey, sunni shia war, egypt, ghaddafi,EU, BDS churches, anti semitic ME christians, Obama, etc. A joy to see them suffer. Detractors in a tizzy!

  29. The Gulen US Connections

    The GM connections here in the US are of interest, because of the controversy over the movement’s control of dozens of Math and Science academies operating with taxpayer funding as charter schools. According to one source there are more than 135 Gulen charter schools with an enrollment of 45,000 students in over 20 states in the US. The staffs of these US charter schools are manned by Turkish Gulenists who enter the US under the HI-B Visa program. There have been exposes on the US Gulen science academies in Texas and elsewhere published by the New York Times. We posted on FBI raids of a Gulen science academy in Louisiana. Because of the problems with the Gulen charter schools, many states have either passed or are considering legislation that would control the proportion of HI-B Visa staff employed at Gulen-sponsored charter schools. The Gulen movement charter school program has been supported by the Gates and Walton Family Foundations. The Walton Family Foundation contributed more than $1 million for Gulen schools in California, alone. Former President Bill Clinton has gone on record supporting the GM interfaith dialogue and educational development program in 2008. GM members were alleged to have contributed to Hillary Clinton’s failed Presidential Campaign in 2008.

    Do these assholes have any idea what they are supporting? These muslim schools need to be shut down and this gulen needs to be kicked out of my country.