Category: Turkey

The Order has been given: Shoot Down Russian Jet within 72 Hours

The order has been given: US Forces inside Syria have been told to SHOOT DOWN A RUSSIAN JET within 72 Hours and claim it was “threatening US Forces” in Syria. According to two separate sources inside the Pentagon, it appears the west has grown impatient for war with Russia, so they began laying the groundwork for it over the past few days, claiming Syrian aircraft are bombing too close to US forces. There are now strident public statements by the US that it will “defend its forces in Syria.”

These strident public statements are not a warning to Russia, the statements are laying the public paradigm for going to war with Russia.

According to Intelligence sources who spoke to SuperStation95 on condition of anonymity, the consensus thinking inside the Beltway is that Russia will not take any action whatsoever against the US or its proxy forces if a Russian jet is shot down, for fear of outright war. Intelligenceanalysts disagree fiercely with that belief.

Inside Intelligence circles, it is understood that the United States is operating inside Syria without permission of the Syrian government and without any mandate from the United Nations. The Intel folks believe a deliberate US shoot-down of a Russian jet will cause a reaction for which the US is not prepared: The Syrian government will give the US 48-72 Hours to remove all its forces from Syria or face attack.

In its arrogance, the US will not heed the warning and, after the exit-time expires, both Russian and Syrian jets will obliterate US forces and their proxy rebels in a thunderous blitzkrieg of air strikes.

At that point, the US will face the decision of whether or not to go to war.

The Russians are said to believe that Obama does not have the guts – or the brains – for a fight, and the American People will oppose (another) war because they’ve had their fill. It’s a risky gamble for the Russians. It’s an even riskier gamble for the US.

In addition to the goings-on in Syria, there is the Ukrainian affair which has been ramping-up for weeks. Russia has now pre-positioned 40,000 troops on the Crimea/Ukraine border and another 30,000 troops across the border from Latvia in the Baltics. If war between the US and Russia kicks-off in Syria, it will not be limited to Syria. Europe will face war as well.

Perhaps this is why the German government over the weekend, told its citizens to immediately begin stocking-up on food and water “in case of an incident which threatens our existence.” The government is telling Germans to have a minimum of TEN DAYS food and water for each person in their home.

No one could make any sense out of this warning when it came on Saturday. With today’s new information from US Intelligence Sources, Germany’s warning to its people now makes a lot of sense. The Germans fear being steamrolled by the Russian Army.

The clock has started ticking. We’ll know within about 72 Hours if this farce we’ve been conducting inside Syria, turns into a real war.

This story will be updated if and when additional information becomes available.

EDITOR’S NOTE: When we came into possession of this information, then confirmed it with a second source, we had two choices:

1) Publish it

2) Not Publish it

We chose to publish it because we want the public to know there are “interests” with influence in government, who are actively seeking war with Russia. There’s a lot of money to be made in a big war, and a lot of scores to settle around the world. Most of all, there’s a lot of DEBT to be done-away-with as a result of a catastrophic war. Since the USA is the most debt-ridden nation in the history of human existence, it is in our interest to have our debt done-away with.

These realities have apparently coalesced into a disastrous plan to intentionally start a war with Russia. We believe it is important for the American people to know – in advance – what is about to take place is not a random act . . . it is planned. It is malevolent. It is wrong and we are being the bad guys.

We also chose to publish this information because we resent our forces being used as canon fodder for someone else’s agenda. We don’t have a military to start wars or to sacrifice on an altar of debt relief. Our troops ought not be betrayed to their deaths like this by people looking to cash-in on war, or be rid of debt.

In the end, it may come to pass that this plan is abandoned because word of it has now leaked to the public. If that happens, then perhaps war will be averted. It is our hope to avert a war.

August 26, 2016
WHAT İS FETHULLA GÜLEN?

WHAT İS FETHULLA GÜLEN?, by F. William Engdahl, for NEO Bakalım bunu okuyup, anlayan olacak mı?

WHAT İS FETHULLA GÜLEN?

by F. William Engdahl, for NEO

Since the failed coup attempt in Turkey of July 15 there has been much speculation in western media that it in fact was all engineered by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to provide him with the pretext to impose emergency rule and to jail any and all opposition to his rule. At this point evidence still suggests that that was not at all the case. Rather, as I wrote at the time when it was clear the coup attempt was collapsing, it was a coup initiated by the CIA acting through their primary asset inside Turkey, the networks of their fugitive Turkish asset Fethullah Gülen. When we examine more closely “what” is Fethullah Gülen he is anything but the grandfatherly image of a 75-year-old soft-spoken Islamic moderate, scholar and Imam. His networks have been called the most dangerous in Germany by Islamic experts and have been banned in several Central Asian countries. Now, too, in Turkey. What’s becoming clear is that the failed coup was in fact a dry-run, a dress rehearsal by Gülen’s controllers in Langley to see how Erdogan would react, in order to recalibrate and prepare for a more serious attempt in the future. Washington was not at all happy with the foreign policy turn of Erdoğan turning to reconcile with Russia and possibly also with Syria’s Assad.

Fethullah Gülen is not a “who” but, rather, it is a “what.” The what is one of the most extensive and elaborate surrogate warfare networks ever created by the United States intelligence community, spanning countless nations including the United States and Germany, as well as the historic Turkic regions of Central Asia from Turkey up to the Uyghur peoples of China’s oil-rich Xinjiang Autonomous Province.

Fethullah Gülen’s Spider Web

The following draws on research for my book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy. I begin with a quote from a Gülen speech to his followers when he was still in Turkey in the 1990’s:

“You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers…You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it…You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power…in Turkey…Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch.” Imam Fetullah Gülen, in a sermon to followers in Turkey

As they were deploying Osama bin Laden’s Arab Mujahideen “holy warriors” into Chechnya and the Caucasus during the 1990s, the CIA, working with a network of self-styled “neo-conservatives” in Washington, began to build their most ambitious political Islam project ever.

It was called the Fethullah Gülen Movement, also known in Turkish as Cemaat, or “The Society.” Their focus was Hizmet, or what they defined as the “duty of Service” to the Islamic community. Curiously enough, the Turkish movement was based out of Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. There, its key figure, the reclusive Fethullah Gülen, was allegedly busy building a global network of Islam schools, businesses, and foundations, all with untraceable funds. His Gülen Movement, or Cemaat, has no main address, no mailbox, no official organizational registration, no central bank account, nothing. His followers never demonstrated for Sharia or Jihad—their operations were all hidden from view.

In 2008, US Government court filings estimated the global value of Gülen’s empire at anywhere between $25 and $50 billion. No one could prove how large as there were no independent audits. In a US Court testimony during the hearing on Gülen’s petition for a special US Green Card permanent residence status, one loyal Cemaat journalist described the nominal extent of Gülen’s empire:

The projects sponsored by Gülen-inspired followers today number in the thousands, span international borders and…include over 2000 schools and seven universities in more than ninety countries in five continents, two modern hospitals, the Zaman newspaper (now in both a Turkish and English edition), a television channel (Samanyolu), a radio channel (Burc FM), CHA (a major Turkish news agency), Aksiyon (a leading weekly news magazine), national and international Gülen conferences, Ramadan interfaith dinners, interfaith dialog trips to Turkey from countries around the globe and the many programs sponsored by the Journalists and Writers Foundation. In addition, the Isik insurance company and Bank Asya, an Islamic bank, are affiliated with the Gülen community.

Bank Asya was listed among the Top 500 Banks in the world by London’s Banker magazine. It had joint-venture banking across Muslim Africa, from Senegal to Mali in a strategic cooperation agreement with the Islamic Development Bank’s Senegal-based Tamweel Africa Holding SA. Zaman, which also owns the English-language Today’s Zaman, is the largest daily paper in Turkey.

By the late 1990s, Gülen’s movement had attracted the alarm and attention of an anti-NATO nationalist wing of the Turkish military and of the Ankara government.

After leading a series of brilliant military campaigns in the 1920s to win the Independence War after World War I, Kemal Ataturk established the modern Turkish state. He launched a series of political, economic, and cultural reforms aimed at transforming the religiously-based Ottoman Caliphate into a modern, secular, and democratic nation-state. He built thousands of new schools, made primary education free and compulsory, and gave women equal civil and political rights, and reduced the burden of taxation on peasants.

Gülen and his movement aim at nothing less than to roll-back the remains of that modern, secular Kemalism in Turkey, and return to the Caliphate of yore. In one of his writings to members, he declared, “With the patience of a spider we lay our net until people get caught in it.”

In 1998, Gülen defected to the US shortly before a treasonous speech he had made to his followers at a private gathering was made public. He had been recorded calling on his supporters to “work patiently and to creep silently into the institutions in order to seize power in the state,” treason by the Ataturk constitution of Turkey.

‘Islamic Opus Dei’

In 1999, Turkish television aired footage of Gülen delivering a sermon to a crowd of followers in which he revealed his aspirations for an Islamist Turkey ruled by Sharia (Islamic law), as well as the specific methods that should be used to attain that goal. In the secret sermon, Gülen said,

You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers…until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this…You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it…You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey…Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside… Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence…trusting your loyalty and secrecy.”

When Gülen fled to Pennsylvania, Turkish prosecutors demanded a ten-year sentence against him for having “founded an organization that sought to destroy the secular apparatus of state and establish a theocratic state.”

Gülen never left the United States after that, curiously enough, even though the Islamist Erdoğan courts later cleared him in 2006 of all charges. His refusal to return, even after being cleared by a then-friendly Erdoğan Islamist AKP government, heightened the conviction among opponents in Turkey about his close CIA ties.

Gülen was charged in 2000 by the then secular Turkish courts of having committed treason. Claiming diabetes as a medical reason, Fethullah Gülen had managed to escape to a permanent exile in the United States, with the help of some very powerful CIA and State Department friends before his indictment was handed down. Some suspected he was forewarned.

CIA Gives Wolf Sheep’s Clothing

Unlike the CIA’s Mujahideen Jihadists, like Hekmatyar in Afghanistan or Naser Orić in Bosnia, the CIA decided to give Fethullah Gülen a radically different image. No blood-curdling, head-severing, human-heart-eating Jihadist, Fethullah Gülen was presented to the world as a man of “peace, love and brotherhood,” even managing to grab a photo op with Pope John Paul II, which Gülen featured prominently on his website.

Gülen and the late Pope John Paul II in Rome in 1998, posing as a man of peace and ecumenical harmony.

Once in the US, the Gülen organization hired one of Washington’s highest-paid Public Relations image experts, George W. Bush’s former campaign director, Karen Hughes, to massage his “moderate” Islam image.

The CIAs Gülen project centered on the creation of a New Ottoman Caliphate, retracing the vast Eurasian domain of the former Ottoman Turkic Caliphates.

When Gülen fled Turkey to avoid prosecution for treason in 1999, he chose the United States. He did so with the help of the CIA. At the time he US Government’s Department of Homeland Security and the US State Department both opposed Gülen’s application for what was called a “preference visa as an alien of extraordinary ability in the field of education.” They presented argument demonstrating that the fifth-grade dropout, Fethullah Gülen, should not be granted a preference visa. They argued that his background,

…contains overwhelming evidence that plaintiff is not an expert in the field of education, is not an educator, and is certainly not one of a small percentage of experts in the field of education who have risen to the very top of that field. Further, the record contains overwhelming evidence that plaintiff is primarily the leader of a large and influential religious and political movement with immense commercial holdings.”

Until an open clash in 2013, Fetullah Gülen (left) was the éminence grise behind Recep Erdoğan’s AK Party; Gülen is widely branded in Turkey as a CIA asset

However, over the objections of the FBI, of the US State Department, and of the US Department of Homeland Security, three former CIA operatives intervened and managed to secure a Green Card and permanent US residency for Gülen. In their court argument opposing the Visa, US State Department attorneys had notably argued, “Because of the large amount of money that Gülen’s movement uses to finance his projects, there are claims that he has secret agreements with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkic governments. There are suspicions that the CIA is a co-payer in financing these projects.”

The three CIA people supporting Gülen’s Green Card application in 2007 were former US Ambassador to Turkey, Morton Abramowitz, CIA official George Fidas and Graham E. Fuller. George Fidas had worked thirty-one years at the CIA dealing, among other things, with the Balkans. Morton Abramowitz, reportedly also with the CIA, if “informally,” had been named US Ambassador to Turkey in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush. Sibel Edmonds, former FBI Turkish translator and “whistleblower,” named Abramowitz, along with Graham E. Fuller, as part of a dark cabal within the US Government that she discovered were using networks out of Turkey to advance a criminal, “deep state” agenda across the Turkic world, from Istanbul into China. The network reportedly included significant involvement in heroin trafficking out of Afghanistan.

On leaving the State Department, Abramowitz served on the board of the US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and was a cofounder, along with George Soros, of the International Crisis Group. Both the NED and International Crisis Group were implicated in various US “Color Revolutions” since the 1990s collapse of the Soviet Union.

Graham E. Fuller, the third CIA “friend” of Fethullah Gülen, had played a key role in the CIA’s steering Mujahideen and other political Islamic organizations since the 1980s. He spent 20 years as CIA operations officer in Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Afghanistan and was one of the CIA’s early advocates of using the Muslim Brotherhood and similar Islamist organizations to advance US foreign policy.

In 1982, Graham Fuller had been appointed the National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia at CIA, responsible for Afghanistan, where he had served as CIA Station Chief, for Central Asia, and for Turkey. In 1986 Fuller became Vice-Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, with overall responsibility for national level strategic forecasting.

Fuller, author of The Future of Political Islam, was also the key CIA figure to convince the Reagan Administration to tip the balance in the eight-year long Iran-Iraq war by using Israel to illegally channel weapons to Iran in what became the Iran-Contra Affair.

In 1988, as the Afghan Mujahideen war would down, Fuller “retired” from the CIA with rank as Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence, to go over to the RAND Corporation, presumably to avoid embarrassment around his role in the Iran-Contra scandal for then Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush, Fuller’s former boss at CIA.

RAND was a Pentagon- and CIA-linked neoconservative Washington think tank. Indications are that Fuller’s work at RAND was instrumental in developing the CIA strategy for building the Gülen Movement as a geopolitical force to penetrate former Soviet Central Asia. Among his RAND papers, Fuller wrote studies on Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Algeria, the “survivability” of Iraq, and the “New Geopolitics of Central Asia” after the fall of the USSR, where Fethullah Gülen’s cadre were sent to establish Gülen schools and Madrassas.

In 1999, while at RAND, Fuller advocated using Muslim forces to further US interests in Central Asia against both China and Russia. He stated, “The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Russians. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.” By all evidence, Fuller and his associates intended their man, Fethullah Gülen, to play perhaps the major role, in their operations to “destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.”

CIA career man Graham E. Fuller was a key backer of Fetullah Gülen and architect of the CIA Islam strategy since Afghanistan’s Mujahideen.

In 2008, shortly after he wrote a letter of recommendation to the US Government asking to give Gülen the special US residence visa, Fuller wrote a book titled The New Turkish Republic: Turkey as a Pivotal State in the Muslim World. At the center of the book was praise for Gülen and his “moderate” Islamic Gülen Movement in Turkey:

Gülen’s charismatic personality makes him the number one Islamic figure of Turkey. The Gülen Movement has the largest and most powerful infrastructure and financial resources of any movement in the country… The movement has also become international by virtue of its far-flung system of schools…in more than a dozen countries including the Muslim countries of the former Soviet Union, Russia, France and the United States.

CIA and Gülen in Central Asia

During the 1990s Gülen’s global political Islam Cemaat spread across the Caucasus and into the heart of Central Asia all the way to Xinjiang Province in western China, doing precisely what Fuller had called for in his 1999 statement: …destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.”

Gülen’s organization had been active in that destabilizing with help from the CIA almost the moment the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, when the nominally Muslim Central Asian former Soviet republics declared their independence from Moscow. Gülen was named by one former FBI authoritative source as “one of the main CIA operation figures in Central Asia and the Caucasus.”

By the mid-1990s, more than seventy-five Gülen schools had spread to Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and even to Dagestan and Tatarstan in Russia amid the chaos of the post-Soviet Yeltsin era. In 2011, Osman Nuri Gündeş, former head of Foreign Intelligence for the Turkish MIT, the “Turkish CIA,” and chief intelligence adviser in the mid-1990s to Prime Minister Tansu Çiller, published a book that was only released in Turkish. Gündeş, then 85 and retired revealed that, during the 1990s, the Gülen schools then growing up across Eurasia were providing a base for hundreds of CIA agents under cover of being “native-speaking English teachers.” According to Gündeş, the Gülen movement “sheltered 130 CIA agents” at its schools in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan alone. More revealing, all the American “English teachers” had been issued US Diplomatic passports, hardly standard fare for normal English teachers.

Today Gülen’s spider web of control via infiltration of the Turkish national police, military and judiciary as well as education is being challenged by Erdogan as never before. It remains to be seen of the CIA will be successful in a second coup attempt. If the model of Brazil is any clue, it will likely come after a series of financial attacks on the Lira and the fragile Turkish economy, something already begun by the rating agency S&P.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer. He holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.

Gönderen ZEKERİYA TÜMER zaman: 01:52

August 26, 2016
Turkey’s migrant deal with Europe may collapse under post-coup crackdown

Turkey’s migrant deal with Europe may collapse under post-coup attempt crackdown

People wave Turkish national flags as they gather this month at Kizilay Democracy Square in Ankara during a rally against a failed military coup on July 15. (Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images)

By Michael Birnbaum and Erin Cunningham

Europe

August 23 at 3:00 AM

BRUSSELS — The landmark agreement that halted a torrent of migrants flowing from Turkey into Europe is nearing collapse in the wake of the failed Turkish coup and the subsequent nationwide crackdown.

Turkish and European leaders are threatening to abandon the deal — the Europeans because they say they are worried about widespread human rights abuses, the Turks because of European reluctance to fulfill a promise to drop visa restrictions for Turkish nationals.

Now, even as it detains tens of thousands of people in response to the coup attempt, Turkey has given the European Union an October deadline over the visa pledge — or it will walk away from its commitment to stem the flow.

An end to the agreement, which came after more than a million migrants and refugees entered in Europe in 2015, would mark another blow to the contentious relationship between the E.U. and Turkey, which is petitioning to join the bloc. It could also result in a fresh surge of asylum seekers traveling from Turkey, which would confront E.U. leaders with a new humanitarian and political dilemma after a relatively quiet spring and summer.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said this month that Turkey was headed toward dictatorship, and that Europe should reset talks with the Turkish government.

“I do not know if the deal with Turkey will be officially terminated,” Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said in an interview with a German publication last week. But “what we are experiencing now are threats and the attempt by Turkey to give us an ultimatum for visa liberalization.”

On Monday, in a blunt acknowledgment of the rising tension, Turkey withdrew its ambassador from Vienna, for what Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called “consultations.”

For months, Europe has demanded changes to Turkey’s harsh anti-terrorism legislation before it loosens its visa rules. But Turkey has fired back, pointing to the terrorist attacks that have hit the country in recent years.

Now, as Turkish authorities clamp down on dissent, the dispute is more heated than ever. Where E.U. leaders see rights violations, Turkish officials see measures necessary to head off another coup attempt.

[Turkey’s purge turns a former national hero into a fugitive]

“It cannot be that everything that is good for the E.U. is implemented by our side, but Turkey gets nothing in return,” Cavusoglu told Germany’s Bild newspaper.

“I don’t want to talk about the worst-case scenario,” he said, referring to the potential for another swell of migrants. “But it’s clear that we either apply all treaties at the same time or we put them all aside.”

Migration agencies and analysts say the consequences of the deal’s breakdown are difficult to predict. At stake is Europe’s fragile migration system, more than $6 billion in aid for refugees, and Turkey’s broader relationship with the West.

For thousands of migrants and refugees, their futures may be at risk.

Under the agreement, the E.U. can send back migrants who have arrived from Turkey in exchange for aid and visa-free travel for Turks. Before it went into effect in March, an average of 1,740 asylum seekers, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, were arriving in Greece every day, according to E.U. figures.

But by May, the average number had plummeted to just 47 a day. And aid agencies say that it was clear Turkish security forces were working to block the stream of people leaving for Greece, which is just across the Aegean Sea.

Although the number of arrivals is down, Greek authorities say they have returned only 482 of more than 10,000 people who have arrived on their shores from Turkey since March. The implementation of the agreement was slow, but deportations were delayed even further when Turkish liaison officers posted to Greece were recalled after the coup attempt, aid officials say.

As part of the wide-scale purge that has followed, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to consolidate control over the security services. In addition to detaining 18,000 military personnel, Erdogan shook up command structures and placed the Turkish coast guard under the control of the Interior Ministry.

The purge “will kill the bureaucracy’s ability to think,” said Aaron Stein, an expert in Turkish politics and a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center. “So things slow down and grind to a halt.”

[Welcome to Greece’s refugee squats]

The chaos may have also led to a rise in the number of arrivals in Greece over the past month, according to figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). More than 2,700 asylum seekers landed in Greece from Turkey from July 15 to Aug. 15, or about 90 a day. And although that is a fraction of last year’s influx, it’s still nearly double the late-spring average.

“We need to be prepared. Contingency, it’s important — it’s something we are doing with Greece and with other countries, telling them you need to be prepared in case this happens,” said William Spindler, a spokesman for the UNHCR.

More than 800,000 men, women and children arrived in Greece last year, overwhelming the nation’s weak response system. Any new spike in arrivals could crowd the camps Greece has established to house migrants and refugees, which are over capacity.

But the greater pressure on Europe may have abated, even if Turkey refuses to patrol its coastline for asylum seekers.

Because western Balkan nations sealed their borders this year, the migrants who make it to Greece are marooned there, unable to press northward. Germany and Sweden, once generous to new refugees, have become less so as their respective governments face domestic backlash for the influx.

“People in Turkey who had been thinking about migrating to Greece know that there they will get stuck, and Greece is not their final destination,” said Eugenio Ambrosi, the director of the E.U., Norway and Switzerland office of the International Organization for Migration, which is involved in providing aid to asylum seekers in Greece and Turkey.

“There are a series of constraints that now exist,” he said, “regardless of the deal.”

Still, a full pullback from the agreement could affect broader cooperation between Europe and Turkey — and also make life tougher for refugees.

The E.U. pledged $3.4 billion in aid for refugees in Turkey, plus up to another $3.4 billion by 2018. This funding could help ease living conditions for the 2.7 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey.

But what happens to that money if the deal falls apart is unclear. And advocacy groups have warned of the human consequences should the two sides walk away from each other.

“Canceling this agreement would inevitably risk a return to smuggling of human beings, illegal trafficking, illegal trade and a massive undermining of human rights,” said Daniel Holtgen, a spokesman for the Council of Europe, a human rights group.

But the post-coup attempt crackdown suggests to some critics that Turkey won’t be able fulfill its human rights obligations under the agreement.

“It’s another nail in the coffin of the deal,” Elizabeth Collett, director of the Brussels-based Migration Policy Institute Europe, said of the crackdown. “It’s another reason to be skeptical.”

August 24, 2016
Found: grave of Siberian noblewoman up to 4,500 years old – with links to native Americans

By The Siberian Times reporter

19 August 2016

Her treasures include an incense burner decorated by solar symbols, 1,500 beads that once adorned her costume, and 100 pendants made from animal teeth.

Undisturbed by pillaging grave robbers, the burial site of the woman, also containing the remains of a child, offers a wealth of clues about the life of these ancient people. Picture: IIMK RAS

The intriguing find of the remains of a ‘noblewoman’ from the ancient Okunev Culture was made in the Republic of Khakassia.

The Okunev people are seen as the Siberian ethnic grouping most closely related to Native Americans. In other words, it was ancestors of the Okunevs who populated America, evidently using primitive boats to venture to the ice-covered Beringia land bridge some 12,600 years ago.

The mysterious ancient culture was ‘unparalleled’ in Siberia in terms of its artistic richness and diversity, according to experts.

Undisturbed by pillaging grave robbers, the burial site of the woman, also containing the remains of a child, offers a wealth of clues about the life of these ancient people.

The incense burner found in the grave contains sun-shaped faces which match previously-discovered ancient rock art in Siberia. Picture: IIMK RAS

The head of the expedition Dr Andrey Polyakov said the grave of the ‘noblewoman’ dated back to the Early Bronze Age, between the 25th and 18th centuries BC.

‘For such an ancient epoch, this woman has a lot of items in her grave,’ he said. ‘We have not encountered anything like this in other burials from this time, and it leads us to suggest that the items in her grave had some ritual meaning.

‘We hope to get even more rare and spectacular finds next year, when will continue to study this unique (burial) mound and open the central burial plot.’

Around 100 decorations made from the teeth of different animals mark the special status of the woman. Picture: IIMK RAS

Archeologists believe the woman ‘enjoyed a special status during her lifetime’, as indicated by around 100 decorations made from the teeth of different animals, items carved from bone and horn, two jars, cases with bone needles inside, a bronze knife, and more than 1,500 beads that embellished her funeral costume.

There is particular excitement about the incense burner because it contains sun-shaped faces which match previously-discovered ancient rock art in Siberia. The clay incense burner bearing three sun-shaped facial images, recovered from the grave, is the most important find of all,’ he said.

‘Its importance is hard to overestimate. All such images previously discovered had been found only on cliffs or separate stones. Now there is the prospect to find out when they were made.’

The stone roofs of some graves on a burial hill at Itkol II also bear chiseled images – known as Okunev faces. Picture: IIMK RAS

He made clear: ‘Now, thanks to our current research, we can definitely say that these rock arts were made by the representatives of the Okunev culture.’ After precise dating and restoration, the incense burner will be exhibited at the world famous Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, he said.

The location where the finds were made is known as the Itkol II burial site, in the Shira district of Khakassia. Excavations began here in 2008 – with some 560 finds in total so far – but there is a sense that the best is yet to come.

Another find is a stone slab with a rare image of a bull having a long rectangular body. These are not common in southern Siberia, but are known on the territory of modern-day Kazakhstan. Archeologists see this as an indication that Okunev people may have migrated to Khakassia from the south.

Excavations began here in 2008 – with some 560 finds in total so far – but there is a sense that the best is yet to come. Picture: IIMK RAS

Does this mean modern-day Native Americans originated from Kazakhstan and not southern Siberia, as previously thought? We await more scientific evidence.

The stone roofs of some graves on a burial hill at Itkol II also bear chiseled images – known as Okunev faces. Archeologists believe they are not faces of real people, but more likely images of spirits, gods and other supernatural deities. One of the faces belongs to a type never seen before, although details of this find have not been made public so far.

The culture owes its name to the locality of Okunev, in the south of Khakassia, where the first burial site of this type was excavated in 1928. The Okunev Steles – anthropomorphous stone columns several meters tall – are the most widely known monument attributed to this culture.

The top of these steles has the shape of a bird’s beak. The middle part is decorated with images of one or several anthropomorphous creatures, while the lower part resembles the open mouth of a snake.

August 22, 2016
Turkey’s Democracy Deficit | Bekdil at Gatestone

Yildiz Unsal [amunsal@hotmail.com]

Turkey’s Democracy Deficit

by Burak Bekdil
The Gatestone Institute

Originally published under the title “Turkey, Europe’s Little Problem.”

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmaier (right) said there is virtually “no basis” for talks between his government and that of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left).

Nations do not have the luxury, as people often do, of choosing their neighbors. Turkey, under the 14-year rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist governments, and neighboring both Europe and the Middle East, was once praised as a “bridge” between Western and Islamic civilizations. Its accession into the European Union (EU) was encouraged by most EU and American leaders.

Nearly three decades after its official bid to join the European club, Turkey is not yet European but has become one of Europe’s problems.

Europe’s “Turkish problem” is not only about the fact that within the span of a single fortnight a bomb attack wrecked a terminal of the country’s biggest airport and a coup attempt killed nearly 250 people; nor is it about who rules the country. It is about the undeniable democratic deficit both in governance and popular culture.

In only the past couple of weeks, Turkey was in the headlines with jaw-dropping news. In Istanbul, a secretary at a daily newspaper was attacked by a group of people who accused her of “wearing revealing clothes and supporting the July 15 failed coup.” She was six months pregnant.

Also in Istanbul, a Syrian gay refugee was murdered: he had been beheaded and mutilated. One social worker helping LGBT groups said: “Police are doing nothing because he is Syrian and because he is gay.”

Turkey is dangerous not only for gays and refugees. A French tourist was left bloodied and beaten by Turkish nationalists after he refused to hold a Turkish flag. Grisly footage shows the gang, encouraged by Erdogan to patrol the streets on “democracy watch,” telling the man “You will be punched if you don’t hold the flag.” The tourist is alone and does not appear to speak Turkish.

Europe shows signs of waking up from its Turkey-as-‘bridge’ dream.

Meanwhile Europe is giving signals, albeit slowly, that it may be waking up from its Turkey-the-“bridge” dream. Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmaier said that his country’s relations with Turkey have grown so bad the two countries have virtually “no basis” for talks. He said that Germany has serious concerns about mass arrests carried out by Turkish officials. According to Steinmaier, Turkey and Germany are like “emissaries from two different planets.” Steinmaier is right. He is also not the only European statesman who sees Turkey as alien.

Erdogan recently threatened Italy that its bilateral relations with Turkey could deteriorate if Italian prosecutors investigating Erdogan’s son, Bilal, for money laundering, proceeded with their probe. “Italy should be attending to the mafia, not my son,” Erdogan said. Typically, he does not understand the existence of independent judiciary in a European country. He thinks, as in an Arab sheikdom, prosecutors are liable to drop charges on orders from the prime minister.

Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, answered Erdogan in language Erdogan will probably will not understand: “Italy has an independent legal system and judges answer to the Italian constitution and not the Turkish president.”

In unusual European realism, Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said that he would start a discussion among European heads of government to end EU membership talks with Turkey. He rightly called the accession talks “diplomatic fiction.” Kern said: “We know that the democratic standards are clearly not sufficient to justify [Turkey’s] accession.”

Even Turkish Cypriots on the divided island fear that Erdogan’s Islamization campaign may target their tiny statelet. On August 3, about 1,500 people from 80 groups spanning the political spectrum took to the streets in Nicosia to protest against “Turkey’s attempt to mold their secular culture into one that’s more in tune with Islamic norms.”

All of that inevitably makes Turkey an alien candidate waiting at Europe’s gates to join the club. According to a European survey, Turkey is the least-wanted potential EU member — even less wanted than Russia. Opposition to Turkish membership ranges from 54% (Norway) to 81% (Germany).

Celal Yaliniz, a little-known Turkish philosopher, likened Turks in the 1950s to “members of a ship’s crew who are running toward the west as their ship travelled east.” The Turks were not alone. Erdogan’s “liberal” Western supporters have been no different.

Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

August 18, 2016
Turkey will never be the same again | New Straits Times |

Turkey will never be the same again

By Harun Yahya – 16 August 2016 @ 11:00 AM

July 15, 2016. The coup attempt that was made, and thanks to God, failed that day, can be qualified as a milestone for Turkey; to understand why, it will be good to remember what happened that day.

Horrific scenes took place during the events that started on the night of July 15 and continued until morning the next day. Tanks ran over innocent civilians, elderly women and even children were fired upon. According to the Anatolian Agency, 240 people — 62 police officers, five soldiers and 173 civilians — were killed and 2,195 people were injured.

Thirty-five airplanes, 37 helicopters, 246 tanks and armoured vehicles, three ships and more than 4,000 light arms were used, and more than 9,000 soldiers participated in the coup attempt. Bridges were blocked, the Turkish Grand National Assembly and the Special Operations Department were bombed. All these attacks were repelled by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s urging people to take to the streets and through the self-sacrificing and vigorous efforts of the people acting in unison with the security forces.

All that happened on the night of the coup attempt are significant in indicating that everything will be different for Turkey from now on. As anticipated, July 15 has become a historical milestone, a turning point. It ushered in a new era. One of the things this new era brought along was the Aug 7 “Democracy and Martyrs’ Rally”.

The rally in Yenikapi, Istanbul, witnessed various firsts. First of all, what should be mentioned is the unprecedented participation. According to data from the Anatolian Agency, there were around five million participants. This number was determined through people-per- square-metre analysis done during the aerial inspections conducted on and around the rally area by helicopters. It was the most crowded rally not only in the history of the Republic of Turkey, but perhaps in the history of the world. The magnificent record that was broken was not limited to this; at the same time, millions of people in other cities of Turkey gathered in public squares as well.

We witnessed other extraordinary things that, again, had never been seen in the political history of Turkey. The millions who gathered in the rally area did not represent a particular section of Turkey, but the whole of the country. Sunnis, Alawis, the religious, atheists, communists or Turkish, Kurdish, Laz, Circassian, Jewish, Armenian — in short, people of all ideologies, faiths, sects and parties were there; leaving the political party flags at home and taking Turkish flags along.

People took to the area and virtually turned the rally into a sea of red and white, the colours of the Turkish flag. The sides, which had been worlds apart before July 15, were banded together against the coup, flooding the streets with great excitement and enthusiasm.

The political leaders were no different. The party leaders, who, before July 15, would not speak to or even shake hands and frequently made quite serious accusations against each other, came together on Aug 7. Erdogan and the leaders of the three biggest parties in the Parliament gave messages of unity and solidarity. Acting in concert against the coup attempt, they laid the foundations of the spirit of brotherhood and love. Their speeches and attitudes in the rally clearly showed that, henceforth, in Turkey, a constructive, positive and reconciliatory political model will replace the sense of politics based on tension, strife, discrepancy and dissension.

What has happened over the last month in our country is truly admirable. The coup attempt eliminated overnight the polarisation within the Turkish society, which was hitherto deemed all but impossible. It united all walks of life on a common ground. It paved the way for the Turkish nation to unify in brotherhood and amiable collaboration; to protect democracy, secularism, freedom and national will. It demonstrated to the entire world our nation’s bravery, tenacity, determination and readiness to boldly sacrifice its life when necessary. There is no doubt that the coup plotters would not have attempted the coup had they known it would lead to such an outcome.

The speech the Chief of General Staff gave in the “Democracy and Martyrs’ Rally” was also notable. Through his uncompromising attitude against the coup plotters, General Hulusi Akar has earned the admiration of the people during this process. The enthusiastic cheers that accompanied his speech were the indicators of the fondness the Turkish nation have both for himself and the army.

The millions who assembled in public squares on Aug 7 sent crucial messages not only to Turkey, but to the entire world. The most significant among these was the image of a Turkey standing united as one nation, one body, one heart, one voice against coups, terrorism and occupation.

On the night of July 15, the people of Turkey gave due response to the bloodthirsty, ruthless, lawless coup plotters who tried to seize power by force, and the Yenikapi rally reaffirmed this response once and for all; it became a spectacular show of strength by and a signature of the people of Turkey. Hopefully, the groups who devise shady schemes aimed at Turkey will take their lessons from this dignified and stalwart stance, and concede.

The coup attempt was severely condemned not only in Turkey, but by many countries around the world.

The people’s stand against the coup on the streets and in public squares was highlighted by
the British media. Regarding the coup attempt in Turkey, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated that military interference is unacceptable.

Steffen Seibert, the spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in his statement: “The democratic order must be respected (in Turkey)… Everything must be done to protect human lives.”

Iran, Georgia, Somalia, Ukraine, Morocco, Qatar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Tunisia, Pakistan, the Baltic states and Azerbaijan were among the countries that condemned the coup attempt.

So, what comes after this? Turkey is going through difficult times that demand utmost caution and constant vigilance. However, there is no reason to give way to uncertainty and despair. Besides the hardships, we also witness fresh, encouraging and hopeful developments with each passing day. The hardships and troubles we go through will open the gates for a more powerful, more peaceful, more prosperous, more spiritual, more unified and more modern Turkey.

The existence of a strong and stable Turkey is essential for the entire world. This assessment is very significant, not only for Turkey, but also from a regional and global viewpoint. For the Middle East, the world’s most turbulent and strategic region, to achieve peace, tranquillity and welfare, Turkey’s existence is an indispensable must. Without doubt, a powerful and stable Turkey is the guarantor of supreme values such as human rights, social justice, democracy, liberties and secularism in the Middle East.

Harun Yahya has authored more than 300 books, translated into 73 languages, on politics, religion and science

August 17, 2016