Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Group items tagged Turkish-border

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Paul Merrell

M of A - Russia "Violated" Turkish Airspace Because Turkey "Moved" Its Border - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org/...e-turkey-moved-its-border.html

war & peace Syria Turkey Russia fighters border

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Russian planes in Syria "violated Turkish air space" the news agency currently tell us. But an earlier report shows that this claim may well be wrong and that the U.S. pushes Turkey to release such propaganda. Reuters (Mon Oct 5, 2015 7:54am BST): Turkey says Russian warplane violated its airspace A Russian warplane violated Turkish airspace near the Syrian border on Saturday, prompting the Air Force to scramble two F-16 jets to intercept it, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday. The Foreign Ministry summoned Moscow's ambassador to protest the violation, according to an e-mailed statement. Turkey urged Russia to avoid repeating such a violation, or it would be held "responsible for any undesired incident that may occur." AFP (10:20am · 5 Oct 2015): Turkey 'intercepts' Russian jet violating its air space Turkey said on Monday its F-16 jets had at the weekend intercepted a Russian fighter plane which violated Turkish air space near the Syrian border, forcing the aircraft to turn back. ... Turkey said on Monday its F-16 jets had at the weekend intercepted a Russian fighter plane which violated Turkish air space near the Syrian border, forcing the aircraft to turn back.
  • Here now what McClatchy reported on these air space violations in a longer piece several hours before Reuters and AFP reported the Turkish claim: ISTANBUL - A Russian warplane on a bombing run in Syria flew within five miles of the Turkish border and may have crossed into Turkey’s air space, Turkish and U.S. officials said Sunday. ... A Turkish security official said Turkish radar locked onto the Russian aircraft as it was bombing early Friday in al Yamdiyyah, a Syrian village directly on the Turkish border. He said Turkish fighter jets would have attacked had it crossed into Turkish airspace. But a U.S. military official suggested the incident had come close to sparking an armed confrontation. Reading from a report, he said the Russian aircraft had violated Turkish air space by five miles and that Turkish jets had scrambled, but that the Russian aircraft had returned to Syrian airspace before they could respond. The Turkish security official said he could not confirm that account.
  • So it is the U.S., not Turkey, which was first pushing the claims of air space violation and of scrambling fighters. The Turkish source would not confirm that. But how could it be a real air space violation when Russian planes "flew within five miles of the Turkish border and may have crossed into Turkey’s air space". The Russian planes were flying in Syrian airspace. They "may have crossed" is like saying that the earth "may be flat". Well maybe it is, right? Fact is the Russians fly ery near to the border and bomb position of some anti-Syrian fighters Turkey supports. They have good reasons to do so: The town, in a mountainous region of northern Latakia province, has been a prime route for smuggling people and goods between Turkey and Syria and reportedly has functioned as a key entry for weapons shipped to Syrian rebels by the U.S.-led Friends of Syria group of Western and Middle Eastern countries.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • One Russian plane may even indeed have slightly crossed the border while maneuvering. But the real reason why the U.S. military official and Turkey claim the above "violations" is because Turkey unilaterally "moved" the Turkish-Syrian border five miles south: Turkey has maintained a buffer zone five miles inside Syria since June 2012, when a Syrian air defense missile shot down a Turkish fighter plane that had strayed into Syrian airspace. Under revised rules of engagement put in effect then, the Turkish air force would evaluate any target coming within five miles of the Turkish border as an enemy and act accordingly. If Syrian rules of engagement would "move" its northern border up to the Black Sea would any plane in eastern Turkey be in violation of Syrian air space? No one would accept such nonsense and that is why no one should accept the U.S.-Turkish bullshit here. Russian planes should not respect the "new" Turkish defined border but only the legitimate one.
  • It would also be no good reason to start a NATO-Russia war just because such a plane might at times slightly intrude on the Turkish side due to an emergency or other accidental circumstances. Do we have to mention that the U.S., France, Britain and Jordan regularly violate Syrian airspace for their pretended ISIS bombing? That Turkey is bombing the PKK in north Iraq without the permission of the Iraqi government? What about Israels regular air space violations over Lebanon? But what is this all really about? Germany, the Netherlands and the U.S. stationed some Patriot air defense systems in Turkey to defend Turkey and its Islamist storm troops in north-Syria. These systems were announced to leave or have already left. Are these claims about air-space violation now an attempt to get these systems back into Turkey? For what real purpose?
Paul Merrell

ISIL, Turkey: The Dream of Restoring the Glories of Sublime Ottoman State , by Israa Al... - 0 views

www.voltairenet.org/article185381.html

war & peace ISIL Turkey Erdogan

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The ISIL’s funding father is Erdogan’s personal friend The name of the Saudi businessman Yassin al-Qadi has been linked to organizations classified as terrorist internationally. In particular, the foreign press and the Turkish opposition media describe him as “al-Qaeda’s funding father”. After the events of September 11/2001, al-Qadi- along with other figures- has been included in the world’s list of terrorists, and his name was stereotyped as a terrorist man. This made several countries ban him from entering into their territories, Turkey was one of them. Earlier, the Turkish media documented a photo scandal: Erdogan’s meetings with Yassin al-Qadi as well as long meetings with his son Bilal Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The scandal that was leaked by Turkish security elements came in the context of the case of corruption of which the son of the former Turkish Prime Minister has been accused. Based upon this, a large number of elements of the security corps were arrested being accused of plotting a coup against the government.
  • Nevertheless, the French journalist Thierry Meyssan describes Yassin al-Qadi as a personal friend of both Dick Cheney (former U.S. Vice President) and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to him, al-Qadi visited Turkey four times during 2012, and “his plane used to land at the second airport of Istanbul, and was being welcomed by the Prime Minister personally, without going through the smart gate, and after cutting the security cameras’ power supply”. The Turkish Gmehoriet Newspaper intended to publish details about the investigations conducted by the Turkish judiciary on the same case, and mentioned that Recep Tayyip Erdogan introduced Yassine al-Qadi as a Saudi businessman visiting Turkey to invest and denied that he is a terrorist. It quoted him as saying: “I trust Mr. Al-Qadi just as I trust myself. He is an almsgiver”.
  • The Turkish newspaper, after publishing Erdogan’s utterances before the Turkish judiciary, revealed that the Turkish police monitored 12 visits made by the Saudi man to Turkey. Seven out of these visits have been made with the help of Erdogan, the period when he was banned from entering Turkey, because his name was added as one of the world wanted terrorists in the list of the American FBI. The newspaper commented saying: “When the Turkish police was looking for al-Qadi, he was holding meetings with the Prime Minister”. Also, it published a photograph that showed separately the aforesaid man, Erdogan, and the Turkish intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, when they were going to a meeting that gathered them. The newspaper noted that Fidan himself met with al-Qadi 5 times when Al-Qadi has been banned from entering the Turkish territory.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Yet, the interesting thing is the leaked recordings published by the newspaper that disclose that Yassin al-Qadi used to give orders to the Erdogan’s office. He used to call to inform them that he had decided today to meet with Erdogan, and that the latter should not engage in any other obligations. The newspaper reported details about the dates of the meetings between the two men, what implies that the meetings were being attended by Fidan and by the Egyptian businessman Osama Qutob; the son of Muhammad Qutob the brother of the Brotherhood leader Sayyid Qutob who holds the Turkish citizenship and is living with his father in Turkey at present. This also mean that the meetings were taking place sometimes at the home of the Turkish businessman Mustafa Latif Topas in Istanbul, attended by Erdogan’s son and Moaz the son of al-Qadi. The recordings verify that Qutob was in charge of delivering the messages from the insurgents in the battlefield in Syria to Erdogan, what signifies that the meetings of these figures exceeded the issues of investment, and perhaps they exploited the title of a charity practice!
  • Those returning from Turkey refer to the public sympathy in the pro-government Turkish street with the ISIL. Social networking websites publish photos of Islamic libraries in Istanbul selling “T-shirts” and goods with the ISIL logo on them. Perhaps this news is no longer shocking after what the German (ARD) Television has revealed regarding the opening of an office for the ISIL in al-Fateh Street in Istanbul, being ran by Turks. Through it, the process of supporting and supplying the Takfiri organization in Iraq and Syria with funds and fighters takes place.
  • The German channel itself revealed in a video report aired by it that the ISIL has training camps on the Turkish territory: 1- The GAZIANTEP Camp: a training camp for the ISIL fighters According to the report published by the website of “Today’s Zaman”, an English-language newspaper in Turkey, the Governor of the Gaziantep (Erdal Ata) rushed to hold a press conference to deny what has been revealed by the German television. However, he spoke about the arrest of 19 elements that belong to the ISIL in the city, among those who came from European countries before committing them to trial.
  • Additionally, the Lebanese journalist Hassan Hamade, in an earlier interview with Al-Manar, drew attention to the existence of three training camps in Turkey for the fighters of extremist organizations [3]. 2- The ORFA Camp, southeastern Turkey: a camp out of which the gunmen came when they attacked the Kasab city that its residents are predominantly Armenian.
  • 3- The OSMANIYA camp in Adana, southern Turkey: It is directly near the major bases of the U.S. Air Force in the Turkish territory. Yet, what is interesting is that the Osmaniya camp is a stone’s throw away from the gas pipelines points of intersection coming from Iraq and Central Asia that empty the freight in the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea. 4- The KARMAN camp, it is also in Adana but is much closer to Istanbul. Moreover, a document published by the French journalist Thierry Meyssan, earlier, revealed that Turkey facilitated the infiltration of 5,000 fighters, who belong to al-Qaeda, to the Syrian territory after receiving training in Libya.
  • Perhaps the report of the American TV Network clarifies the argument of the Turkish journalist Orhan Kama Genghis: “The strongholds of the ISIL are located close to the Turkish border, and this did not happen coincidentally”. The Turkish journalist Kadri Gursel talks about the fact that the Turkish border territories have turned into an easy pathway facilitating the arrival and departure of the militants, where there are no formal procedures (visas, etc…) that could bother them, referring to the cooperation of the Turkish intelligence agency with the militants. Above and beyond, the Turkish opposition Republican People’s Party MP Muharram Ingee said that the ISIL leader “Mazen Abu Mohammed” received treatment in one of the Turkish government hospitals in the city of Hatay on April 2014, publishing a photo of the terrorist man in the hospital.
  • Reviewing these data provide an early answer to the question of the Saudi writer, Nawaf Qadimi, who is known for his support for the Muslim Brotherhood, where the phenomenon of the ISIL leads us to evoke history. The Seljuks drew the policies to expand their influence and their tools were the advocates of takfir and the recruiting of fighters in the name of religion. Here is Erdogan in actual fact walking in the footsteps of the ancestors and painting policies, and the tools are the texts of takfir for which he is recruiting fighters in the name of religion itself! That is how history is enabling us to understand our present...
Paul Merrell

M of A - ISIS Moves To Syria Where Erdogan Still Aims For Aleppo - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org/...gan-still-aims-for-aleppo.html

war & peace Syria sitrep Russia Turkey ISIL Mosul Aleppo Deir-Ezzor

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • The Iraqi army started a large operation to liberate Mosul from Islamic State jihadists. But the forces, in total some 40,000, are still several dozen kilometers away from the city limits. They will have to capture several towns and villages and pass many IED obstacles before coming near to the center and house to house fighting. It might take many month to eliminated the last stay-behind ISIS cells in Mosul. About one million civilians live in Mosul. Many, many more than in east-Aleppo. Many of them were sympathetic with the new overlords when ISIS stormed in two years ago. French, American, Kurdish, Iraqi and Turkish artillery are pounding them now. Airstrikes attack even the smallest fighting position. When the city will be conquered it will likely be destroyed. The imminent fight over Mosul might be the reason why John Kerry dialed down his hypocritical howling over east-Aleppo in Syria which is under attack from Syrian and Russian forces. The attack on Mosul proceeds on three axes. From the north Kurdish Peshmerga under U.S. special force advisors lead the fighting. Iraqi forces attack from the east and south. The way to the west, towards Syria, is open. The intend of the U.S. is to let ISIS fighters, several thousand of them, flee to Deir Ezzor and Raqqa in Syria. They are needed there to further destroy the Syrian state.
  • We pointed out here that this move will create the "Salafist principality" the U.S. and its allies have striven to install in east-Syria since 2012. The "mistake" of the U.S. bombing of Syrian army positions in Deir Ezzor was in support of that plan. Other commentators finally catch up with that conclusion. The Turks are openly talking about such an escape plan for ISIS in Mosul. The Turkish news agency Anadolu published this "sensitive" operations plan. Point 4 says: An escape corridor into Syria will be left for Daesh so they can vacate Mosul
  • Two points in the Turkish plan will not come true. The Iraqi government has ordered that no Turkish troops take part in the Mosul operation and will designate them as enemies should they try. The Sunni "Nineveh Guard", trained by Turkey, paid by the Saudis and led by the former Anbar governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, will also be excluded. It was the Saudi proxy al-Nujaifi who practically handed Anbar over to ISIS by ordering his troops to flee when ISIS attacked. He and his Saudi and Turkish sponsors want to create an independent Sunni statelet in west Iraq just like the Kurds created their own entity within north Iraq. The U.S. hopes that the influx of ISIS fighters into Syria will keep the Russians and Iranians trapped in the "quagmire" Obama prescribed and finally destroy the Syrian state. It seems to have mostly given up on other plans. The U.S. military now acknowledges that fighting the Russian air defense in Syria would be a real challenge: "It’s not like we’ve had any shoot at an F-35,” the official said of the next-generation U.S. fighter jet. “We’re not sure if any of our aircraft can defeat the S-300.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • There is a "no-fly zone" over west-Syria and it is the Russians who control it. All U.S. and Turkish talk about such a zone is moot. The Obama administration has for now also given up on other plans. The recent National Security Council meeting deferred on further decisions: Consideration of other alternatives, including the shipment of arms to U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in Syria, and an increase in the quantity and quality of weapons supplied to opposition fighters in Aleppo and elsewhere, were deferred until later, officials said. U.S. military action to stop Syrian and Russian bombing of civilians was even further down the list of possibilities. The only U.S. "hope" for its Syria plans is now the facilitation of another ISIS influx. That and the CIA coordinated actions of its allies. The Saudis Foreign Minister announced that his country will increase weapons flow to its al-Qaeda proxies in Syria. The "rebels" are still receiving TOW anti-tank missiles and other heavy weapons. Turkish proxy forces, some Syrians, some "Turkmen" from Chechnya and elsewhere, have taken Dabiq from ISIS. The village is said to become a focal point of a future apocalyptic Christian-Muslim battle. A lot of "western" commentators pointed to that as a reason why ISIS would fight for it. But that battle is only predicted for the period after the return of the Mahdi which has not been announced. The current ideological value of Dabiq is therefore low and, like in Jarablus, ISIS cooperated well and moved out before the Turkish proxies moved in. The Russians had allowed Turkey to enter Syria only within a limit of some 15 kilometers south of the Turkish border. Heavy artillery would have to stay on the Turkish side. The sole original purpose of the Turkish invasion was to prevent a Kurdish corridor from the eastern Kurdish areas in Syria to Afrin in the west. Such a corridor would have limited ISIS access to Turkey.
  • The Kurdish corridor has been prevented and ISIS access to Turkish controlled areas and Turkey itself is as open as ever. The Turkish military sees this as sufficient for its aims: Taking control of Dabiq had eliminated the threat to Turkey from rockets fired by the jihadists, the Turkish Armed Forces said in a written statement.
  • The Turkish military wants to halt the operation. But Erdogan and his proxies forces want to go further south and west to attack the Syrian army encirclement of east-Aleppo: President Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Sunday Dabiq's liberation was a "strategic and symbolic victory" against Islamic State. He told Reuters it was important strategically that the Turkey-backed forces continue their advance toward the Islamic State stronghold of al-Bab. To move to al-Bab Turkish artillery, with its units relying on conscripts, would have to move south of the Turkish-Syrian border. Any attack on them by the Syrian or Russian forces would thus become legal. Kurdish guerilla would be a constant threat. This explains the new split between the Turkish military and political forces. It will be interesting to watch how that dispute develops. For Thursday the Russian command announced a unilateral temporary ceasefire in east-Aleppo to let the Jihadis move out. British and other special forces, said to be embedded with al-Qaeda, will be happy for the chance to leave. In Iraq some Shia militia are moving towards Tal Afar to cut of the ISIS path to the west. Russia promised to take political and military measures should it detect an ISIS move. In east-Syria the Russian and Syrian air-forces, Hizbullah and more Shia militia from Iraq are now preparing surprises for the expected ISIS influx from Mosul. How much can they risk when the U.S. provides further air-support for the ISIS move?
Paul Merrell

"Humanitarian Supplies" for the Islamic State (ISIS): NATO's Terror Convoys Halted at S... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5492253

war & peace Syria ISIL Russia U.S.-foreign-policy supply-lines

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • For years, NATO has granted impunity to convoys packed with supplies bound for ISIS and Al Qaeda. Russian airstrikes have stopped them dead in their tracks. If a legitimate, well-documented aid convoy carrying humanitarian supplies bound for civilians inside Syria was truly destroyed by Russian airstrikes, it is likely the world would never have heard the end of it. Instead, much of the world has heard little at all about a supposed “aid” convoy destroyed near Azaz, Syria, at the very edge of the Afrin-Jarabulus corridor through which the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) and Al Qaeda’s remaining supply lines pass, and in which NATO has long-sought to create a “buffer zone” more accurately described as a Syrian-based, NATO-occupied springboard from which to launch terrorism deeper into Syrian territory. The Turkish-based newspaper Daily Sabah reported in its article, “Russian airstrikes target aid convoy in northwestern Syrian town of Azaz, 7 killed,” claims: At least seven people died, 10 got injured after an apparent airstrike, reportedly by Russian jets, targeted an aid convoy in northwestern Syrian town of Azaz near a border crossing with Turkey on Wednesday. Daily Sabah also reported: Speaking to Daily Sabah, Serkan Nergis from the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) said that the targeted area is located some 5 kilometers southwest of the Öncüpınar Border Crossing.  Nergis said that IHH has a civil defense unit in Azaz and they helped locals to extinguish the trucks. Trucks were probably carrying aid supplies or commercial materials, Nergis added.
  • Daily Sabah’s report also reveals that the Turkish-Syrian border crossing of Oncupinar is held by what it calls “rebels.” The border crossing of Oncupinar should be familiar to many as it was the scene of Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s (DW) investigative report where DW camera crews videotaped hundreds of trucks waiting at the border, bound for ISIS territory, apparently with full approval of Ankara. The report was published in November of 2014, a full year ago, and revealed precisely how ISIS has been able to maintain its otherwise inexplicable and seemingly inexhaustible fighting capacity. The report titled, “‘IS’ supply channels through Turkey,” included a video and a description which read: Every day, trucks laden with food, clothing, and other supplies cross the border from Turkey to Syria. It is unclear who is picking up the goods. The haulers believe most of the cargo is going to the “Islamic State” militia. Oil, weapons, and soldiers are also being smuggled over the border, and Kurdish volunteers are now patrolling the area in a bid to stem the supplies. The report, and many others like it, left many around the world wondering why, if the US is willing to carry out risky military operations deep within Syrian territory to allegedly “fight ISIS,” the US and its allies don’t commit to a much less riskier strategy of securing the Turkish-Syrian border within Turkey’s territory itself – especially considering that the United States maintains an airbase, training camps, and intelligence outposts within Turkish territory and along the very border ISIS supply convoys are crossing over.
  • Ideally, NATO should have interdicted these supply convoys before they even crossed over into Syria – arresting the drivers and tracking those who filled the trucks back to their source and arresting them as well. Alternatively, the trucks should have been destroyed either at the border or at the very least, once they had entered into Syria and were clearly headed toward ISIS-occupied territory. That none of this took place left many to draw conclusions that the impunity granted to this overt logistical network was intentional and implicated NATO directly in the feeding of the very ISIS terrorists it claimed to be “fighting.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Russia’s increased activity along the Syrian-Turkish border signifies the closing phases of the Syrian conflict. With Syrian and Kurdish forces holding the border east of the Euphrates, the Afrin-Jarabulus corridor is the only remaining conduit for supplies bound for terrorists in Syria to pass. Syrian forces have begun pushing east toward the Euphrates from Aleppo, and then will move north to the Syrian-Turkish border near Jarabulus. Approximately 90-100 km west near Afrin, Ad Dana, and Azaz, it appears Russia has begun cutting off terrorist supply lines right at the border. It is likely Syrian forces will arrive and secure this region as well. For those that have criticized Russia’s air campaign claiming conflicts can’t be won from the air without a ground component, it should be clear by now that the Syrian Arab Army is that ground component, and has dealt ISIS and Al Qaeda its most spectacular defeats in the conflict. When this corridor is closed and supplies cut off, ISIS, Nusra, and all associated NATO-backed factions will atrophy and die as the Syrian military restores order across the country. This may be why there has been a sudden “rush” by the West to move assets into the region, the impetus driving the United States to place special forces into Syrian territory itself, and for Turkey’s ambush of a Russian Su-24 near the Syrian-Turkish border.
  • Obviously, any nation truly interested in defeating ISIS would attack it at its very source – its supply lines. Military weaponry may have changed over the centuries, but military strategy, particularly identifying and severing an enemy’s supply lines is a tried and true method of achieving victory in any conflict. Russia, therefore, would find these convoys a natural target and would attempt to hit them as close to the Syrian-Turkish border as possible, to negate any chance the supplies would successfully reach ISIS’ hands. Russian President Vladmir Putin noted, regarding the Azaz convoy in particular, that if the convoy was legitimately carrying aid, it would have been declared, and its activities made known to all nations operating military aircraft in the region.
  • What all of this adds up to is a clear illustration of precisely why the Syrian conflict was never truly a “civil war.” The summation of support for militants fighting against the Syrian government and people, has come from beyond Syria’s borders. With that support being cut off and the prospect of these militants being eradicated, the true sponsors behind this conflict are moving more directly and overtly to salvage their failed conspiracy against the Syrian state. What we see emerging is what was suspected and even obvious all along – a proxy war started by, and fought for Western hegemonic ambitions in the region, intentionally feeding the forces of extremism, not fighting them.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Dec 15
     
    Watch for new action to begin on the southern supply lines for Al Nusrah running from Jordan and Israel. It's a question of when rather than if.
Paul Merrell

Erdogan's Dirty Dangerous ISIS Games | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ans-dirty-dangerous-isis-games

war & peace ISIL Turkey Erdogan

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • Turkey is a beautiful land, rich in resources, with many highly intelligent and warm people. It also happens to have a President who seems intent on destroying his once-proud nation. More and more details are coming to light revealing that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, variously known as ISIS, IS or Daesh, is being fed and kept alive by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish President and by his Turkish intelligence service, including MIT, the Turkish CIA. Turkey, as a result of Erdoğan’s pursuit of what some call a Neo-Ottoman Empire fantasies that stretch all the way to China, Syria and Iraq, threatens not only to destroy Turkey but much of the Middle East if he continues on his present path.
  • In October 2014 US Vice President Joe Biden told a Harvard gathering that Erdoğan’s regime was backing ISIS / ISIL with “hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons…” Biden later apologized clearly for tactical reasons to get Erdogan’s permission to use Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base for airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, but the dimensions of Erdoğan’s backing for ISIS since revealed is far, far more than Biden hinted. ISIS militants were trained by US, Israeli and now it emerges, by Turkish special forces at secret bases in Konya Province inside the Turkish border to Syria, over the past three years. Erdoğan’s involvement in ISIS goes much deeper. At a time when Washington, Saudi Arabia and even Qatar appear to have cut off their support for ISIS, they remaining amazingly durable. The reason appears to be the scale of the backing from Erdoğan and his fellow neo-Ottoman Sunni Islam Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu. Nice Family Business The prime source of money feeding ISIS these days is sale of Iraqi oil from the Mosul region oilfields where they maintain a stronghold. The son of Erdoğan it seems is the man who makes the export sales of ISIS-controlled oil possible. Bilal Erdoğan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdoğan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers.
  • In addition to son Bilal’s illegal and lucrative oil trading for ISIS, Sümeyye Erdoğan, the daughter of the Turkish President apparently runs a secret hospital camp inside Turkey just over the Syrian border where Turkish army trucks daily being in scores of wounded ISIS Jihadists to be patched up and sent back to wage the bloody Jihad in Syria, according to the testimony of a nurse who was recruited to work there until it was discovered she was a member of the Alawite branch of Islam, the same as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who Erdoğan seems hell-bent on toppling. Turkish citizen Ramazan Başol, captured this month by Kurdish People’s Defence Units,YPG, as he attempted to join ISIS from Konya province, told his captors that said he was sent to ISIS by the ‘İsmail Ağa Sect,’ a strict Turkish Islam sect reported to be tied to Recep Erdoğan. Başol said the sect recruits members and provides logistic support to the radical Islamist organization. He added that the Sect gives jihad training in neighborhoods of Konya and sends those trained here to join ISIS gangs in Syria. According to French geopolitical analyst, Thierry Meyssan, Recep Erdoğan “organised the pillage of Syria, dismantled all the factories in Aleppo, the economic capital, and stole the machine-tools. Similarly, he organised the theft of archeological treasures and set up an international market in Antioch…with the help of General Benoît Puga, Chief of Staff for the Elysée, he organised a false-flag operation intended to provoke the launching of a war by the Atlantic Alliance – the chemical bombing of la Ghoutta in Damascus, in August 2013. “
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Meyssan claims that the Syria strategy of Erdoğan was initially secretly developed in coordination with former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé and Erdoğan’s then Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, in 2011, after Juppe won a hesitant Erdoğan to the idea of supporting the attack on traditional Turkish ally Syria in return for a promise of French support for Turkish membership in the EU. France later backed out, leaving Erdoğan to continue the Syrian bloodbath largely on his own using ISIS. Gen. John R. Allen, an opponent of Obama’s Iran peace strategy, now US diplomatic envoy coordinating the coalition against the Islamic State, exceeded his authorized role after meeting with Erdoğan and “promised to create a « no-fly zone » ninety miles wide, over Syrian territory, along the whole border with Turkey, supposedly intended to help Syrian refugees fleeing from their government, but in reality to apply the « Juppé-Wright plan ». The Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, revealed US support for the project on the TV channel A Haber by launching a bombing raid against the PKK.” Meyssan adds. There are never winners in war and Erdoğan’s war against Syria’s Assad demonstrates that in bold. Turkey and the world deserve better. Ahmet Davutoğlu’s famous “Zero Problems With Neighbors” foreign policy has been turned into massive problems with all neighbors due to the foolish ambitions of Erdoğan and his gang.
Paul Merrell

Putin condemns Turkey after Russian warplane downed near Syria border | World news | Th... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...own-jet-near-border-with-syria

war & peace Turkey Russia fighters

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Vladimir Putin has called Turkey “accomplices of terrorists” and warned of “serious consequences” after a Turkish F-16 jet shot down a Russian warplane on Tuesday morning, the first time a Nato country and Moscow have exchanged direct fire over the crisis in Syria. The Russian president, speaking before a meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan in Sochi, said the plane had been shot down over Syrian airspace and fell 4km inside Syria. Putin said it was “obvious” the plane posed no threat to Turkey.
  • “Our military is doing heroic work against terrorism … But the loss today is a stab in the back, carried out by the accomplices of terrorists. I can’t describe it in any other way,” he said. Putin suggested the Turks were shielding Islamic State terrorists from Russian attacks, saying: “Do they want to make Nato serve Isis?” Ankara and the Kremlin gave conflicting accounts of the incident, which appears to have occurred in an area near the Turkish-Syrian border straddling Iskenderun and Latakia. The Turkish military said it scrambled two F-16 fighter jets after a plane entered Turkish airspace in the province of Hatay at 9.20am on Tuesday, warning it to leave 10 times in five minutes before shooting it down. A government official said: “In line with the military rules of engagement, the Turkish authorities repeatedly warned an unidentified aircraft that they were 15km or less away from the border. The aircraft didn’t heed the warnings and proceeded to fly over Turkey. The Turkish air forces responded by downing the aircraft.
  • “This isn’t an action against any specific country: our F-16s took necessary steps to defend Turkey’s sovereign territory.” Russia’s defence ministry, in a series of tweets, confirmed that a Russian Su-24 had been shot down, but insisted the plane had never left Syrian airspace and claimed that fire from the ground was responsible. “At all times, the Su-24 was exclusively over the territory of Syria,” the defence ministry said. “The Su-24 was at 6,000 metres and preliminary information suggests it was brought down by fire from the ground. The circumstances are being investigated.” A rebel brigade in Syria said both pilots had been shot dead as they parachuted from the jet. The Turkish TV network CNN Türk reported that one of the pilots was found dead. A graphic video purporting to show a dead Russian pilot has been widely circulated.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Russian helicopters were combing the crash site area in Jabal al-Turkman in Syria’s northern Latakia province for the pilots, and have apparently blocked wireless communications.
  • Sinan Ülgen, a former Turkish diplomat who is now the chairman of the Edam thinktank in Istanbul, said Tuesday’s incident had been coming for some time. “There were two airspace violations [in the past few weeks], and after that a very high-level Russian military delegation came to Turkey to talk about it, including a top air force official. They apologised for one of the incidents, saying that in that case the Russian pilot didn’t speak the language. So we thought we had an understanding and solved the problem. “So it’s a surprise that it happened since that visit,” said Ülgen. “But it’s not a surprise in terms of Russian strategy. Since the intervention the Russians have been testing the Turkish response at its borders and its rules of engagement. “In this case, the pilot was warned a number of times. First at 13 miles out from the Turkish border, and then at five miles out, which is when Turkish jets scramble. It went past all those thresholds,” he said.
  • Putin said there would be “serious consequences” for Russia-Turkish relations. “We have always treated Turkey as a friendly state. I don’t know who was interested in what happened today, certainly not us. And instead of immediately getting in contact with us, as far as we know, the Turkish side immediately turned to their partners from Nato to discuss this incident, as if we shot down their plane and not they ours.” Turkey opposes Assad and has condemned the Russian intervention for targeting rebels not affiliated with the terror group Islamic State. The latest incident highlights the grave risks of clashes of arms between the various international forces that have intervened in Syria. A coalition led by the US is conducting an campaign against Isis in the country, and American and Russian officials have worked on ensuring there are no clashes between their forces as they pursue their separate campaigns. But the shooting down of the Russian plane is an escalation that leaves open the possibility of a clash between a Nato member and Russia, whose intervention shows an increasing assertiveness in international affairs.
Paul Merrell

Russian intelligence report on Turkey's current assistance to Daesh - 0 views

www.voltairenet.org/article190333.html

war & peace Syria Turkey ISIL

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • eportedly, representatives of ISIL — with help from the Turkish intelligence services — have established an extensive network in Antalya for the recruitment of individuals who have arrived in Turkey from the post-Soviet States, to enable their participation in the Syrian conflict and possible transfer to Russia.
  • In March 2014 the head of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT), Mr. H. Fidan, coordinated the transfer of a large ISIL unit headed by Mahdi al-Kharati, a Libyan national [1]. The fighters were taken by sea from Libya to Syria through the Barsai crossing on the Turkish-Syrian border. Since late December 2015, with the assistance of the Turkish intelligence services, arrangements have been made for an air route for moving ISIL fighters from Syria through Turkey to Yemen using Turkish military air transport. An alternative means of transporting fighters is by sea to the Yemeni port of Aden.
  • It is well known that wounded ISIL fighters are being provided with places to rest and receive treatment in areas of Turkey bordering Syria. At least 700 fighters were recuperating in Gaziantep in 2014. Reportedly, beginning in 2015, Turkish intelligence services assisted in the removal from Antalya to Eskişehir of what was termed a “Tatar Village”, which houses ethnic Tatar fighters and accomplices of the terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusrah who are natives of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Mordovia. Some of them are dual Russian-Turkish nationals.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • In December 2014, Turkish intelligence services helped to set up camps in Turkey, particularly in Hatay Province, to gather illegal migrants and provide training in preparation for the dispatch of extremist gangs to Syria. In January 2015, the Turkish MIT was involved in the operation to merge three terrorist bands, Osman Gazi, Omer bin Abdulaziz and Omer Mukhtar, into a group called the Sultan Abdulhamid Brigade, of which Omer Abdullah was appointed commander. The members of this group are trained in a camp in Bayır-Bucak in Turkey under the leadership of instructors from special operations units of the Turkish Armed Forces general command and MIT personnel. The activities of the Sultan Abdulhamid Brigade are coordinated with the activities of Jabhat al-Nusrah fighters in the north of the Syrian province of Latakia.
  • It is well known that on 21 September 2015, in the Syrian town of Tell Rifaat, representatives of the Syrian opposition who had received military training at a camp in Kırşehir in Turkey had delivered weapons to Jabhat al-Nusrah fighters. Deliveries of weapons to terrorist groups in Syria are reportedly still taking place, profiting from the facilities of Turkish-based foundations İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri ve İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH — Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief), İmkander and Öncü Nesil İnsani Yardım Derneği.
  • Supplies of various forms of weapons, military equipment and ammunition are arriving from abroad via the Turkish port of İskenderun. Military equipment and supplies are transported from there through Hatay Province (Öncüpinar border crossing) to Aleppo and Idlib in Syria using vehicles belonging to IHH, İmkander and Öncü Nesil with the following Turkish registrations: 33 SU 317, 06 DY 7807, 33 SU 540, 33 SU 960, 42 GL 074 and 31 R 5487. Within Syria, the weapons and ammunition are distributed to Turkmen gangs and Jabhat al-Nusrah units.
  • On 15 September 2014, representatives of IHH brought supplies of weapons and medicines from Bursa through the Ceylanpınar border crossing (Reyhanlı district) by vehicle into Syria for ISIL groups. This shipment was followed and escorted through Turkey by a vehicle carrying MIT personnel.
Paul Merrell

Putin's Revenge? The Fight for the Border - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...venge-the-fight-for-the-border

war & peace Syria Turkey U.S.-foreign-policy Russia border-closure

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • “We have received additional information confirming that the oil controlled by Islamic State militants (ISIS) enters Turkish territory on an industrial scale. We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure the security of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers.” –Russian President Vladimir Putin, Paris, 11-30-15
  • In candid remarks to the Russian media, Putin implicated the US in the downing of the Su-24 stating that the US military was briefed on the warplane’s flight path and then immediately passed along that information to Turkey. Here’s what he said: “We told our US partners in advance where, when at what altitudes our pilots were going to operate. The US-led coalition, which includes Turkey, was aware of the time and place where our planes would operate. And this is exactly where and when we were attacked. Why did we share this information with the Americans? Either they don’t control their allies, or they just pass this information left and right without realizing what the consequences of such actions might be. We will have to have a serious talk with our US partners.” Putin’s damning remarks have not appeared in any of the western media. The censorship of this information is similar to the blackout of comments Putin made just two weeks earlier at the G-20 summit where he announced that “40 countries” are financing ISIS including members of the G-20.
  • Here’s an except of Putin’s bombshell announcement: “I provided examples based on our data on the financing of different Islamic State units by private individuals. This money, as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them,” Putin told the journalists. “I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products. The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon,” Putin added, comparing the convoy to gas and oil pipeline systems.” (Putin: ISIS financed from 40 countries, including G20 members, RT)
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It’s clear that Russia’s bombardment of jihadi groups operating near the Turkish-Syrian border has Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan worried. Erdogan has long hoped that the area would be turned into a Safe Zone where Sunni militants– committed to removing Assad from power– could receive weapons and other support from their sponsors while coming and going as they pleased. The Russian-led coalition’s attempt to retake the area and seal the border to stop the flow of terrorists from Turkey, is probably what precipitated the attack on the Russian warplane. It was a desperate attempt to wave-off the Russian offensive and reverse the course of the war which has turned decisively in Assad’s favor. As for the militant groups that are operating in this area, analyst Pepe Escobar sums it up like this in a recent post at Sputnik News: “The Su-24s were actually after Chechens and Uzbeks — plus a few Uyghurs — smuggled in with fake Turkish passports (Chinese intel is also on it), all of these operating in tandem with a nasty bunch of Turkish Islamo-fascists. Most of these goons transit back and forth between the CIA-weaponized Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Jabhat al-Nusra. These were the goons who machine-gunned the Russian pilots as they parachuted down after the hit on the Su-24…. Turkey, for all practical purposes, has been a handy, sprawling Salafi-jihadi Infrastructure and Logistics Center; it offers everything from porous borders enabling countless jihadi return tickets from Syria to Europe, facilitated by corrupt police, to a convenient crossroads for all kinds of smuggling and a hefty money laundering ops.” (Sultan Erdogan’s War on…Russia, Pepe Escobar, Sputnik)
  • Escobar sums up Ankara’s role in Syria as succinctly as anyone. Erdogan has been ISIS best friend, of that, there is little doubt. The problem that Turkey faces now is that the Russian-led coalition is rapidly destroying the infrastructure that provides funding for ISIS, (oil refineries, fields and transport) while gradually retaking territory that was formally-controlled by the many anti-regime or al Qaida-linked groups in the north, west and central parts of the country. In the last few days alone, Russia and Co. have concluded the encirclement of Syria’s biggest city, Aleppo, vaporized a convoy of over 500 oil trucks in the vicinity of Raqqa, and intensified their bombing in the Turkmen Mountains, the Kurdish Mountains, and the Prophet Jonah Mountains. The coalition has moved as far north as Azaz along the Turkish border and recaptured the strategic Aleppo-Raqqa highway which completely cuts off ISIS supply-route from the east in Raqqa. All of the recent progress comes in the wake of the retaking of the strategic Kuweris Airbase which was the tipping point in the 4 and a half year-long conflict. Now the Russian coalition has focused on closing the border, a move that will sever vital supply-lines to pro-Turkish militias operating in Syria and force the terrorists to either flee or surrender. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized this point last week saying, “We are convinced that by blocking the border we will in many respects solve the tasks to eradicate terrorism on Syrian soil.”
  • Keep in mind, that Erdogan is not the only one with designs on the so-called “Afrin-Jarabulus corridor” east of the Euphrates. Powerful politicians in the US, including John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and others, have all alluded to this area as the most suitable location for a no-fly zone. And, despite the fact that Obama refuses to send US ground forces to fight in Syria, he has continued to fuel the conflict in other less conspicuous ways. Just last Wednesday, under the cover of the Thanksgiving holiday when the media was preoccupied with other matters, Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016 which provides another $800 million in aid to armed extremists in Syria and Ukraine. The NDAA, which effectively prevents the closing down of US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo), reflects Obama’s determination to continue Washington’s vicious policy in Syria which has resulted in the deaths of more than 250,000 and the displacement of 11 million more. This helps to explain why the Russian offensive has set alarms off in Washington; it’s because the US plan to establish a permanent staging ground for terrorists in N Syria is quickly going up in smoke.
  • Seen in this light, Obama’s recent request for Turkey to deploy “30,000 (troops) to seal the border on the Turkish side”, (See: Wall Street Journal) should be viewed with extreme skepticism. Clearly, Washington has not relented in its “Assad must go” policy at all, in fact, Obama reiterated that mantra less than a week ago. That means the Obama crew may be hoping that Turkish ground forces can succeed where his jihadi proxies failed, that is, that the 30,000 troops will be used to clear and hold a 60×20-mile stretch of Syrian territory that can be used as the proposed safe zone. All Turkey would need is a pretext to invade and a little bit of air cover from the USAF. It wouldn’t be the first time a false flag was used to start a war. The bottom line is this: Putin had better move quickly before Washington and Ankara get their ducks in a row and begin to mobilize. The time to seize the border is now.
Paul Merrell

Turkey Cooks the Books in Syria | The American Conservative - 0 views

www.theamericanconservative.com/...urkey-cooks-the-books-in-syria

war & peace Syria Turkey U.S.-foreign-policy false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • If you had been a reader of The American Conservative magazine back in December 2011, you might have learned from an article written by me that “Unmarked NATO warplanes are arriving at Turkish military bases close to Iskenderum on the Syrian border, delivering weapons [to the Free Syrian Army] derived from Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenals…” Well, it seems that the rest of the media is beginning to catch up with the old news, supplemented with significant details by Sy Hersh in the latest issue of the London Review of Books in an article entitled “The Red Line and the Rat Line.” The reality is that numerous former intelligence officials, like myself, have long known most of the story surrounding the on-again off-again intervention by the United States and others in Syria, but what was needed was a Sy Hersh, with his unmatched range of contacts deep in both the Pentagon as well as at CIA and State Department, to stitch it all together with corroboration from multiple sources. In a sense it was a secret that wasn’t really very well hidden but which the mainstream media wouldn’t touch with a barge pole because it revealed that the Obama Administration, just like the Bushies who preceded it, has been actively though clandestinely conspiring to overthrow yet another government in the Middle East. One might well conclude that the White House is like the Bourbon Kings of France in that it never forgets anything but never learns anything either.
  • The few media outlets that are willing to pick up the Syria story even now are gingerly treating it as something new, jumping in based on their own editorial biases, sometimes emphasizing the CIA and MI6 role in cooperating with the Turks to undermine Bashar al-Assad. But Hersh’s tale is only surprising if one had not been reading between the lines over the past three years, where the clandestine role of the British and American governments was evident and frequently reported on over the internet and, most particularly, in the local media in the Middle East. Far from being either rogue or deliberately deceptive, operations by the U.S. and UK intelligence services, the so-called “ratlines” feeding weapons into Syria, were fully vetted and approved by both the White House and Number 10 Downing Street. The more recent exposure of the Benghazi CIA base’s possible involvement in obtaining Libyan arms as part of the process of equipping the Syrian insurgents almost blew the lid off of the arrangement but somehow the media attention was diverted by a partisan attack on the Obama Administration over who said what and when to explain the security breakdown and the real story sank out of sight.
  • So this is what happened, roughly speaking: the United States had been seeking the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria since at least 2003, joining with Saudi Arabia, which had been funding efforts to destabilize his regime even earlier. Why? Because from the Saudi viewpoint Syria was an ally of Iran and was also a heretical state led by a secular government dominated by Alawite Muslims, viewed as being uncomfortably close to Shi’ites in their apostasy. From the U.S. viewpoint, the ties to Iran and reports of Syrian interference in Lebanon were a sufficient casus belli coupled with a geostrategic assessment shared with the Saudis that Syria served as the essential land bridge connecting Hezbollah in Lebanon to Iran. The subsequent Congressional Syria Accountability Acts of 2004 and 2010, like similar legislation directed against Iran, have resulted in little accountability and have instead stifled diplomacy. They punished Syria with sanctions for supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon and for its links to Tehran, making any possible improvement in relations problematical. The 2010 Act even calls for steps to bring about regime change in Damascus. The United States also engaged in a program eerily reminiscent of its recent moves to destabilize the government in Ukraine, i.e., sending in ambassadors and charges who deliberately provoked the Syrian government by meeting with opposition leaders and openly making demands for greater democracy. The last U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford spoke openly in support of the protesters while serving in Damascus in 2010. On one occasion he was pelted with tomatoes and was eventually removed over safety concerns.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Lost in translation is the fact that Washington’s growing support for radical insurgency in Syria would also inevitably destabilize all its neighbors, most notably including Iraq, which has indeed been the case, making a shambles of U.S. claims that it was seeking to introduce stable democracies into the region. Some also saw irony in the fact that a few years before Washington decided al-Assad was an enemy it had been sending victims of the CIA’s rendition program to Syria, suggesting that at least some short-term and long-term strategies were on a collision course from the start, if indeed the advocates of the two policies were actually communicating with each other at all. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, whose country shared a long border with Syria and who had legitimate security concerns relating to Kurdish separatists operating out of the border region, became the proxy in the secret war for Washington and its principal European allies, the British and French. When the U.S.-Saudi supported insurgency began to heat up and turn violent, Turkey became the key front line state in pushing for aggressive action against Damascus. Erdogan miscalculated, thinking that al-Assad was on his last legs, needing only a push to force him out, and Ankara saw itself as ultimately benefiting from a weak Syria with a Turkish-controlled buffer zone along the border to keep the Kurds in check.
  • Hersh reports how President Barack Obama had to back down from attacking Syria when the Anglo-American intelligence community informed him flatly and unambiguously that Damascus was not responsible for the poison gas attack that took place in Damascus on August 21, 2013 that was being exploited as a casus belli. The information supporting that assertion was known to many like myself who move around the fringes of the intelligence community, but the real revelation from Hersh is the depth of Turkish involvement in the incident in order to have the atrocity be exploitable as a pretext for American armed intervention, which, at that point, Erdogan strongly desired. As the use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians was one of the red lines that Obama had foolishly promoted regarding Syria Erdogan was eager to deliver just that to force the U.S.’s hand. Relying on unidentified senior U.S. intelligence sources, Hersh demonstrates how Turkey’s own preferred militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is generally regarded as an al-Qaeda affiliate, apparently used Turkish-provided chemicals and instructions to stage the attack.
  • Is it all true? Unless one has access to the same raw information as Sy Hersh it is difficult to say with any certainty, but I believe I know who some of the sources are and they both have good access to intelligence and are reliable. Plus, the whole narrative has an undeniable plausibility, particularly if one also considers other evidence of Erdogan’s willingness to take large risks coupled with a more general Turkish underhandedness relating to Syria. On March 23rd, one week before local elections in Turkey that Erdogan feared would go badly for him, a Turkish air force F-16 shot down a Syrian Mig-23, claiming that it had strayed half a mile into Turkish airspace. The pilot who bailed out, claimed that he was attacking insurgent targets at least four miles inside the border when he was shot down, an assertion borne out by physical evidence as the plane’s remains landed inside Syria. Was Erdogan demonstrating how tough he could be just before elections? Possibly.
  • Critics of Hersh claim that the Turks would be incapable of carrying out such a grand subterfuge, but I would argue that putting together some technicians, chemicals, and a couple of trucks to carry the load are well within the capability of MIT, an organization that I have worked with and whose abilities I respect. And one must regard with dismay the “tangled webs we weave,” with due credit to Bobby Burns, for what has subsequently evolved in Syria. Allies like Turkey that are willing to cook the books to bring about military action are exploiting the uncertainty of a White House that continues to search for foreign policy successes while simultaneously being unable to define any genuine American interests. Syria is far from an innocent in the ensuing mayhem, but it has become the fall guy for a whole series of failed policies. Turkey meanwhile has exploited the confusion to clamp down on dissent and to institutionalize Erdogan’s authoritarian inclinations. Ten years of American-licensed meddling combined with obliviousness to possible consequences has led to in excess of 100,000 dead Syrians and the introduction of large terrorist infrastructures into the Arab heartland, yet another foreign policy disaster in the making with no clear way out.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Apr 14
     
    Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi adds valuable context to revelations of Turkey's involvement in the false flag Sarin gas attack in Syria and in Turkey's follow-up plan to stage a false flag attack on a Turkish tomb in Syria as a pretext for Turkish invasion of Syria. 
Paul Merrell

Turkey duped the US, and Isis is reaping the rewards - Comment - Voices - The Independent - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...is-reaps-rewards-10478720.html

war & peace Turkey treachery ISIL Kurds U.S.-foreign-policy Incirlik

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The disastrous miscalculation made by the United States in signing a military agreement with Turkey at the expense of the Kurds becomes daily more apparent. In return for the use of Incirlik Air Base just north of the Syrian border, the US betrayed the Syrian Kurds who have so far been its most effective ally against Islamic State (Isis, also known as Daesh). In return for this deal signed on 22 July, the US got greater military cooperation from Turkey, but it swiftly emerged that Ankara’s real target was the Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Action against Isis was almost an afterthought, and it was hit by only three Turkish airstrikes, compared to 300 against the bases of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). President Barack Obama has assembled a grand coalition of 60 states, supposedly committed to combating Isis, but the only forces on the ground to win successive victories against the jihadis over the past year are the ruling Syrian-Kurdish Party (PYD) and its People’s Protection Units (YPG). Supported by US air power, the YPG heroically defeated the Isis attempt to capture the border city of Kobani during a four-and-a-half month siege that ended in January, and seized the Isis crossing point into Turkey at Tal Abyad in June.
  • The advance of the Syrian Kurds, who now hold half of the 550-mile Syrian-Kurdish border, was the main external reason why Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered the US closer cooperation, including the use of Incirlik, which had previously been denied. The domestic impulse for an offensive by the Turkish state against the Kurds also took place in June when the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) won 13 per cent of the vote in the Turkish general election, denying Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) a majority for the first time since 2002. By strongly playing the Turkish nationalist and anti-Kurdish card, Mr Erdogan hopes to win back that majority in a second election on 1 November.There are signs of a growing understanding in Washington that the US was duped by the Turks, or at best its negotiators deceived themselves when they agreed their bargain with Ankara. Senior US military officers are anonymously protesting in the US media they did not know that Turkey was pretending to be going after Isis when in practice it was planning an offensive against its 18 million-strong Kurdish minority.
  • But in July, the US plan to create such a moderate force was humiliatingly knocked on the head when Jabhat al-Nusra attacked and kidnapped many of this US-trained force as they entered Syria from Turkey. It now seems certain that Nusra had been tipped off by Turkish intelligence about the movements of the US-backed unit known as “Division 30”. Turkey apparently did this because it does not want the US to have its own surrogate in Syria. According to an investigation by Mitchell Prothero of the McClatchy news organisation, citing many Syrian sources in Turkey, the Turkish motive was to destroy the US-run movement, which was intended to number 15,000 fighters targeting Isis. Its disintegration would leave the US with no alternative but to train Turkish-sponsored rebel groups whose primary aim is to topple Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. The article quotes a Syrian rebel commander in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa, 30 miles north of the Syrian border, as saying that the Turks “don’t want anything bad to happen to their allies – Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham – along the border, and they know that both the Americans and the Syrian people will eventually recognise that there’s no difference between groups such as Nusra, Ahrar and Daesh.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The US campaign against Isis is failing and the US-Turkish deal will not reverse that failure and may make it more complete. Why did US negotiators allow themselves to be deceived, if that is what happened. No doubt the US air force was over-eager for the use of Incirlik so it would not have to fly its planes from Jordan, Bahrain or carriers in the Gulf.But there is a deeper reason for America’s inability to confront Isis successfully. Ever since 9/11, the US has wanted to combat al-Qaeda-type movements, but without disturbing its close relations with Sunni states such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies. But it is these same allies that have fostered, tolerated or failed to act against the al-Qaeda clones, which explains their continuing success.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Sep 15
     
    Patrick Cockburn lets loose on the Turkish government for betraying the U.S.
Gary Edwards

BENGHAZI - THE BIGGEST COVER-UP SCANDAL IN U.S. HISTORY? - WAS BENGHAZI A CIA GUN-RUNNI... - 0 views

www.libertynews.com/...r-insurgents-fighting-in-syria

Benghazi Benghazigate Benghazi-coverup

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 May 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 May 13
     
    "LibertyNEWS.com - Editorial Team Special Report It's never fun to admit you've been lied to and duped. There is no comfort in realizing a high-level group in government has conned you. The wound created from such a realization would be deep and painful when paired with extraordinary insult when you realize the cons are people you not only trusted, but people who are tasked with protecting your rights, your liberty, your life. When these people betray you, you're in trouble - big trouble. Unfortunately, we believe America is being betrayed by powerful individuals tasked with our protection. These people are found in the White House, the Congress, the CIA and other government entities - and they're lying to you. Then they're covering it up on an epic scale, in a never-before-seen manner. Here are the basics of what the schemers in government and the complicit media would like for us all to focus on and buy into: Why wasn't there better security at the consulate (keep this misleading word in mind) in Benghazi? Why didn't authorization come to move special forces in for protection and rescue? Why was an obscure video blamed when everyone knew the video had nothing to do with it? Did Obama's administration cover-up the true nature of the attacks to win an election? Truth is, as we're starting to believe, the above questions are convenient, tactical distractions. And truth is, answers to these questions, if they ever come, will never lead to revelations of the REAL TRUTH and meaningful punishment of anyone found responsible. Rep. Darrell Issa knows this, members of the House Committee investigating the Benghazi attacks know this, the White House knows this, and much of the big corporate media infrastructure knows it, too. How do they know it? Because they know the truth. They know the truth, but cannot and/or will not discuss it in public. Here are the basics that we (America, in general) should be focusing on, but aren't: Why do media
Paul Merrell

Turkey downs Russian warplane near Syria border, Putin warns of 'serious consequences' ... - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...a-turkey-idUSKBN0TD0IR20151124

war & peace Turkey Russia fighters

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border on Tuesday, saying it had repeatedly violated its air space, one of the most serious publicly acknowledged clashes between a NATO member country and Russia for half a century.Russian President Vladimir Putin said the plane had been attacked when it was 1 km (0.62 mile) inside Syria and warned of "serious consequences" for what he termed a stab in the back administered by "the accomplices of terrorists"."We will never tolerate such crimes like the one committed today," Putin said, as Russian and Turkish shares fell on fears of an escalation between the former Cold War enemies.Each country summoned a diplomatic representative of the other and NATO called a meeting of its ambassadors for Tuesday afternoon. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov canceled a visit to Turkey due on Wednesday and the defense ministry said it was preparing measures to respond to such incidents.Footage from private Turkish broadcaster Haberturk TV showed the warplane going down in flames, a long plume of smoke trailing behind it as it crashed in a wooded part of an area the TV said was known by Turks as "Turkmen Mountain". Separate footage from Turkey's Anadolu Agency showed two pilots parachuting out of the jet before it crashed. A deputy commander of rebel Turkmen forces in Syria said his men shot both pilots dead as they came down.
  • A video sent to Reuters earlier appeared to show one of the pilots immobile and badly wounded on the ground and an official from the group said he was dead.Russia's defense ministry said one of its Su-24 fighter jets had been downed in Syria and that, according to preliminary information, the pilots were able to eject. "For the entire duration of the flight, the aircraft was exclusively over Syrian territory," it said.The Turkish military said the aircraft had been warned 10 times in the space of five minutes about violating Turkish air space. Officials said a second plane had also approached the border and been warned."The data we have is very clear. There were two planes approaching our border, we warned them as they were getting too close," a senior Turkish official told Reuters. "We warned them to avoid entering Turkish air space before they did, and we warned them many times. Our findings show clearly that Turkish air space was violated multiple times. And they violated it knowingly," the official said.
  • HOT AS THEY FELLTurkish President Tayyip Erdogan was briefed by the head of the military, while Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was due to report on the incident to NATO ambassadors. He also informed the United Nations and related countries.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the warplane crashed in a mountainous area in the northern countryside of Latakia province, where there had been aerial bombardment earlier and where pro-government forces have been battling insurgents on the ground."A Russian pilot," a voice is heard saying in the video sent to Reuters as men gather around the man on the ground. "God is great," is also heard.The rebel group that sent the video operates in the northwestern area of Syria, where groups including the Free Syrian Army are active but Islamic State, which has beheaded captives in the past, has no known presence.A deputy commander of a Turkmen brigade told reporters on a trip organized by Turkish authorities that his forces had shot dead both pilots as they descended. U.S. and Turkish officials said they could not confirm the pilots' status.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • "Both of the pilots were retrieved dead. Our comrades opened fire into the air and they died in the air," Alpaslan Celik said near the Syrian village of Yamadi, close to where the plane came down, holding what he said was a piece of a pilot's parachute. In a further sign of a growing fallout over Syria, Syrian rebel fighters who have received U.S. arms said they fired at a Russian helicopter, forcing it to land in territory held by Moscow's Syrian government allies.Turkey called this week for a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss attacks on Turkmens, who are Syrians of Turkish descent, and last week Ankara summoned the Russian ambassador to protest against the bombing of their villages.About 1,700 people have fled the mountainous area due to fighting in the last three days, a Turkish official said on Monday. Russian jets have bombed the area in support of ground operations by Syrian government forces.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Nov 15
     
    It's a war crime to shoot at combatants who are hors de combat, i.e., those who are not fighting. 
Paul Merrell

Turkey Plans to Invade Syria, But to Stop the Kurds, Not ISIS - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...to-syria-widening-the-war.html

war & peace Syria Turkey invasion Kurds

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning a military intervention into northern Syria to prevent Syrian Kurds from forming their own state there, despite concerns among his own generals and possible criticism from Washington and other NATO allies, according to reports in both pro- and anti-government media. In a speech last Friday, Erdogan vowed that Turkey would not accept a move by Syrian Kurds to set up their own state in Syria following gains by Kurdish fighters against the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, in recent weeks. “I am saying this to the whole world: We will never allow the establishment of a state on our southern border in the north of Syria,” Erdogan said. “We will continue our fight in that respect whatever the cost may be.” He accused Syrian Kurds of ethnic cleansing in Syrian areas under their control.After the speech, several news outlets reported that the president and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had decided to send the Turkish army into Syria, a hugely significant move by NATO’s second-biggest fighting force after the U.S. military. Both the daily Yeni Safak, a mouthpiece of the government, and the newspaper Sozcu, which is among Erdogan’s fiercest critics, ran stories saying the Turkish Army had received orders to send soldiers over the border. Several other media had similar stories, all quoting unnamed sources in Ankara. There has been no official confirmation or denial by the government.
  • The reports said up to 18,000 soldiers would be deployed to take over and hold a strip of territory up to 30 kilometers deep and 100 kilometers long that is held by ISIS. It stretches from close to the Kurdish-controlled city of Kobani in the east to an area further west held by the pro-Western Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other rebel groups, beginning around the town of Mare. This “Mare Line,” as the press calls it, is to be secured with ground troops, artillery and air cover, the reports said. Yeni Safak reported preparations were due to be finalized by next Friday. There has been speculation about a Turkish military intervention ever since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. Ankara has asked the United Nations and its Western allies to give the green light to create a buffer zone and a no-fly area inside Syria to prevent chaos along the Turkish border and to help refugees on Syrian soil before they cross over into Turkey. But the Turkish request has fallen on deaf ears.
  • The daily Hurriyet reported Erdogan and Davutoglu wanted to “kill two birds with one stone” with a military intervention along the Mare Line. One aim would be to drive ISIS away from the Turkish border, depriving the jihadists of their last foothold on the frontier and thereby cutting off supply lines. Such a move would tie in with the U.S. strategy to contain and weaken ISIS.A second goal of the operation would be closer to Ankara’s own interests. The English-language Hurriyet Daily News quoted one source saying there was a need to  “prevent the PYD from taking full control over the Turkish-Syrian border,” and also to create a zone on Syrian territory rather than in Turkey to take in new waves of refugees.But the military is reluctant, the reports said. Generals told the government that Turkish troops could come up against ISIS, Kurds, and Syrian government troops and get drawn into the Syrian quagmire. Retaliation attacks by ISIS and Kurdish militants on Turkish territory are another concern.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Finally, the soldiers pointed to the international dimension. The military leadership told the government that the international community might get the impression that Turkey’s intervention was directed against Syria’s Kurds, the newspaper Haberturk reported.Turkey’s NATO partners, some of whom have deployed troops operating Patriot missile defense units near the Syrian border to shield member country Turkey against possible attacks from Syria, are unlikely to be happy with a Turkish intervention.
Paul Merrell

Turkish Forces Watch as the Syrian Army Seizes Large Parts of the Border in Northern La... - 0 views

www.almasdarnews.com/...the-border-in-northern-latakia

war & peace Syria Turkish-border SAA-advance

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Each day, the Turkish-back Islamist rebels lose large chunks of territory to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and their allies in the Turkmen Mountains (Jabal Al-Turkmen) and the Kurdish Mountains (Jabal Al-Akrad) of northern Latakia. If this were to happen four months ago, the Turkish Armed Forces would have most certainly helped the Islamist rebels deter the Syrian Arab Army’s advance towards the border-crossing; however, Turkey is now at the mercy of the Russian Air Force’s fighter jets, who relentlessy target groups like Jabhat Al-Nusra (Syrian Al-Qaeda group) and Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham along the Latakia-Turkey axis. .adslot_1 { width: 320px; height: 100px; } @media (min-width:500px) { .adslot_1 { width: 468px; height: 60px; } } @media (min-width:800px) { .adslot_1 { width: 336px; height: 280px; } } On Monday morning in northern Latakia, the Syrian Arab Army’s 103rd Brigade of the Republican Guard – backed by the National Defense Forces (NDF), the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), and Muqawama Souri (Syrian Resistance) – continued their significant push along the Turkish border by intensifying their assault on the Firlalaq Forest and the mountains to the east of Jabal Al-Zahiyah. The Syrian Arab Army’s 103rd Brigade and their allies were able to push further east towards the northern flank of Al-Rubayah (rebel stronghold), where they encountered heavy resistance from the Islamist rebels of Jabhat Al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) – fighting has resumed this morning. In the southern part of Jabal Al-Turkmen, the Syrian Arab Army’s 103rd Brigade pounded the Islamist rebels of Jabhat Al-Nusra at Jabal Al-Nuba; this attack led to a much needed advance for the Syrian Armed Forces and another defeat for Jabhat Al-Nusra and their allies.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 15
     
    The proposed American-Turkish "safe zone" in northern Syria is anything but safe now, as the Syria Arab Army seizes territory along the Turkish border.
Paul Merrell

Turkey Goes to War - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...turkey-goes-to-war

war & peace Turkey Syria invasion safety-zones Obama Erdogan

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • More important, Erdogan intends to use his landslide victory to persuade the Military High Command that he has a popular mandate for his foreign policy, a policy that has amassed thousands of Turkish troops, armored vehicles and tanks on the Syrian border for a possible invasion. Up to now, the military has resisted Erdogan on this matter, but now that Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel, has been replaced as head of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) by the more compliant General Hulusi Akar, the plan to invade Syria and secure a so called “safety zone” along the Syrian side of the Turkish border, becomes much more probable. The plan to annex sovereign Syrian territory and use it to launch attacks on the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad dates back to 2012.  In 2015, however, the strategy was expanded upon by Brookings analyst Michael E. O’Hanlon in a piece  titled “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war”. Here’s an excerpt:
  • “…the only realistic path forward may be a plan that in effect deconstructs Syria….the international community should work to create pockets with more viable security and governance within Syria over time… The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via special forces. … Western forces themselves would remain in more secure positions in general—within the safe zones but back from the front lines—at least until the reliability of such defenses, and also local allied forces, made it practical to deploy and live in more forward locations. Creation of these sanctuaries would produce autonomous zones that would never again have to face the prospect of rule by either Assad ….The interim goal might be a confederal Syria, with several highly autonomous zones… The confederation would likely require support from an international peacekeeping force….to make these zones defensible and governable,….and to train and equip more recruits so that the zones could be stabilized and then gradually expanded.”  (Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war, Michael E. O’Hanlon, Brookings Institute)
  • This is the Obama administration’s basic blueprint for toppling Assad and reducing Syria into an ungovernable failed state run by regional warlords, renegade militias and Islamic extremists. US Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed our worst suspicions about this sinister plan in a speech he delivered to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace just last week.  Here’s part of what he said: “In northern Syria, the coalition and its partners have pushed Daesh (ISIS) out of more than 17,000 square kilometers of territory, and we have secured the Turkish-Syrian border east of the Euphrates River. That’s about 85 percent of the Turkish border, and the President is authorizing further activities to secure the rest……. We’re also enhancing our air campaign in order to help drive Daesh, which once dominated the Syria-Turkey border, out of the last 70-mile stretch that it controls.” (U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the Future of U.S. Policy in the Middle East, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) Repeat: “That’s about 85 percent of the Turkish border, and the President is authorizing further activities to secure the rest.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Why has Obama “authorized further activities to secure the rest”? Because no one in Washington believes that the US-backed jihadis will beat the combined forces of the Russian-led coalition which is gradually annihilating the terrorist militias across Syria. So now, Obama is moving on to Plan B, the creation of a terrorist sanctuary on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border where the US and its partners can continue to arm, train and deploy their jihadi maniacs back into Syria whenever they choose to do so. Undoubtedly, Obama’s Special Forces will be used to oversee this operation and to make sure that everything goes according to plan. There is, of course, a question about the Kurdish militias role in this strategy. Recently, the US has air-dropped pallet-loads of weapons and ammo to the Democratic Union Party (PYD)  hoping the group could help the US secure the last stretch of land along the border west of the Euphrates thus keeping vital supplylines open for the jihadis while establishing a safe haven on Syrian territory. Erdogan violently opposes any operation that will create a contiguous Kurdish state on the Syrian side of the border. So how will this situation be resolved? Will Obama stick with the Kurds or realign with Erdogan in exchange for Turkish boots on the ground?
Paul Merrell

Why Turkey Is Sitting Out the ISIS War - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...oalition-of-the-unwilling.html

war & peace ISILSyria Turkey U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • ISTANBUL, Turkey — A diplomatic crisis looms. Turkey, a key U.S. ally and the only NATO member that borders areas controlled by ISIS jihadists in Syria and Iraq, is in a prime location to hit the extremists next door. But it prefers not to. Instead, Ankara is seeking a low-profile role—so low as to be almost invisible—in the international alliance that Washington is building up against the so-called caliphate, and that fact is undermining the American strategy to strike back against the terrorists President Barack Obama deems “unique in their brutality.”  
  • Washington, obviously aware of the problem, is working overtime to get some sort of concrete supportive commitments from the Turkish government for a strategy in which American airpower supports regional armies with boots on the ground to crush the ISIS forces. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited Ankara on Monday; Secretary of State John Kerry is expected in the Turkish capital Friday. But background briefings to the Turkish press suggest that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government will refuse to give the United States more than the bare minimum of support: It won’t allow the Americans to attack from NATO air bases in Turkey and it will decline to let Turkish troops take part in combat operations. Before traveling to Turkey, Kerry tried to downplay Ankara’s reluctance, despite the fact that the NATO ally refused to sign a joint declaration of Arab and other states outlining the battle against ISIS in a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Kerry said Turkey was dealing with some “sensitive issues,” according to the BBC.
  • Following talks by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu with top military and diplomatic officials on Wednesday, the newspaper Yeni Safak, which often reflects the government line, reported that Turkey would opt for a “passive” role in the fight against ISIS in Syria. Other news reports said Turkey would strengthen controls along the Syrian border and open its air space and its air force bases for logistical operations and for humanitarian flights—for example to save the lives of U.S. pilots—but not for the expected attacks on ISIS targets. Direct participation of Turkey’s modern air force in the attacks is out of the question as well.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Besides taking Turkish hostages, and using Turkish territory to bring supplies and new fighters into Syria, ISIS has been making millions by selling diesel fuel on the Turkish black market. More directly worrisome from Ankara’s point of view, Turkish news media have quoted some ISIS members as threatening to stage attacks within the country. Around 1,000 Turks are estimated to have joined the group in Syria. More than a million Syrian refugees, meanwhile, have flooded into Turkish camps and Turkish cities.Ankara’s policies have been upended further by the fact that Turkish-Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are playing a major role in the fight against ISIS in northern Iraq. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said this week that the government is concerned the PKK, which has been waging war against Ankara for 30 years, could receive sophisticated arms from Western nations supporting Kurdish forces fighting ISIS.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14
     
    Obama's coalition of the willing hits a snag.
Paul Merrell

Turkish-Uyghur Terror Inc. - America's Other Al Qaeda | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...or-inc-americas-other-al-qaeda

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Gray-Wolves Turkey Uyghur

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Because it relatively poorly understood and under-reported in comparison to other more notorious terrorist groups, the Turkish-Uyghur terror network is perhaps more dangerous and of greater utility to the United States and its allies presently versus their increasingly exposed Al Qaeda legions. The genesis of modern Turkish-sponsored terrorism, like Al Qaeda, also originates from the Cold War. Part of the wider stay-behind networks known as “Gladios” created by NATO to allegedly fight Soviet forces in the event of a Soviet invasion and occupation of Western Europe, these terrorist groups were instead turned against the population of NATO member states and engaged in violence, terrorism, mass murder, and assassinations. A group of ultra-nationalists known as the “Grey Wolves” would be cultivated for this task within Turkey. In a 1998 LA Times article titled, “Turkish Dirty War Revealed, but Papal Shooting Still Obscured,” it would be reported that (emphasis added):
  • In the late 1970s, armed bands of Gray Wolves launched a wave of bomb attacks and shootings that killed hundreds of people, including public officials, journalists, students, lawyers, labor organizers, left-wing activists and ethnic Kurds. During this period, the Gray Wolves operated with encouragement and protection of the Counter-Guerrilla Organization, a section of the Turkish Army’s Special Warfare Department. Working out of the U.S. Military Aid Mission building in Ankara, the Special Warfare Department received funds and training from U.S. advisors to establish “stay behind” squads of civilian irregulars who were set up to engage in acts of sabotage and resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion. Similar Cold War counter-guerrilla units were created in every member state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But instead of preparing for foreign enemies, these operatives often set their sights on domestic targets. Another LA Times piece titled, “Turkey’s Gray Wolves Nip at Heels of Power,” would reveal the extent of the Grey Wolves reign of terror (emphasis added): At the height of the Cold War, the army used the Gray Wolves as a violent counterweight to Turkish Communists. The party’s coffers swelled with secret contributions from the government.  By the late 1970s, the Gray Wolves had spun out of state control. Their paramilitary wing fought a campaign against leftist rivals that killed nearly 6,000 people. Ali Agca, who shot Pope John Paul II in a 1981 assassination attempt, is alleged to have been affiliated with the party.
  • The article would also reveal that despite this horrific past, the Grey Wolves and their political allies were still a very potent political force in Turkey. Today, the Grey Wolves function as a paramilitary wing of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which holds the third largest number of seats in Turkey’s parliament. As troubling as this should be to Turks who may find themselves on the receiving end of a politically powerful terrorist organization apparently tolerated, even sponsored by NATO for decades and in particular, supported by the United States, the Grey Wolves’ terrorism has branched out far beyond Turkey’s borders. NATO Gladio Goes Global  According to a 2009 New American Media report titled, “Behind the China Riots — Oil, Terrorism & ‘Grey Wolves’,” Turkey’s Grey Wolves have established militant training camps as far as China’s western Xinjiang region, helping produce violent terrorists who have carried out a series of deadly attacks across China. The report would state (emphasis added):
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Enter the Grey Wolves, one of the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations. Founded in the 1960s, the Wolves are a pan-Turkic paramilitary group with 1 million followers across the Near East, Central Asia and inside Xinjiang. During the decade of political violence in Turkey in the 1980s, the military-backed activists launched a wave of assassinations, massacres of ethnic minorities, and extortions of businesses. By official count, the Turkish government holds the Wolves responsible for more than 600 murders, while leftists estimate the victims numbered in the many thousands.  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Grey Wolves set up training camps in Central Asia for youths from Turkic language groups, including Uighur. Their indoctrination program embraces the goal of establishing Turan, a Turkish empire across Euro-Asia, subjugating non-Turkish races and unleashing violence to achieve their ends. Out of the limelight, the Wolves provided commando training and material support for the East Turkestan Independence Movement. In essence, NATO’s stay-behind networks had become NATO’s “go-abroad” networks, projecting the same sort of violence, terrorism, and political coercion abroad after the Cold War that these networks carried out domestically during the Cold War.
  • The alleged “struggle” by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, referred to by the terrorists and their foreign sponsors as “East Turkistan,” consists of two essential components – a foreign harbored political front including the Washington D.C. and Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and a militant front clearly backed by the US and NATO through intermediary groups like Turkey’s Grey Wolves. Like the Grey Wolves, the World Uyghur Congress is a creation and perpetuation of Western special interests. WUC is directly funded by the US State Department via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) over a quarter of a million dollars (on record) a year. The NED admittedly organizes and underwrites all of WUC’s events, and their annual meetings usually feature almost exclusively US representatives reaffirming their commitment to support WUC’s objectives
  • Looking at a map of China it is clear that this campaign of separatism directly serves the long-standing plans of the United States to encircle and contain China’s rise – a campaign that has been openly and repeated outlined in US policy papers for decades – the most recent of which was published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and was titled, “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China.” It states in no uncertain terms: Because the American effort to ‘integrate’ China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to U.S. primacy in Asia—and could result in a consequential challenge to American power globally—Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy. Encouraging separatism in China’s western Xinjiang region, if successful, would carve off a substantial amount of territory. In conjunction with US-backed separatism in China’s Tibet region, an immense buffer region stands to be created that would virtually isolate China from Central Asia. And while the Grey Wolves and their Uyghur proxies are working hard to create this barrier to China’s west, with their involvement in a recent bombing in Bangkok, it appears the US is now using them to augment efforts to create a similar encirclement across Southeast Asia.
  • The Turkish-Uyghur terror network, in addition to fomenting violence across China, has more recently been trafficking terrorists from Xinjiang, through Southeast Asia, and onward to Turkey where they are staged, armed, trained, and then sent to fight NATO’s proxy war in Syria. This trafficking network apparently snaked its way through Thailand – exposed when Thailand detained over 100 Uyghurs which it then deported upon Beijing’s request back to China in July. On the same day the deportations occurred WUC and NATO’s Grey Wolves organized violent protests in Turkey both in Ankara and at the Thai consulate in Istanbul during which the consulate was invaded and destroyed. A month later, a devastating bomb would detonate in the heart of Bangkok, killing 20 mostly Chinese tourists and injuring over 100 more. In addition to the BBC already being on site before the blast, the British network would conclude even before bodies were cleared from the site that Uyghurs were likely behind the blast. This was done specifically to deflect blame from another US proxy, Thaksin Shinawatra, who has been attempting for years to regain power in Thailand. In reality, Shinawatra and the Uyghur terrorists are both functions of the same Westesrn agenda to encircle and contain China by building up a “wall” of proxy states around Beijing, and if nothing else, to create chaos in which Beijing finds it nearly impossible to prosper.
Paul Merrell

M of A - Ankara Bombing Fails To Achive Strategic Changes - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org/...nges-after-ankara-bombing.html

war & peace Turkey Syria YPK car-bombing false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • The bombing in Ankara yesterday killed 27 mostly military people. It was a big car bomb and a suicide attack.The Turkish government claims that the person who did this was one Saleh Nejar and also claims that he is connected to the Syrian Kurdish group YPG. There is no way to verify this. But the YPG has so fare never used any car bombs or done any suicide attacks. It never touched any target in Turkey. It officially denied to have taken any part in it. The Turkish group PKK has done vehicle bomb attacks and a few suicide attacks but not in Ankara or any other major west-Turkish city. Its attacks are usually operational, not strategic like this one. In the last Turkish version of its magazine the Islamic State had called for attacks in Turkey and on Turkish soldiers. It is the entity that has most to win through such an attack that would predictably be blamed on the Kurds. It is the most plausible culprit. The attack could also have been arranged by the Turkish secret service MIT. But the number and type of casualties seems to be too high and valuable for a stage-managed false flag attack.
  • The Turkish government called in the ambassadors of the permanent members of the UN Security Council to present its evidence. A "western diplomat" told the Wall Street Journal that the evidence shown was "not conclusive". That is the diplomatese expression for "bullshit". The Turkish attempt to use the attack to change the U.S. and EU relations to the YPK failed. The YPK and its associated Arab and Turkmen forces is a very valuable asset for the U.S. to fight the Islamic State. It will refrain from condemning it as long as that is the case. The YPG groups in west Syria are fighting together with others under the label Syrian Democratic Forces. These and the mysterious additional attendants are pressing Jihadi forces in the Azaz pocket at the Turkish border. They are now seeing more resistance. The Turks use artillery to protect the Jihadis in Azaz and the number of enemies has grown. One "rebel" tells Reuters that 2,000 "rebels" with some tanks came from Idleb through Turkey to Azaz. That number is dubious. The British MI6 outlet SOHR as well as a Turkish pro government daily put the numbers at 350 on Monday and another 500 on Wednesday. To transport the tanks through Turkey would likely have been too much a hassle. I doubt that any reached Azaz.
  • I suspect that many of these "rebels" in Azaz are actually Turks of some radical nationalist and Islamist faction as well as Grey Wolf fascists which have strong connections to the MIT. Pictures show such "rebels" in Latakia with Turkish and Islamic State flags and in Azaz with their typical Grey Wolf hand sign.
Paul Merrell

U.S. Deploys Marines to Syria for Raqqa Operation Into Highly Disputed - Congested Thea... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...hly-disputed-congested-theater

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria Marines Turkey

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • The United States deployed U.S. Marines to northeastern Syria to provide artillery support for local forces in the upcoming assault against Islamic State in Raqqa. Turkey criticized the U.S. for supporting Syrian YPG/YPJ forces which Turkey designates as PKK-linked terrorists. So far, the Syrian government has not officially criticized the deployment but complained that Turkish forces targeted Syrian troops in Manbij. Turkey, for its part, has launched major operations against the PKK.
  • The deployment of U.S. Marines to the region prompted disputes between Turkey and the United States. One of the central issues is the question whether U.S. troops should back the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which are dominated by the PYD and its military wings, the YPG and the all female YPJ, or whether the U.S. troops should back Turkish-led fighters under the umbrella of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA). The dispute happens as Turkish, Syrian, Russian, and U.S. troops and the various factions are preparing the assault on an estimated 4,000 fighters of the Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, IS, Daesh) who are controlling the city of Raqqa. Any of these troops, the newly deployed U.S. Marines included, are entering a highly contested and highly congested theater. The contingent of U.S. Marines arrives Thursday. Their role is to provide artillery support, most probably for the SDF which already have U.S. Special Forces and “advisers” deployed among their ranks. After the arrival of the U.S. troops on Thursday, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned that Turkish forces would strike the PYD’s YPG/YPJ forces in Manbij. This would imply that Turkey would carry out strikes against forces which already have Special Forces from Turkey’s NATO ally USA amidst their ranks. However, Cavusoglu argued that the Kurdish occupation of the town of Manbij and or Raqqa are a hindrance to what he describes as Turkish efforts to carve out a safe zone in northern Syria. Cavusoglu gave no deadline though for an attac but accused Washington of being confused in its planning for an attack on the IS stronghold of Raqqa.
  • The deployment marks an escalation of U.S. military involvement in Syria. Several hundred Special Operations troops have been advising the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Last weekend, some of those Special Forces, a hundred U.S. Rangers, deployed in Manbij in a bid to deter clashes between YPG fighters and Turkish-led fighters. The deployment comes as the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump debates a Raqqa plan drafted by Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the U.S. commander overseeing the campaign against the Islamic State. However, on Thursday the top U.S. commander in the Middle East signalled that there will be a larger and longer American military presence in Syria, allegedly to accelerate the fight against the Islamic State group and quell friction within the complicated mix of warring factions there. Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, told Senators that he will need more conventional U.S. forces to insure stability once the fight to defeat Islamic State militants in their self-declared capital of Raqqa is over. The U.S. military, he said, can’t just leave once the fight is over because the Syrians will need help keeping IS out and ensuring the peaceful transition to local control.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Surprisingly, the Syrian government has not lodged a formal complaint against the latest deployment. U.S. troops are operating in Syria without a mandate from the UN Security Council or an “official” invitation from Syria. It may be that an “unofficial” or classified agreement has been reached involving Syria, Russia and the USA, but so far no verifiable information about such an agreement has been made available to the press. However, there have been Syrian complaints about Turkish activities. A Syrian military source said on Thursday that Turkish military forces targeted positions held by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) allied forces in Manbij with artillery and rockets. The Turkish shelling reportedly targeted border guard checkpoints and claimed several lives. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Erdogan, for their part, met in an attempt to bolster Turkish – Russian relations. Adding complexity to the highly volatile situation is that the Syrian PYD and its military wings, the YPG / YPJ are traditional allies of Turkey’s Kurdistan Worker’s party (PKK). The PKK as well as the PYD have functioned as a Russian / Syrian / and in part Iranian version of what NATO forces would describe as stay-behinds (or proxies).
Paul Merrell

Erdogan Says Will Resign If Oil Purchases From ISIS Proven After Putin Says Has "More P... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...rkey-after-erdogan-slams-claim

war & peace Syria oil-smuggling ISIL Erdogan Turkey Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • “I’ve shown photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” Vladimir Putin told reporters earlier this month on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Antalya. Putin was of course referencing Islamic State’s illicit and highly lucrative oil trade, the ins and outs of which we’ve documented extensively over the past two weeks: The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey's President How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World: The Scientific Evidence ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: "Raqqa's Rockefellers", Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection Turkey’s move to shoot down a Russian Su-24 warplane near the Syrian border afforded the Russian President all the motivation and PR cover he needed to expose Ankara’s alleged role in the trafficking of illegal crude from Iraq and Syria and in the aftermath of last Tuesday’s “incident,” Putin lambasted Erdogan. “Oil from Islamic State is being shipped to Turkey,” Putin said while in Jordan for a meeting with King Abdullah. In case that wasn’t clear enough, Putin added this: “Islamic State gets cash by selling oil to Turkey.”
  • To be sure, it’s impossible to track the path ISIS oil takes from extraction to market with any degree of precision. That said, it seems that Islamic State takes advantage of the same network of smugglers, traders, and shipping companies that the KRG uses to transport Kurdish crude from Kurdistan to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. From there, the oil makes its way to Israel and other markets (depending on which story you believe) and if anyone needs to be thrown off the trail along the way, there’s a ship-to-ship transfer trick that can be executed off the coast of Malta. The maneuver allegedly makes the cargoes more difficult to track.  Some believe Erdogan’s son Bilal - who owns a marine transport company called BMZ Group - is heavily involved in the trafficking of Kurdish and ISIS crude. Most of the ships BMZ owns are Malta-flagged.  In light of the above, some have speculated that Turkey shot down the Su-24 in retaliation for Russia’s bombing campaign that recently has destroyed over 1,000 ISIS oil trucks. Here’s what Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoub said on Friday:
  • “All of the oil was delivered to a company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than 500 trucks with oil already. This really got on Erdogan and his company’s nerves. They’re importing not only oil, but wheat and historic artefacts as well." Al-Zoub isn’t alone in his suspicions. In an interview with RT, Iraqi MP and former national security adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie - who personally led Saddam to the gallows - said ISIS is selling around $100 million of stolen crude each month in Turkey. Here are some excerpts:  “In the last eight months ISIS has managed to sell ... $800 million dollars worth of oil on the black market of Turkey. This is Iraqi oil and Syrian oil, carried by trucks from Iraq, from Syria through the borders to Turkey and sold ...[at] less than 50 percent of the international oil price."   "Now this either get consumed inside, the crude is refined on Turkish territory by the Turkish refineries, and sold in the Turkish market. Or it goes to Jihan and then in the pipelines from Jihan to the Mediterranean and sold to the international market.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Hilariously, the man who just finished starting a civil war just so he could regain a few lost seats in Parliament and who would just as soon throw you in jail as look at you if he thinks you might be a threat to his government, now says he will resign if Putin (or anyone else) can present "proof": “We are not that dishonest as to buy oil from terrorists. If it is proven that we have, in fact, done so, I will leave office. If there is any evidence, let them present it, we’ll consider [it]."  Hold your breath on that. And so, the Turkey connection has been exposed and in dramatic fashion. Unfortunately for Ankara, Erdogan can't arrest Vladimir Putin like he can award winning journalists and honest police officers who, like Moscow, want to see the flow of money and weapons to Sunni militants in Syria cut off.  The real question is how NATO will react now that Turkey is quickly becoming a liability. Furthermore, you can be sure that the US, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (who are all heavily invested in the Sunni extremist cause in Syria), are getting nervous. No one wants to see this blown wide open as that would mean the Western public getting wise to the fact that it is indeed anti-ISIS coalition governments that are funding and arming not only ISIS, but also al-Nusra and every other rebel group fighting to wrest control of the country from Assad. Worse, if it gets out that the reason the US has refrained from bombing ISIS oil trucks until now is due to the fact that Ankara and Washington had an understanding when it comes to the flow of illicit crude to Cehyan, the American public may just insist on indicting "some folks." 
  • On Monday, Putin was back at it, saying that Russia has obtained new information that further implicates Turkey in the Islamic State oil trade. “At the moment we have received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on industrial scale," Putin said on the sidelines of the climate change summit in Paris. "We have traced some located on the territory of the Turkish Republic and living in regions guarded by special security services and police that have used the visa-free regime to return to our territory, where we continue to fight them." "We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure security of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers," he added, taking it up another notch still.  As for Erdogan, well, he "can't accept" the accusations which he calls "not moral": ERDOGAN: TURKEY CAN'T ACCEPT RUSSIA CLAIMS THAT IT BUYS IS OIL LATEST - Erdo?an: Russia’s claim that Turkey bought oil from Daesh is not ‘moral’, such claims have to be proved pic.twitter.com/PZka8MwzpL — DAILY SABAH (@DailySabah) November 30, 2015
  • lars generated by selling Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market  is like the oxygen supply to ISIS and it’s operation,” he added. “Once you cut the oxygen then ISIS will suffocate.”   "There isn't a shadow of a doubt that the Turkish government knows about the oil smuggling operations. The merchants, the businessmen [are buying oil] in the black market in Turkey under the noses – under the auspices if you like – of the Turkish intelligence agency and the Turkish security apparatus."   “There are security officers who are sympathizing with ISIS in Turkey. They are allowing them to go from Istanbul to the borders and infiltrate ... Syria and Iraq.”   “There is no terrorist organization which can stand alone, without a neighboring country helping it – in this case Turkey.”
  • Remember, when it comes to criminal conspiracies, the guy who gets caught first usually ends up getting cut loose. It will be interesing to see if Erdogan starts to get the cold shoulder from Ankara's "allies" going forward.
1 - 20 of 136 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page