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FTR #884 What the Hell Does Dave Emory Mean by “The Earth Island Boogie”?, Part 1 (Turkish Taffy, Part 4)

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. [1] The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by late spring of 2015. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) is com­plete through the late spring of 2015.

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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [6].

[7]

Intro­duc­tion: Clar­i­fy­ing and fur­ther devel­op­ing analy­sis of geopo­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sion pre­sent­ed in both pre­vi­ous and future broad­casts, this pro­gram details the devel­op­ing Islam­ic fas­cism of Turkey’s Tayyip Erdo­gan. A NATO coun­try and Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-derived Islamist in nature, Turkey is rapid­ly descend­ing into fas­cism and aggres­sive mil­i­tarism.

(Pre­vi­ous pro­grams that should enhance lis­ten­ers’ under­stand­ing of this com­plex analy­sis include: FTR #‘s 549 [8], 720 [9]723 [10], 857 [11]862 [12], 863 [13], 878 [14], 879 [15], 880 [16] and 881 [17].)

Turkey’s geo­graph­i­cal posi­tion bestows a unique dynam­ic on the for­mer seat of the last “califate”–the Ottoman Empire. Prox­i­mate to Europe, Asia, the Mid­dle East and Africa, it is (along with Ukraine), a tra­di­tion­al “piv­ot point” of the “Earth Island.”

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion.  The pop­u­la­tion that occu­pies the mid­dle of that stretch of geog­ra­phy is large­ly Mus­lim.

Uti­liz­ing that Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion to con­trol the resources of the Earth Island is a strat­a­gem [18] that has been in effect [19] in the West for a cen­tu­ry.

This analy­sis is pre­sent­ed in con­junc­tion with, and against the back­ground of, the Earth Island [10] or World Island as it is some­times known.

In recent years, we have not­ed grow­ing con­flu­ence between Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-based Islamism and Pan-Turk­ist ele­ments. As events in Ukraine, the Mid­dle East and Asia con­tin­ue to heat up, the Islamist/­Pan-Turk­ist con­nec­tion appears to be solid­i­fy­ing. The “cement” that is bring­ing them togeth­er appears to be ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence, the BND and asso­ci­at­ed Under­ground Reich/transnational cor­po­rate fac­tion of the CIA in par­tic­u­lar.
Before exam­in­ing the devel­op­ment of Turk­ish Islam­ic fas­cism, we note that “The Earth Island Boo­gie” embraces an over­lap­ping series of “ops” includ­ing: the so-called “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion” of Ukraine, Wik­iLeaks, the so-called “Arab Spring,” “L’Af­faire Snow­den” and the Maid­an coup of 2014. We will flesh out this line of analy­sis in FTR #885.

Dur­ing what we call “The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring” of 2011, Amer­i­can media pun­dits were gush­ing about how what oth­ers termed the Arab Spring would bring about mod­er­ate Islam­ic democ­ra­cies sim­i­lar to Turkey’s and fea­tur­ing the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as the cen­ter­piece of those “democ­ra­cies.” We had a dif­fer­ent take.

Let’s review the bul­let points from the descrip­tion of FTR #737 [20] (record­ed on 4/2/2011.):

  • Wik­iLeaks appears to have played a role [21] in the events, with a pur­port­ed “leaked” State Depart­ment memo hav­ing helped spur the upris­ing in Tunisia which, in turn, helped to gal­va­nize events in Egypt. Far from being the “pro­gres­sive,” “whis­tle-blow­ing” enti­ty it pur­ports to be, Wik­iLeaks is a far-right [22], Nazi-influ­enced pro­pa­gan­da and data min­ing oper­a­tion.
  • Karl Rove’s dom­i­nant pres­ence [23] in Swe­den as the Wik­iLeaks “op” was gain­ing momen­tum may well have much to do with the “leak­ing” of State Depart­ment cables from the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion that are undoubt­ed­ly mak­ing the suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of state­craft even more dif­fi­cult under the cir­cum­stances.
  • Far from being a spon­ta­neous event, the Mid­dle East upris­ings appear to have stemmed, in part at least, from a covert oper­a­tion begun under the Bush admin­is­tra­tion [24] and con­tin­ued under Oba­ma’s tenure [25]. (Oba­ma may well have been set up to take the fall for neg­a­tive con­se­quences of the event. It is unclear just how “on top of it” his admin­is­tra­tion is. In this regard, the event is very much like the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion, begun under Eisen­how­er’s admin­is­tra­tion and con­tin­ued under JFK.)
  • The oper­a­tion may well be intend­ed to desta­bi­lize the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion [26], paving the way for the ascent of the GOP in the Unit­ed States. In this respect, it is very much like what has come to be known as the Octo­ber Sur­prise.
  • Cour­tesy of Wik­iLeaks, the oper­a­tion’s exis­tence was “blown” [24]–con­tacts between U.S. Embassy per­son­nel in Cairo and lead­ers of the April 6 move­ment dur­ing the last months of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion came to light cour­tesy of more alleged­ly “leaked” State Depart­ment mem­os made pub­lic by Wik­Leaks. Pre­vi­ous­ly, the U.S. embassy in Cairo had been in con­tact with lead­ers of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood [27].
  • Loom­ing large in the unfold­ing sce­nario are the the­o­ries of non-vio­lent the­o­reti­cian Gene Sharp [28], who held posi­tions asso­ci­at­ed with the “lib­er­al” ele­ment  [29]of the U.S. intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus [30].
  • Sharp’s activ­i­ties have been under­writ­ten [31] by junk bond king Michael Milken’s for­mer right-hand man Peter Ack­er­man, who has served as an advi­sor to the Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace [32], an agency of the U.S. gov­ern­ment.
  • The Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace’s Mus­lim World Ini­tia­tive–charged by crit­ics [33] with legit­imiz­ing jihadists–may well have been the ini­ti­at­ing ele­ment in these devel­op­ments.
  • High tech firms with links to the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment [34] appear to have facil­i­tat­ed the Pig­gy-Back Coup.
  • The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s free-mar­ket eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive [35] has endeared it to lais­sez-faire the­o­reti­cians around the world. Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Cairo, at which Broth­er­hood affil­i­at­ed the­o­reti­cians hold forth, is an epi­cen­ter of the eco­nom­ic phi­los­o­phy of Ibn Khal­dun, the Ikhwan’s eco­nom­ic god­fa­ther.
  • Despite assur­ances from many “expert” sources, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood seems poised to ben­e­fit [27] the most from the unfold­ing events in the Mid­dle East.
  • The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-con­trolled Al Jazeera [36] net­work has also had much to do with the upris­ings.
  • The youth­ful ide­al­ists of the Anonymous/Pirate Bay/Pirate Par­ty milieu appear to have been cyn­i­cal­ly deceived [22] and manip­u­lat­ed into sup­port­ing an oper­a­tion that fig­ures to empow­er some tru­ly dark forces. Those dark forces are fun­da­men­tal­ly opposed to the Utopi­an val­ues dear to the Anonymous/Pirate Bay folks.
  • Those same reas­sur­ing voic­es have told us that the Broth­er­hood aspires to a polit­i­cal agen­da to the “mod­er­ate” agen­da of the Turk­ish AK par­ty. That par­ty is close­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The “mod­er­a­tion” of the AK Par­ty may be weighed in the dis­cus­sion below.
  • Pre­cip­i­tat­ing the ascent of the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Mid­dle East may well be an attempt at using the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion of the Earth Island [10] as a proxy force against Rus­sia [37] and Chi­na [8]. The goal, ulti­mate­ly, is to peel away strate­gic, resource-rich areas such, as the petro­le­um-rich areas of the Cau­ca­sus and Xin­jiang province.
In FTR #‘s 737 [20], 738 [38] and 739 [39], (Turk­ish Taffy, Parts 1, 2 and 3), we not­ed the Islam­ic fas­cist nature of Erdo­gan’s Turkey. That phe­nom­e­non is accel­er­at­ing, as this pro­gram doc­u­ments.
Pro­gram High­lights Include:
1a. Seek­ing to cement his polit­i­cal pow­er and extend the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic reach of his regime, Turk­ish pres­i­dent Erdo­gan com­pared his pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al changes to Hitler’s gov­ern­ment.

“It’s No Sur­prise that Turkey’s Erdo­gan Likes Adolf Hitler’s Gov­ern­ment” by John A. Tures; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 1/2/2016. [40]

Late Fri­day after­noon, reports cir­cu­lat­ed that Erdo­gan expressed admi­ra­tion for Adolf Hitler’s Nazi gov­ern­ment. If it was a state­ment made by a demo­c­ra­t­ic fig­ure, it would be treat­ed as a gaffe or bad joke in poor taste. But for the author­i­tar­i­an Erdo­gan, it’s a rare instance of his hon­esty, show­ing how the strong­man real­ly feels.

Busi­ness Insid­er report­ed on the links Erdo­gan made between his vision of the new Turk­ish gov­ern­ment that he is push­ing for, and Hitler’s regime.

“Asked on his return from a vis­it to Sau­di Ara­bia late on Thurs­day whether an exec­u­tive pres­i­den­tial sys­tem was pos­si­ble while main­tain­ing the uni­tary struc­ture of the state, he said: “There are already exam­ples in the world. You can see it when you look at Hitler’s Ger­many. There are lat­er exam­ples in var­i­ous oth­er coun­tries,” he told reporters, accord­ing to a record­ing broad­cast by the Dogan news agency.”

Accord­ing to Reuters, Erdo­gan’s gov­ern­ment insist­ed that it’s remarks were mis­con­strued, after domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion.

“ ‘If the sys­tem is abused it may lead to bad man­age­ment result­ing in dis­as­ters as in Hitler’s Ger­many ... The impor­tant thing is to pur­sue fair man­age­ment that serves the nation,’ [Erdo­gan’s] state­ment said, adding it was unac­cept­able to sug­gest Erdo­gan was cast­ing Hitler’s Ger­many in a pos­i­tive light.”

Of course, in Erdo­gan’s Hitleresque state, it would be a crime to sug­gest that Erdo­gan admired Hitler. Iron­i­cal­ly, you could even be marched off to prison, for sug­gest­ing that Erdo­gan is author­i­tar­i­an.

In fact, Erdo­gan’s gov­ern­ment has arrest­ed many peo­ple, includ­ing jour­nal­ists and law enforce­ment offi­cials [accused] of uncov­er­ing evi­dence of cor­rup­tion or accus­ing him of author­i­tar­i­an actions. He even tar­get­ed peo­ple liv­ing in the USA who are crit­i­cal of him. Erdo­gan’s excuse for such actions is that he claims his ene­mies are “ter­ror­ists.”

Turkey’s social media, one of the few unreg­u­lat­ed sources of news in Erdo­gan’s gov­ern­ment, imme­di­ate­ly went into high gear, accord­ing to the New York Times:

“Let’s do a close com­par­i­son between Hitler and Erdo­gan,” one per­son wrote on Twit­ter. “The only dif­fer­ence is that Hitler was a bit short­er.” Peo­ple also shared a Pho­to­shopped pic­ture of Hitler with Mr. Erdo­gan’s face super­im­posed on it.

On a vis­it to Turkey dur­ing their June elec­tion, I found that the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of peo­ple I met real­ly like their demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem. Many did­n’t like Erdo­gan, but were afraid to say any­thing. Of those who did, half asked me to keep it anony­mous, while the oth­er half said they would be arrest­ed any­way, and it did­n’t mat­ter if I used their names. . . .

1b. Erdo­gan brings up Hitler’s gov­ern­ment as an exam­ple of how his vision for a pow­er­ful pres­i­dency could oper­ate. And fol­low­ing the uproar, the gov­ern­ment issue state­ments about how Erdo­gan was actu­ally ref­er­enc­ing Nazi Ger­many as a warn­ing of the poten­tial abus­es of pow­er that could emerge from the con­sti­tu­tional changes Erdo­gan wants to hap­pen.

So, at best, Erdogan’s Hitler ref­er­ence was an argu­ment against the con­sti­tu­tional over­haul he’s long cham­pi­oned. At, at worse (and more like­ly), Erdo­gan actu­ally thinks Hitler’s Ger­many is a great mod­el to emu­late.

With that dis­turb­ing inci­dent of foot-in-mouth syn­drome in mind, it’s going to be inter­est­ing to see what hap­pens to the peo­ple who shared an ani­mated image of Mr. Erdogan’s face chang­ing into Hitler. After all, the tri­al of Bil­gin Çiftçi, the man who shared images com­par­ing Erdo­gan to Gol­lum from the Lord of the Rings, is cur­rently adjourned so experts to study whether or not being com­pared to Gol­lum actu­ally qual­i­fies as an insult [49] (it’s a sur­pris­ingly nuanced ques­tion [50]). So will the Hitler com­par­isons result in more tri­als for those that dare to insult Turkey’s wannabe Führer? Or, giv­en Erdogan’s appar­ent atti­tudes towards Hitler’s Ger­many, would he even con­sider it an insult [41]?

“Turkey Says Hitler Com­ment by Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan Was ‘Dis­tort­ed’” by Cey­lan Yegin­suThe New York Times [51]; 1/1/2016. [51]

Turkey issued a state­ment on Fri­day say­ing that com­ments by Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan — in which he cit­ed Hitler in response to a ques­tion about whether a strong pres­i­dency was pos­si­ble in Turkey — had been mis­in­ter­pret­ed.

Mr. Erdo­gan, who is push­ing to imbue the large­ly cer­e­mo­nial pres­i­dency with sweep­ing exec­u­tive pow­ers, told reporters late Thurs­day that “there are already exam­ples in the world.”

“You can see it when you look at Hitler’s Ger­many,” he said.

Mr. Erdo­gan did not elab­o­rate, but his com­par­i­son to Hitler drew imme­di­ate crit­i­cism because of what many view as his increas­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism. His com­ment also raised the issue of how the leader of one of the world’s most influ­en­tial coun­tries, an Amer­i­can ally and mem­ber of NATO, would men­tion Hitler in the con­text of his own tenure.

On Fri­day, the office of the pres­i­dency said that “Erdogan’s ‘Hitler’s Ger­many metaphor’ has been dis­torted by media out­lets and has been used in the oppo­site sense.”

It said Mr. Erdo­gan had used the exam­ple to demon­strate that an exec­u­tive pres­i­dency does not depend on a fed­eral sys­tem of gov­ern­ment.

“If the sys­tem is abused, it may lead to bad man­age­ment result­ing in dis­as­ters as in Hitler’s Ger­many,” the state­ment said. “The impor­tant thing is to pur­sue fair man­age­ment that serves the nation.”

Mr. Erdo­gan became Turkey’s first pop­u­larly elect­ed pres­i­dent in August 2014, hav­ing dom­i­nated Turk­ish pol­i­tics for more than a decade as prime min­is­ter. Since assum­ing the new post, he has aggres­sively cam­paigned to rewrite the Turk­ish Con­sti­tu­tion and estab­lish an exec­u­tive sys­tem of gov­ern­ment.

His con­sol­i­da­tion of pow­er has had a potent effect on Turk­ish soci­ety. Crit­ics say Mr. Erdogan’s divi­sive rhetoric, in which he has den­i­grated oppo­nents as ter­ror­ists or trai­tors, has helped polar­ize the coun­try.

A gov­ern­ment crack­down on dis­sent — includ­ing a grow­ing cam­paign of intim­i­da­tion against the oppo­si­tion news media, with a mob of his sup­port­ers attack­ing news­pa­per offices ahead of the Novem­ber elec­tion — has raised con­cerns domes­ti­cally and abroad about Turkey’s com­mit­ment to democ­ra­cy.

To change the Con­sti­tu­tion, Mr. Erdogan’s Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty, which regained its par­lia­men­tary major­ity in Novem­ber, needs sup­port from oppo­si­tion par­ties, who fear that such a sys­tem would con­sol­i­date too much pow­er in Mr. Erdogan’s hands.

...

Prime Min­is­ter Ahmet Davu­to­glu told the leader of Turkey’s main oppo­si­tion par­ty, Kemal Kil­ic­daroglu, that a pres­i­den­tial sys­tem would not lead to a dic­ta­tor­ship.

“What is right for Turkey is to adopt the pres­i­den­tial sys­tem in line with the demo­c­ra­tic spir­it,” he said in a tele­vi­sion inter­view this week. “This sys­tem will not evolve into dic­ta­tor­ship, but if we do not have this spir­it, even the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem can turn into this dic­ta­tor­ship.”

In Turkey, reac­tion to his remarks was strong on social media.

“now let’s do a close com­par­i­son of hitler and Erdo­gan,” one per­son wrote on Twit­ter. “The dif­fer­ence is that Hitler was a bit short­er.” That remark lat­er appeared to have been delet­ed.

Peo­ple also shared an ani­mated image of Mr. Erdogan’s face chang­ing into Hitler’s.

1c. Fur­ther devel­op­ing our analy­sis, we ref­er­ence a Turk­ish jour­nal­ist’s explic­it analy­sis of Erdo­gan’s AK Par­ty as an Islam­ic-fas­cist enti­ty.

“AKP Attempt at an Islamist-Fas­cist Dic­ta­tor­ship” by Ihsan Yil­maz; Today’s Zaman; 10/28/2015. [41]

About two months ago, I pub­lished a piece here titled “Rise of fas­cism and Green­shirts in Turkey.”

Some of you might have found it a lit­tle bit exag­ger­at­ed. After the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al con­quest of İpek Media Group [52] TV sta­tions and news­pa­pers by Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP [53]) fig­ures, let me revis­it my piece and elab­o­rate on it fur­ther.

I gave a def­i­n­i­tion of fas­cism in the piece, and wrote that “fas­cism is a form of polit­i­cal behav­ior marked by obses­sive pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with com­mu­ni­ty decline, humil­i­a­tion, or vic­tim­hood and by com­pen­sato­ry cults of uni­ty, ener­gy and puri­ty, in which a mass-based par­ty of com­mit­ted nation­al­ist mil­i­tants, work­ing in uneasy but effec­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion with tra­di­tion­al elites, aban­dons demo­c­ra­t­ic lib­er­ties and pur­sues with redemp­tive vio­lence and with­out eth­i­cal or legal restraints, goals of inter­nal cleans­ing and exter­nal expan­sion.”

I then added that “...its a  type of a new­ly emerg­ing Black­shirts (the para­mil­i­tary group of Mus­soli­ni) and Brown­shirts (Hitler’s para­mil­i­tary mobs). The pri­ma­ry pur­pos­es of the Brown­shirts were: ‘pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion for Nazi ral­lies and assem­blies, dis­rupt­ing the meet­ings of oppos­ing par­ties, fight­ing against the para­mil­i­tary units of the oppos­ing par­ties and intim­i­dat­ing Slav­ic and Romani cit­i­zens, union­ists, and Jews.’ The AKP ver­sion should, of course, be called the Green­shirts!”

Then, I warned that “the oppo­si­tion media has been threat­ened. Samany­olu TV, Zaman, Bugün TV and the Bugün dai­ly could direct­ly be seized on base­less grounds of ter­ror­ism. The AKP is cal­cu­lat­ing that not many peo­ple in Turkey and in the West would be both­ered about it because of these media out­lets’ affil­i­a­tion with the Hizmet move­ment.” Well, I was wrong on one point: Despite my pes­simistic expec­ta­tion, the oppo­si­tion in Turkey, which amounts to 60 per­cent of the vote, is up in arms and strong­ly behind the İpek Media Group. This may even be a first in Turkey and won­der­ful news for the con­sol­i­da­tion of democ­ra­cy in the medi­um run. But let me return to my warn­ing that the AKP had been try­ing to estab­lish an Islamist-fas­cist regime in Turkey. As you can see, it is try­ing to destroy all the oppo­si­tion media out­lets one by one, by sheer police force and by injur­ing jour­nal­ists.

It is wrong to expect that what­ev­er is hap­pen­ing in Turkey must be iden­ti­cal to 1930s Italy and Ger­many in order to describe what is hap­pen­ing in Turkey as the emer­gence and rise of fas­cism. There are, of course, spa­tial and tem­po­ral dif­fer­ences. Yet, the gen­er­al expec­ta­tions of fas­cists are sim­i­lar: rely­ing on pop­u­lar sup­port, try­ing to cre­ate a one-man regime and sup­press­ing the oppo­si­tion not just with puni­tive and ide­o­log­i­cal state appa­ra­tus­es, but also para-mil­i­taris­tic, pseu­do-civil­ian youth orga­ni­za­tions. The fact that act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Ahmet Davu­toğlu has been seen shoul­der to shoul­der with the chief of the AKP youth branch who raid­ed the Hur­riyet dai­ly along with his com­rades and caused phys­i­cal harm is a tes­ta­ment to this phe­nom­e­non.

Does Turkey have a fas­cist regime now? Of course not. It is not so easy. We still have judges and pros­e­cu­tors who do not suc­cumb to the dic­ta­to­r­i­al desires of the AKP. The oppo­si­tion is still alive and kick­ing. It is unfor­tu­nate to say this, but the army is wide­ly seen to be a last brake against a full-fledged fas­cist regime. Yet, say­ing all these things do not negate the fact that AKP lead­ers are des­per­ate­ly try­ing to estab­lish a bizarre Islamist-fas­cist regime in order to stay away from judi­cial, polit­i­cal and pub­lic scruti­ny for cor­rup­tion crimes.

The def­i­n­i­tion of the term dic­ta­tor­ship is giv­en as: “a form of gov­ern­ment where polit­i­cal author­i­ty is monop­o­lized by a per­son or polit­i­cal enti­ty, and exer­cised through var­i­ous mech­a­nisms to ensure the enti­ty’s pow­er remains strong. In dic­ta­tor­ships, politi­cians reg­u­late near­ly every aspect of the pub­lic and pri­vate behav­ior of nor­mal peo­ple. Dic­ta­tor­ships and total­i­tar­i­an­ism gen­er­al­ly employ polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da to decrease the influ­ence of pro­po­nents of alter­na­tive gov­ern­ing sys­tems.”

If we com­bine this def­i­n­i­tion with my above analy­sis, we can con­clude that the AKP is “try­ing” to estab­lish an Islamist-fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship. This, most prob­a­bly, was not their orig­i­nal inten­tion. But since they were caught red-hand­ed by the judi­cia­ry on very seri­ous cor­rup­tion crimes, they thought that this was their only option. Now, they are try­ing to estab­lish an Islamist-fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship. The fact that Turkey is not and will nev­er be such a dic­ta­tor­ship is anoth­er sto­ry. The only prob­lem is, the AKP does not know this right now and it will only learn it by expe­ri­ence, which will be a very cost­ly one for Turkey.

2a. Note that the Turk­ish AK Par­ty is being seen as a role mod­el for “mod­er­ate” Islamist par­ties being her­ald­ed as role mod­els for the coun­tries tar­get­ed by the so-called “Arab Spring.” We exam­ine a Ger­man Islamist group affil­i­at­ed with the Refah Par­ty (the Turk­ish branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood). The pro­gram high­lights con­nec­tions between that par­ty and the AK par­ty cur­rent­ly gov­ern­ing Turkey. The AK par­ty appears to be lit­tle more than a “mod­er­ate” rework­ing of the Refah par­ty, which is lit­tle more than a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood front orga­ni­za­tion. Erbakan of the Refah was the men­tor of Erdo­gan, who pre­sides over the “mod­er­ate” AK par­ty.

“Turkey Offers Sup­port for Con­tro­ver­sial Islam­ic Group”; Deutsche Welle; 4/23/2003.  [42]

Mil­li Gorus, Germany’s largest Islam­ic asso­ci­a­tion, recent­ly gained the offi­cial sup­port of the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment, despite being watched by Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vices due to alleged extrem­ist lean­ings. On April 19, Turkey’s reli­gious-con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment ordered its embassies to offer the Islamis­che Gemein­schaft Mil­li Gorus (IGMG) their sup­port. The group, formed in 1985 in Cologne to sup­port Turk­ish nation­al­ism and oppose the sep­a­ra­tion of state and reli­gion, has long been crit­i­cized by Ger­man offi­cials as being anti-Semit­ic and against lib­er­al West­ern val­ues.”

Turk­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Abdul­lah Gul on Sat­ur­day refused to dis­cuss his spe­cif­ic direc­tions to diplo­mats regard­ing Mil­li Gorus, say­ing only the gov­ern­ment ‘has for some time tried to strength­en the ties between our coun­try and our cit­i­zens over­seas.’ The deci­sion comes only two weeks after an agree­ment between Ger­many and Turkey on com­bat­ing orga­nized crime incensed many mem­bers of Turkey’s rul­ing AK par­ty because it includ­ed Mil­li Gorus with groups like the Kur­dish ter­ror­ist out­fit PKK. Since many AK mem­bers have ties to Islam­ic reli­gious groups, Gul was com­pelled to say he did not con­sid­er Mil­li Gorus a ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion.

. . . . Some observers say the attempt to reform its pub­lic image could be at least part­ly linked to the rise of Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdo­gan and his AK par­ty. Com­ing to pow­er in a land­slide vic­to­ry last year, Erdo­gan styles his par­ty as a mod­ern con­ser­v­a­tive group based on Mus­lim val­ues. He has dis­tanced him­self from for­mer men­tor Necmet­tin Erbakan, who found­ed the Islam­ic-influ­enced Wel­fare Par­ty. . . .

2b. Recap­ping dis­cus­sion of Necmet­tin Erbakan, his Refah par­ty and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the pro­gram high­lights Erbakan’s rela­tion­ship with Ahmed Huber and the man­ner in which that rela­tion­ship pre­cip­i­tat­ed Huber’s ascen­sion to his posi­tion as a direc­tor of Al Taqwa.

Close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the AK Par­ty’s pre­de­ces­sor Refah orga­ni­za­tion, Huber’s con­cept of “mod­er­a­tion” might be gleaned from the pho­tographs of some of the “mod­er­ates” he admires. (The AK Par­ty is Erdo­gan’s party–evolved direct­ly from the Refah Par­ty.)

Speak­ing of the décor of Huber’s res­i­dence:

Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The Unit­ed States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000 [SC]; Algo­ra Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; p. 142. [43]

. . . . A sec­ond pho­to­graph, in which Hitler is talk­ing with Himm­ler, hangs next to those of Necmet­tin Erbakan and Jean-Marie Le Pen [leader of the fas­cist Nation­al Front]. Erbakan, head of the Turk­ish Islamist par­ty, Refah, turned to Achmed Huber for an intro­duc­tion to the chief of the French par­ty of the far right. Exit­ing from the meet­ing (which took place in Sep­tem­ber 1995) Huber’s two friends sup­pos­ed­ly stat­ed that they ‘share the same view of the world’ and expressed ‘their com­mon desire to work togeth­er to remove the last racist obsta­cles that still pre­vent the union of the Islamist move­ment with the nation­al right of Europe.’

Last­ly, above the desk is dis­played a poster of the imam Khome­i­ni; the meet­ing ‘changed my life,’ Huber says, with stars in his eyes. For years, after the Fed­er­al Palace in Bern, Ahmed Huber pub­lished a Euro­pean press review for the Iran­ian lead­ers, then for the Turk­ish Refah. Since the for­mer lacked finan­cial means, Huber chose to put his efforts to the ser­vice of the lat­ter. An out­post of the Turk­ish Mus­lim Broth­ers, Refah thus became Huber’s prin­ci­pal employ­er; and it was through the inter­me­di­ary of the Turk­ish Islamist par­ty that this for­mer par­lia­men­tary cor­re­spon­dent became a share­hold­er in the bank Al Taqwa. . . .

3. The Turk­ish AK Par­ty (tout­ed as a role mod­el for the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood) has a strong eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ship with Ger­many and oth­er Euro­pean eco­nom­ic play­ers.

“The Turk­ish Mod­el”; german-foreign-policy.com; 2/18/2011. [44]

. . . . The focus is on two par­tic­u­lar aspects of Turk­ish pol­i­cy. The first is that over the past few years, polit­i­cal Islam in Turkey has proven to be very coop­er­a­tive with the EU. This is due to the eco­nom­ic rise of the con­ser­v­a­tive sec­tors of the Ana­to­lian hin­ter­land, which is orga­nized with­in the Adelet ve Kalk­in­ma Par­tisi (AKP), the par­ty of Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan and rul­ing par­ty in Ankara since 2002. The AKP has a clear­ly Islam­ic ori­en­ta­tion. The Ana­to­lian enter­pris­es form­ing the back­bone of the par­ty have close eco­nom­ic ties in EU coun­tries. It is on this basis that the AKP has estab­lished inten­sive ties to West­ern Europe, and incor­po­rat­ed into its brand of polit­i­cal Islam a reori­en­ta­tion favor­able to the EU. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[2]) The par­ty has since stood as a mod­el for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Islamism hav­ing a pro-west­ern char­ac­ter. In fact, over the past few years, sev­er­al North African Islam­ic forces — includ­ing sec­tors of the influ­en­tial Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood — have been ori­ent­ing them­selves on the AKP. Accord­ing to a recent study, co-financed by the SPD-affil­i­at­ed Friedrich Ebert Foun­da­tion, near­ly two-thirds of the pop­u­la­tions in sev­en Arab nations, includ­ing Egypt, would be in favor of their coun­tries’ adopt­ing the Turk­ish model.[3] A pro-west­ern ori­en­ta­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, implic­it in such a mod­el, would be appre­ci­at­ed in west­ern cap­i­tals. . . .

4a. Dur­ing a Skype inter­view back in Octo­ber, Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey’s intel­i­gence ser­vice, railed against Rus­sia try­ing to sup­press Syria’s Islamist rev­o­lu­tion and assert­ed that “ISIS is a real­ity and we have to accept that we can­not erad­i­cate a well-orga­nized and pop­u­lar estab­lish­ment such as the Islam­ic State; there­fore I urge my west­ern col­leagues to revise their mind­set about Islam­ic polit­i­cal cur­rents, put aside their cyn­i­cal men­tal­ité and thwart Vladimir Putin’s plans to crush Syr­ian Islamist rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies.”

“Turk­ish Intel­li­gence Chief: Putin’s Inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia Is Against Islam and Inter­na­tional Law, ISIS Is a Real­ity and We Are Opti­mistic about the Future”; AWD News [45]; 10/18/2015. [45]

Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey’s Nation­al Intel­li­gence Orga­ni­za­tion, known by the MIT acronym, has drawn a lot of atten­tion and crit­i­cism for his con­tro­ver­sial com­ments about ISIS.

Mr. Hakan Fidan, Turk­ish President’s staunchest ally, con­demned Russ­ian mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia, accus­ing Moscow of try­ing to ‘smoth­er’ Syria’s Islamist rev­o­lu­tion and seri­ous breach of Unit­ed Nations law.

“ISIS is a real­ity and we have to accept that we can­not erad­i­cate a well-orga­nized and pop­u­lar estab­lish­ment such as the Islam­ic State; there­fore I urge my west­ern col­leagues to revise their mind­set about Islam­ic polit­i­cal cur­rents, put aside their cyn­i­cal men­tal­ité and thwart Vladimir Putin’s plans to crush Syr­ian Islamist rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies,” Anadolu News Agency quot­ed Mr. Fidan as say­ing on Sun­day.

Fidan fur­ther added that in order to deal with the vast num­ber of for­eign Jihadists crav­ing to trav­el to Syr­ia, it is imper­a­tive that ISIS must set up a con­sulate or at least a polit­i­cal office in Istan­bul. He under­lined that it is Turkey’s firm belief to pro­vide med­ical care for all injured peo­ple flee­ing Russ­ian ruth­less airstrikes regard­less of their polit­i­cal or reli­gious affil­i­a­tion.

Recent­ly as the fierce clash­es between Russ­ian army and ISIS ter­ror­ists rag­ing across the war-torn Syr­ia, count­less num­ber of ISIS injured fight­ers enter the Turk­ish ter­ri­tory and are being admit­ted in the mil­i­tary hos­pi­tals name­ly those in Hatay Province. Over the last few days, the Syr­ian army with the sup­port of Russ­ian air cov­er could fend off ISIS forces in strate­gic provinces of Homs and Hama.

Emile Hokayem, a Wash­ing­ton-based Mid­dle East ana­lyst said that Turkey’s Erdo­gan and his oil-rich Arab allies have dual agen­das in the war on ter­ror and as a mat­ter of fact they are sup­ply­ing the Islamist mil­i­tants with weapons and mon­ey, thus Russ­ian inter­ven­tion is con­sid­ered a dev­as­tat­ing set­back for their efforts to over­throw Syr­ian sec­u­lar Pres­i­dent Assad.

Hokayem who was speak­ing via Skype from Wash­ing­ton, D.C. high­lighted the dan­ger of Turk­ish-backed ter­ror­ist groups and added that what is hap­pen­ing in Syr­ia can­not be cat­e­go­rized as a gen­uine and pop­u­lar rev­o­lu­tion against dic­ta­tor­ship but rather it is a chaos orches­trated by Erdo­gan who is dream­ing to revive this ancestor’s infa­mous Ottoman Empire.

4b. Fur­ther illus­trat­ing his true polit­i­cal natau­re, Erdo­gan has invad­ed the autonomous Kur­dish sec­tion of Iraq and defied the Iraqi gofer­n­men­t’s request to leave. Bagh­dad just issued the threat of mil­i­tary action if Turkey doesn’t remove its troops from Kurd-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ries in North­ern Iraq. And Ankara’s response was basi­cally, ‘we respect your sov­er­eignty, but no, we aren’t leav­ing. And any­way, you don’t cur­rently con­trol this ter­ri­tory’. As far as ten­sions between neigh­bors go, the unwel­come pres­ence of for­eign troops along with taunts of ‘we’ll respect you’re sov­er­eignty once you actu­ally con­trol this ter­ri­tory’ is quite a doozy [46]:

“Iraqi PM Says Turkey Not Respect­ing Agree­ment to With­draw Troops” [46] by Saif Hameed and Ece Toksabay; Reuters [46]; 12/30/2015. [46]

Iraq’s prime min­is­ter accused Turkey on Wednes­day of fail­ing to respect an agree­ment to with­draw its troops from the country’s north and its for­eign min­is­ter said if forced, Iraq could resort to mil­i­tary action to defend its sov­er­eign­ty.

The diplo­matic dis­pute flared after Turkey deployed a force pro­tec­tion unit of around 150 troops ear­lier this month, cit­ing height­ened secu­rity risks near Bashiqa mil­i­tary base where its troops were train­ing an Iraqi mili­tia to fight Islam­ic State insur­gents in near­by Mosul.

Iraqi secu­rity forces have had only a lim­ited pres­ence in Nin­eveh province, where the camp is locat­ed, since col­laps­ing in June 2014 in the face of a light­ning advance by Islam­ic State.

Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Haider al-Aba­di told his Turk­ish coun­ter­part in a call on Wednes­day that a Turk­ish del­e­ga­tion had promised to with­draw its troops, accord­ing to a state­ment from his media office.

“But the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment has not respect­ed the agree­ment and we request that the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment announce imme­di­ately that it will with­draw from Iraqi ter­ri­tory”, he said.

Ankara has acknowl­edged there was a “mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion” with Bagh­dad over the deploy­ment. It lat­er with­drew some troops to anoth­er base inside the near­by autonomous Kur­dis­tan region and said it would con­tinue to pull out of Nin­eveh province, where Bashiqa is locat­ed.

But Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Tayyip Erdo­gan has said a total with­drawal is out of the ques­tion, and Aba­di repeat­ed to Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Ahmet Davu­to­glu on Wednes­day that Bagh­dad had not approved the deploy­ment.

Speak­ing on Wednes­day night, Davu­to­glu said Ankara respect­ed Iraqi sov­er­eignty, but that Bagh­dad had no con­trol over a third of its own ter­ri­tory. “If Bagh­dad wants to use force, they should use it against Daesh,” Davu­to­glu added, using an Ara­bic name for Islam­ic State.

Aba­di said there was no rea­son for Turkey to expose its train­ers to dan­ger by send­ing them “deep inside Iraqi bor­ders”, and that Islam­ic State posed no dan­ger to Turkey from inside Iraqi ter­ri­tory. Bashiqa is about 90 km (55 miles) from the Turk­ish bor­der.

Davu­to­glu also con­grat­u­lated Aba­di after Iraqi forces retook the cen­ter of the city of Rama­di this week, a vic­tory that could help vin­di­cate the Iraqi leader’s strat­egy for rebuild­ing the mil­i­tary after stun­ning defeats.

MILITARY ACTION

Iraqi For­eign Min­is­ter Ibrahim al-Jaa­fari said ear­lier in the day that his gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to exhaust­ing peace­ful diplo­matic avenues to avoid a cri­sis with Turkey, its north­ern neigh­bor, but insist­ed that all options remained open.

“If we are forced to fight and defend our sov­er­eignty and rich­es, we will be forced to fight,” he told reporters in Bagh­dad.

U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, in a phone call with Davu­to­glu ear­lier this month, wel­comed the Turk­ish troops’ with­drawal and urged Ankara to con­tinue try­ing to coop­er­ate with Bagh­dad.

...

After the diplo­matic row began, the Bashiqa base came under fire from Islam­ic State when mil­i­tants fired rock­ets in an attack on Kur­dish Pesh­merga forces in the area. The Turk­ish mil­i­tary said its sol­diers returned fire and four had been light­ly wound­ed in the inci­dent.

6. In his last will and tes­ta­ment, Hitler saw alliance with the Mus­lim world as a key to future Nazi world dom­i­na­tion. It is against the back­ground of this that much of the sub­se­quent dis­cus­sion should be eval­u­at­ed. Note also that this polit­i­cal will and tes­ta­ment was bequeathed to Fran­cois Genoud. Although he died in 1996, Genoud’s name crops up sig­nif­i­cant­ly in a num­ber of impor­tant respects in the con­text of the events of 9/11. For an overview of Genoud’s career, see FTR#453 [54]. For more infor­ma­tion about Genoud and 9/11, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 343 [55]354 [56]371 [57]456 [58]498 [59]499 [60]. We exam­ined Genoud’s links to the milieu of Al Taqwa and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in FTR #537. For a con­tem­po­rary inter­pre­ta­tion of Hitler’s words, sub­sti­tute the Unit­ed States for Britain in the fol­low­ing con­text:

Tes­ta­ment of Hitler, Head­quar­ters of the Fuhrer, Feb­ru­ary 4 to April 2, 1945, pref­ace by Fran­cois Genoud; not­ed as Foot­note #8 in: “The Reds, The Browns and the Greens” by Alexan­dre Del Valle; Occi­den­tal­is; 12/13/04; p. 10. [47]

. . . . Adolf Hitler declared in his ‘Tes­ta­ment,’ report­ed by Mar­tin Bor­mann: ‘All of Islam vibrates at announce­ment of our vic­to­ries..... What can we do to help them..., how can it be to our inter­est and’ our duty? The pres­ence next to us of the Ital­ians... cre­ates a malaise among our friends of Islam,... it hin­ders us from play­ing one of our bet­ter cards: to sup­port the coun­tries oppressed by the British. Such a pol­i­cy would excite enthu­si­asm through­out Islam. It is, in effect, a par­tic­u­lar­i­ty of the Mus­lim world that what touch­es one, whether good or ill, is felt by all the oth­ers.... The peo­ple ruled by Islam will always be near­er to us than France, in spite of the kin­ship of blood’ . . . .

 

6. In his last will and tes­ta­ment, Hitler saw alliance with the Mus­lim world as a key to future Nazi world dom­i­na­tion. It is against the back­ground of this that much of the sub­se­quent dis­cus­sion should be eval­u­at­ed. Note also that this polit­i­cal will and tes­ta­ment was bequeathed to Fran­cois Genoud. Although he died in 1996, Genoud’s name crops up sig­nif­i­cant­ly in a num­ber of impor­tant respects in the con­text of the events of 9/11. For an overview of Genoud’s career, see FTR#453 [54]. For more infor­ma­tion about Genoud and 9/11, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 343 [55]354 [56]371 [57]456 [58]498 [59]499 [60]. We exam­ined Genoud’s links to the milieu of Al Taqwa and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in FTR #537 [61]. For a con­tem­po­rary inter­pre­ta­tion of Hitler’s words, sub­sti­tute the Unit­ed States for Britain in the fol­low­ing con­text:

Tes­ta­ment of Hitler, Head­quar­ters of the Fuhrer, Feb­ru­ary 4 to April 2, 1945, pref­ace by Fran­cois Genoud; not­ed as Foot­note #8 in: “The Reds, The Browns and the Greens” by Alexan­dre Del Valle; Occi­den­tal­is; 12/13/04; p. 10. [47]

. . . . Adolf Hitler declared in his ‘Tes­ta­ment,’ report­ed by Mar­tin Bor­mann: ‘All of Islam vibrates at announce­ment of our vic­to­ries..... What can we do to help them..., how can it be to our inter­est and’ our duty? The pres­ence next to us of the Ital­ians... cre­ates a malaise among our friends of Islam,... it hin­ders us from play­ing one of our bet­ter cards: to sup­port the coun­tries oppressed by the British. Such a pol­i­cy would excite enthu­si­asm through­out Islam. It is, in effect, a par­tic­u­lar­i­ty of the Mus­lim world that what touch­es one, whether good or ill, is felt by all the oth­ers.... The peo­ple ruled by Islam will always be near­er to us than France, in spite of the kin­ship of blood’ . . . .