Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #879 Further Update on Pan-Turkism, Islamism and the Earth Island Boogie

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. 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) con­tains FTR #850.  

WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself HERE.

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

Ottoman Empire

Intro­duc­tion: As the title indi­cates, this broad­cast con­tin­ues analy­sis of the grow­ing con­flu­ence of Mus­lim-Broth­er­hood dom­i­nat­ed Islamism and Pan-Turk­ist ele­ments, this against the back­ground of the mount­ing hos­til­i­ties over­tak­ing the region.

These events are also man­i­fest­ing them­selves in the Euro­pean por­tion of the Earth Island, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Ukraine. (See the links in the “Progam High­lights” sec­tion.)

(For back­ground on this com­pli­cat­ed dynam­ic, see–among oth­er programs–FTR #‘s 710720723, 737819, 862, 863, 878.)

We begin with a short quote from Zbig­niew Brzezin­s­ki, read by Eliz­a­beth Gould in FTR #872. Brzezin­s­ki is quite open about the util­i­ty of using Islamists to desta­bi­lize Rus­sia and Chi­na.

Next, the pro­gram begins by not­ing that the Turk­ish shoot-down of a Russ­ian Su-24 appears to have been an instance of the Turk­ish air force pro­vid­ing air cov­er for the Turk­men mili­tia and ele­ments of the al-Qae­da-affil­i­at­ed Nus­ra Front, who are part of the so-called “mod­er­ates” enjoy­ing the sup­port of the West and its allies in the region, includ­ing Turkey, Sau­di Ara­bia and Qatar.

The region con­trolled by the Turk­men has become the focal point for al-Qae­da-affil­i­at­ed Nus­ra Front fight­ers and ISIS com­bat­ants as well. There appears to be a degree of over­lap and syn­the­sis of the ISIS forces with the Nus­ra and Turk­men fight­ers.

Next, we revis­it a very impor­tant, rel­e­vant arti­cle by Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Robert Kaplan.

Kaplan notes that U.S. mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in the Mus­lim world occurs in for­mer ter­ri­to­ries of the Ottoman Empire and results in Islamists com­ing to pow­er for the ulti­mate ben­e­fit of–Germany!

In FTR #‘s 710720723 we not­ed that the GOP/Underground Reich fac­tion of the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment was pur­su­ing covert oper­a­tions in the Earth Island, par­tic­u­lar­ly in parts of Rus­sia and Chi­na. Part­nered in this is the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and irre­den­tist Turk­ish ele­ments seek­ing a return to the glo­ry days of the Ottoman Empire.

(We should nev­er fail to note that the areas of activ­i­ty in the dynam­ic high­light­ed here are areas that are rich in nat­ur­al resources–fossil fuels, in par­tic­u­lar. The petro­le­um-rich Cau­ca­sus and coal and petro­le­um resources of Xin­jiang Province in Chi­na are note­wor­thy in this regard.)

Kaplan notes a pat­tern that is of more than pass­ing inter­est: ” . . . . Each U. S. mil­i­tary action in Europe and the Mid­dle East since 1990, how­ev­er, with the excep­tion of Iraq, has fol­lowed an overt pat­tern: First there is an armed con­flict with­in the coun­try where the inter­ven­tion will take place. Amer­i­can news media heav­i­ly report this con­flict. The ‘good guys’ in the sto­ry are the rebels. The ‘bad guys,’ to be attacked by Amer­i­can mil­i­tary force, are bru­tal­ly anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic, and com­mit­ters of war crimes, crimes against human­i­ty, and geno­cide. Pres­ti­gious pub­lic fig­ures, NGOs, judi­cial and qua­si-judi­cial bod­ies and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions call for sup­port­ing the rebels and attack­ing the regime.

Next, the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent orders Amer­i­can logis­ti­cal sup­port and arms sup­plies for the rebels. Final­ly the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent orders mil­i­tary attack under the aus­pices of NATO in sup­port of the rebels. The attack usu­al­ly con­sists of aer­i­al bomb­ing, today’s equiv­a­lent of the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies’ gun­boat which could attack coastal cities of mil­i­tar­i­ly weak coun­tries with­out fear of retal­i­a­tion. The ulti­mate out­come of each Amer­i­can inter­ven­tion is the replace­ment of a sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment with an Islamist regime in an area that had been part of the Ottoman Empire. . . .”

Weigh­ing the oper­a­tional his­to­ry of the Grey Wolves, we con­clude the pro­gram with a re-broad­cast of FTR #59, not­ing that the orga­ni­za­tion had func­tioned as the Turk­ish com­po­nent of Oper­a­tion Stay Behind. This was a NATO oper­a­tion that cre­at­ed under­ground cadres to fight any left-wing gov­ern­ment that may have come to pow­er in one of the orga­ni­za­tion’s mem­ber nations. With the Grey Wolves hav­ing served as an under­ground exten­sion of the NATO order of bat­tle, we should eval­u­ate their activ­i­ties in the con­text of the Earth Island “op” appar­ent­ly under way.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: 

  • Review of Grey Wolf activ­i­ty in Asia.
  • Review of Grey Wolf activ­i­ty in Syr­ia.
  • Review of Erdo­gan’s sup­port for the Crimean Tatars.
  • Review of Crimean Tatars’ col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pravy Sek­tor in the sab­o­tage of the Crimean pow­er grid, water sup­ply and the block­ade of road traf­fic.
  • Review of ISIS-linked Chechens trained in Syr­ia fight­ing in Ukraine under Pravy Sek­tor admin­is­tra­tive com­mand.

1a. We begin with a short quote from Zbig­niew Brzezin­s­ki, read by Eliz­a­beth Gould in FTR #872. Brzezin­s­ki is quite open about the util­i­ty of using Islamists to desta­bi­lize Rus­sia and Chi­na.

1b. Next, we note that the Turk­ish shoot-down of a Russ­ian Su-24 appears to have been an instance of the Turk­ish air force pro­vid­ing air cov­er for the Turk­men mili­tia and ele­ments of the al-Qae­da-affil­i­at­ed Nus­ra Front, who are part of the so-called “mod­er­ates” enjoy­ing the sup­port of the West and its allies in the region, includ­ing Turkey, Sau­di Ara­bia and Qatar. (“Air cov­er” refers to com­bat air­craft neu­tral­iz­ing ene­my air threats to ground forces. This should not be con­fused with “air sup­port,” which refers to com­bat air­craft act­ing in sup­port of ground forces against their opponents–serving, in effect, as “air­borne artillery.”)

“Facts Back Rus­sia on Turk­ish Attack” by Gareth Porter; Con­sor­tium News; 11/30/2015.

The Unit­ed States and its NATO allies offered a rit­u­al of NATO uni­ty after Turk­ish offi­cials pre­sent­ed their case that the shoot-down of a Russ­ian jet occurred after two planes had pen­e­trat­ed Turk­ish air­space. The Turk­ish rep­re­sen­ta­tive report­ed­ly played a record­ing of a series warn­ing the Turk­ish F‑16 pilots had issued to the Russ­ian jets with­out a Russ­ian response, and U.S. and oth­er NATO mem­ber states endorsed Turkey’s right to defend its air­space.

U.S. Defense Depart­ment spokesman Colonel Steve War­ren sup­port­ed the Turk­ish claim that 10 warn­ings had been issued over a peri­od of five min­utes. The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion appar­ent­ly expressed less con­cern about whether Russ­ian planes had actu­al­ly crossed into Turk­ish air­space. Col. War­ren admit­ted that U.S. offi­cials have still yet to estab­lish where the Russ­ian air­craft was locat­ed when a Turk­ish mis­sile hit the plane.

Although the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion is not about to admit it, the data already avail­able sup­ports the Russ­ian asser­tion that the Turk­ish shoot-down was, as Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin assert­ed, an “ambush” that had been care­ful­ly pre­pared in advance. The cen­tral Turk­ish claim that its F‑16 pilots had warned the two Russ­ian air­craft 10 times dur­ing a peri­od of five min­utes actu­al­ly is the pri­ma­ry clue that Turkey was not telling the truth about the shoot-down.

The Russ­ian Su-24 “Fencer” jet fight­er, which is com­pa­ra­ble to the U.S. F‑111, is capa­ble of a speed of 960 miles per hour at high alti­tude, but at low alti­tude its cruis­ing speed is around 870 mph, or about 13 miles per minute. The nav­i­ga­tor of the sec­ond plane con­firmed after his res­cue that the Su-24s were fly­ing at cruis­ing speed dur­ing the flight.

Close analy­sis of both the Turk­ish and Russ­ian images of the radar path of the Russ­ian jets indi­cates that the ear­li­est point at which either of the Russ­ian planes was on a path that might have been inter­pret­ed as tak­ing it into Turk­ish air­space was rough­ly 16 miles from the Turk­ish bor­der – mean­ing that it was only a minute and 20 sec­onds away from the bor­der.

Fur­ther­more accord­ing to both ver­sions of the flight path, five min­utes before the shoot-down the Russ­ian planes would have been fly­ing east­ward – away from the Turk­ish bor­der.

If the Turk­ish pilots actu­al­ly began warn­ing the Russ­ian jets five min­utes before the shoot-down, there­fore, they were doing so long before the planes were even head­ed in the gen­er­al direc­tion of the small pro­jec­tion of the Turk­ish bor­der in North­ern Latakia province. In order to car­ry out the strike, in fact, the Turk­ish pilots would have had to be in the air already and pre­pared to strike as soon as they knew the Russ­ian air­craft were air­borne.

The evi­dence from the Turk­ish author­i­ties them­selves thus leaves lit­tle room for doubt that the deci­sion to shoot down the Russ­ian jet was made before the Russ­ian jets even began their flight.

The motive for the strike was direct­ly relat­ed to the Turk­ish role in sup­port­ing the anti-Assad forces in the vicin­i­ty of the bor­der. In fact, the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment made no effort to hide its aim in the days before the strike. In a meet­ing with the Russ­ian ambas­sador on Nov. 20, the for­eign min­is­ter accused the Rus­sians of “inten­sive bomb­ing” of “civil­ian Turk­men vil­lages” and said there might be “seri­ous con­se­quences” unless the Rus­sians end­ed their oper­a­tions imme­di­ate­ly.

Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Ahmet Davu­to­glu was even more explic­it, declar­ing that Turk­ish secu­ri­ty forces “have been instruct­ed to retal­i­ate against any devel­op­ment that would threat­en Turkey’s bor­der secu­ri­ty.” Davu­to­glu fur­ther said: “If there is an attack that would lead to an intense influx of refugees to Turkey, required mea­sures would be tak­en both inside Syr­ia and Turkey.”

The Turk­ish threat to retal­i­ate – not against Russ­ian pen­e­tra­tion of its air­space but in response to very broad­ly defined cir­cum­stances on the bor­der – came amid the lat­est in a series of bat­tles between the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment and reli­gious fight­ers.

The area where the plane was shot down is pop­u­lat­ed by the Turk­men minor­i­ty. They have been far less impor­tant than for­eign fight­ers and oth­er forces who have car­ried out a series of offen­sives in the area since mid-2013 aimed at threat­en­ing Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad’s main Alaw­ite redoubt on the coast in Latakia province.

Charles Lis­ter, the British spe­cial­ist who was vis­it­ing Latakia province fre­quent­ly in 2013, not­ed in an August 2013 inter­view, “Latakia, right up to the very north­ern tip [i.e. in the Turk­men Moun­tain area], has been a strong­hold for for­eign fight­er-based groups for almost a year now.” He also observed that, after Islam­ic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) had emerged in the north, al-Nus­ra Front and its allies in the area had “reached out” to ISIL and that one of the groups fight­ing in Latakia had “become a front group” for ISIL.

In March 2014, the reli­gious rebels launched a major offen­sive with heavy Turk­ish logis­ti­cal sup­port to cap­ture the Armen­ian town of Kessab on the Mediter­ranean coast of Latakia very close to the Turk­ish bor­der. An Istan­bul news­pa­per, Bag­cilar, quot­ed a mem­ber of the Turk­ish parliament’s for­eign affairs com­mit­tee as report­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from vil­lagers liv­ing near the bor­der that thou­sands of fight­ers had streamed across five dif­fer­ent bor­der points in cars with Syr­i­an plates to par­tic­i­pate in the offen­sive.

Dur­ing that offen­sive, more­over, a Syr­i­an jet respond­ing to the offen­sive against Kessab was shot down by the Turk­ish air force in a remark­able par­al­lel to the down­ing of the Russ­ian jet. Turkey claimed that the jet had vio­lat­ed its air­space but made no pre­tence about hav­ing giv­en any pri­or warn­ing. The pur­pose of try­ing to deter Syr­ia from using its air­pow­er in defense of the town was obvi­ous.

Now the bat­tle in Latakia province has shift­ed to the Bayir­bu­cak area, where the Syr­i­an air force and ground forces have been try­ing to cut the sup­ply lines between vil­lages con­trolled by Nus­ra Front and its allies and the Turk­ish bor­der for sev­er­al months. The key vil­lage in the Nus­ra Front area of con­trol is Salma, which has been in jihadist hands ever since 2012. The inter­ven­tion of the Russ­ian Air Force in the bat­tle has giv­en a new advan­tage to the Syr­i­an army.

The Turk­ish shoot-down was thus in essence an effort to dis­suade the Rus­sians from con­tin­u­ing their oper­a­tions in the area against al-Nus­ra Front and its allies, using not one but two dis­tinct pre­texts: on one hand a very dubi­ous charge of a Russ­ian bor­der pen­e­tra­tion for NATO allies, and on the oth­er, a charge of bomb­ing Turk­men civil­ians for the Turk­ish domes­tic audi­ence. . . .

2. We then review a very impor­tant post that dis­tills a line of inquiry we’ve been pur­su­ing for years. Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Robert Kaplan notes that U.S. mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in the Mus­lim world occurs in for­mer ter­ri­to­ries of the Ottoman Empire and results in Islamists com­ing to pow­er for the ulti­mate ben­e­fit of–Germany!

In FTR #‘s 710720723 we not­ed that the GOP/Underground Reich fac­tion of the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment was pur­su­ing covert oper­a­tions in the Earth Island, par­tic­u­lar­ly in parts of Rus­sia and Chi­na. Part­nered in this is the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and irre­den­tist Turk­ish ele­ments seek­ing a return to the glo­ry days of the Ottoman Empire.

Fol­low­ing the turn to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (for­mal­ized dur­ing Bush’s sec­ond admin­is­tra­tion grow­ing out of the pro­found GOP links to the Broth­er­hood and the al-Taqwa milieu) we wit­nessed the cen­ter piece of this oper­a­tion–the so-called Arab Spring. The Boston Marathon bomb­ing appears to be “blow­back” from this oper­a­tion, with FBI appar­ent­ly hav­ing cut across ele­ments of the covert oper­a­tion men­tioned above.

The Fetul­lah Gulen orga­ni­za­tion appears to be an out­crop­ping of this mas­sive Earth Island “op.”

Before return­ing to the sub­ject of the “Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring,” let’s high­light a key para­graph of the Kaplan essay, sum­ming up an all-too famil­iar pat­tern in the oper­a­tions that are bring­ing to pow­er the Ger­man Hand in the Ottoman/Islamist glove:

. . . . Each U. S. mil­i­tary action in Europe and the Mid­dle East since 1990, how­ev­er, with the excep­tion of Iraq, has fol­lowed an overt pat­tern: First there is an armed con­flict with­in the coun­try where the inter­ven­tion will take place. Amer­i­can news media heav­i­ly report this con­flict. The “good guys” in the sto­ry are the rebels. The “bad guys,” to be attacked by Amer­i­can mil­i­tary force, are bru­tal­ly anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic, and com­mit­ters of war crimes, crimes against human­i­ty, and geno­cide. Pres­ti­gious pub­lic fig­ures, NGOs, judi­cial and qua­si-judi­cial bod­ies and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions call for sup­port­ing the rebels and attack­ing the regime. Next, the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent orders Amer­i­can logis­ti­cal sup­port and arms sup­plies for the rebels. Final­ly the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent orders mil­i­tary attack under the aus­pices of NATO in sup­port of the rebels. The attack usu­al­ly con­sists of aer­i­al bomb­ing, today’s equiv­a­lent of the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies’ gun­boat which could attack coastal cities of mil­i­tar­i­ly weak coun­tries with­out fear of retal­i­a­tion. The ulti­mate out­come of each Amer­i­can inter­ven­tion is the replace­ment of a sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment with an Islamist regime in an area that had been part of the Ottoman Empire. . . .

Anoth­er fas­ci­nat­ing and very impor­tant part of the arti­cle con­cerns the ICC, much-bal­ly­hooed by the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor in this and oth­er coun­tries:

. . . . From that arti­cle, “A Law­less Glob­al Court” by John Rosen­thal (Pol­i­cy Review Feb. 1. 2004 No.123), one learns that the ICC is a project ini­ti­at­ed, pro­mot­ed and, to a con­sid­er­able extent, fund­ed by Ger­many. Giv­en this, the idea that the ICC serves Ger­many’s pur­pos­es is com­mon sense. Through the ICC con­nec­tion, Ger­many’s pro­mo­tion of the “Arab Spring” is clear. Yet it is nev­er or almost nev­er men­tioned. This silence calls for expla­na­tion. . . .

Amen! That silence does indeed call for an expla­na­tion.

Notice, also, the Ger­man method­ol­o­gy here. Under­scor­ing Ger­man pow­er-polit­i­cal method­ol­o­gy pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War I, Kaplan’s analy­sis applies equal­ly well to Nazi Ger­man’s geo-polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion. It applies equal­ly well to that of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic, which, like the GOP and a dis­turbing­ly large part of the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment, is con­trolled by Ger­many:

. . . . In the view of the lead­ers of Ger­many, Turkey was con­trol­lable through a com­bi­na­tion of eco­nom­ic inter­course, gifts of edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties, pro­vi­sion of tech­ni­cal exper­tise and admin­is­tra­tive aid, as well as bribes to Turk­ish offi­cials. Ger­many saw influ­ence over Turkey as a means of influ­enc­ing Moslems world­wide for its own inter­ests. . . .

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

  • Wik­iLeaks appears to have played a role 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, Nazi-influ­enced pro­pa­gan­da and data min­ing oper­a­tion.
  • Karl Rove’s dom­i­nant pres­ence 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 and con­tin­ued under Oba­ma’s tenure. (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, 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”–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.
  • Loom­ing large in the unfold­ing sce­nario are the the­o­ries of non-vio­lent the­o­reti­cian Gene Sharp, who held posi­tions asso­ci­at­ed with the “lib­er­al” ele­ment of the U.S. intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus.
  • Sharp’s activ­i­ties have been under­writ­ten 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, an agency of the U.S. gov­ern­ment.
  • The Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace’s Mus­lim World Ini­tia­tive–charged by crit­ics with legit­imiz­ing jihadists–may well have been the ini­ti­at­ing ele­ment in these devel­op­ments.
  • High tech firms with links to the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment appear to have facil­i­tat­ed the Pig­gy-Back Coup.
  • The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s free-mar­ket eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive 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 the most from the unfold­ing events in the Mid­dle East.
  • The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-con­trolled Al Jazeera 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 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 as a proxy force against Rus­sia and Chi­na. The goal, ulti­mate­ly, is to peel away strate­gic, resource-rich areas such, as the petro­le­um-rich areas of the Cau­ca­sus and Xin­jiang province.

The Robert E. Kaplan post epit­o­mizes the argu­ments we’ve been advanc­ing for many years. Please digest it and dis­sem­i­nate the infor­ma­tion to oth­ers. Although he does not men­tion it, vet­er­an lis­ten­ers and read­ers will no doubt rec­og­nize the pres­ence of the Under­ground Reich in the con­cate­na­tion that Kaplan presents. Detail­ing the evo­lu­tion of the Under­ground Reich is beyond the scope of this post.

The wealth of infor­ma­tion con­tained on this web­site will pro­vide the nec­es­sary intel­lec­tu­al under­pin­ning for inter­est­ed and curi­ous readers/listeners.

Suf­fice it to say here, that the proxy war­riors of the neo-Ottoman caliphate will, ulti­mate­ly, be used to destroy the U.S. and the U.K., as well as Israel.

With Oba­ma respond­ing to his long-fore­cast (in these quar­ters) desta­bi­liza­tion by con­tin­u­ing to build bi-par­ti­san bridges and com­mit­ting polit­i­cal sui­cide in the process, this should be rel­a­tive­ly easy to accom­plish.

“The U.S. Helps Recon­struct the Ottoman Empire” by Robert E. Kaplan; The Gate­stone Insti­tute; 5/29/2013.

Since the mid-1990s the Unit­ed States has inter­vened mil­i­tar­i­ly in sev­er­al inter­nal armed con­flicts in Europe and the Mid­dle East: bomb­ing Serbs and Ser­bia in sup­port of Izetbe­gov­ic’s Moslem Regime in Bosnia in 1995, bomb­ing Serbs and Ser­bia in sup­port of KLA Moslems of Koso­vo in 1999, bomb­ing Libya’s Gaddafi regime in sup­port of rebels in 2010. Each inter­ven­tion was jus­ti­fied to Amer­i­cans as moti­vat­ed by human­i­tar­i­an con­cerns: to pro­tect Bosn­ian Moslems from geno­ci­dal Serbs, to pro­tect Koso­vo Moslems from geno­ci­dal Serbs, and to pro­tect Libyans from their mur­der­ous dic­ta­tor Muam­mar Gaddafi.

Oth­er rea­sons for these inter­ven­tions were also offered: to gain for the Unit­ed States a strate­gic foothold in the Balka­ns, to defeat com­mu­nism in Yugoslavia, to demon­strate to the world’s Moslems that the Unit­ed States is not anti-Moslem, to rede­fine the role of NATO in the post-Cold War era, among oth­ers.

Each of these Unit­ed States mil­i­tary inter­ven­tions occurred in an area that had been part of the Ottoman Empire. In each, a sec­u­lar regime was ulti­mate­ly replaced by an Islamist one favor­ing sharia law and the cre­ation of a world-wide Caliphate. The coun­tries that expe­ri­enced the “Arab Spring” of the 2010s with­out the help of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion, Tunisia and Egypt, had also been part of the Ottoman Empire, and also end­ed up with Islamist regimes.

In the Unit­ed States most dis­cus­sions of the mil­i­tary con­flicts of the 1990s in the Balka­ns and the “Arab Spring” of the 2010s do not men­tion that the areas involved had been part of the Ottoman Empire; these includ­ed Turkey, the Moslem-pop­u­lat­ed areas around the Mediter­ranean, Iraq, the coastal regions of the Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la and parts of the Balka­ns. In the areas that expe­ri­enced the Arab Spring Turkey’s role in every instance has been to sup­port the rebels and quick­ly rec­og­nize them as the legit­i­mate gov­ern­ment of the coun­try in upheaval.

Turk­ish lead­ers do make the con­nec­tion between the con­flicts in the Bosnia, the “Arab Spring” and the Ottoman Empire. Harold Rhode, an Amer­i­can expert on Turkey, has report­ed:

[Pres­i­dent of Turkey] Erdo­gan’s recent [2011] elec­toral vic­to­ry speech puts his true inten­tions regard­ing Turkey’s for­eign pol­i­cy goals in per­spec­tive. He said that this vic­to­ry is as impor­tant in Ankara as it is in the cap­i­tal of Bosnia-Herze­gov­ina, Sara­je­vo, under Ottoman times, an impor­tant Ottoman city; that his par­ty’s vic­to­ry was as impor­tant in a large Turk­ish city Izmir, on the West­ern Ana­to­lian coast, as it is in Dam­as­cus, and as impor­tant in Istan­bul as it is in Jerusalem….

In say­ing that this vic­to­ry is as impor­tant in all of these for­mer Ottoman cities, Erdo­gan appar­ent­ly sees him­self as try­ing to reclaim Turkey’s full Ottoman past.

The occur­rence that since 1990 each Euro­pean and Mid­dle East­ern coun­try that expe­ri­enced Amer­i­can mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in an inter­nal mil­i­tary con­flict or an “Arab Spring” has end­ed up with a gov­ern­ment dom­i­nat­ed by Islamists of the Moslem Broth­er­hood or al-Qae­da vari­ety fits nice­ly with the idea that these events rep­re­sent a return to Ottoman rule. Besides being a polit­i­cal empire rul­ing a ter­ri­to­ry and its pop­u­la­tion, the Ottoman Empire claimed to be a Caliphate with spir­i­tu­al suzerain­ty over all Moslems – those with­in its bor­ders and those beyond. Though it might seem strange at first, the idea of advanc­ing the renew­al of the Ottoman Empire on two tracks – break­ing down the post-Ottoman polit­i­cal struc­ture and pro­mot­ing a Caliphate which Islamists say they long for – is real­ly quite rea­son­able.

Just as the Balkan con­flicts of the 1990s and the “Arab Spring” of the 2010s con­sid­ered in his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive sug­gests that Turkey might be attempt­ing to recre­ate its for­mer empire, con­sid­er­a­tion of the Turk­ish Empire in his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive sug­gests the pos­si­ble part­ner­ship of Ger­many with Turkey in the project giv­en that, from its cre­ation in 1870, Ger­many viewed Turkey with its empire as a most valu­able client and ally. In the view of the lead­ers of Ger­many, Turkey was con­trol­lable through a com­bi­na­tion of eco­nom­ic inter­course, gifts of edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties, pro­vi­sion of tech­ni­cal exper­tise and admin­is­tra­tive aid, as well as bribes to Turk­ish offi­cials. Ger­many saw influ­ence over Turkey as a means of influ­enc­ing Moslems world­wide for its own inter­ests. Thus as the Ger­man schol­ar Wolf­gang Schwanitz has shown, dur­ing World War I Ger­many employed the Turk­ish Caliphate to pro­mote jihad – riot and rebel­lion – in areas where Moslem pop­u­la­tions were ruled by its ene­mies Rus­sia, France, Britain and Ser­bia.

Yet in the 50-odd arti­cles col­lect­ed in an explo­ration of the aware­ness on the part of Amer­i­cans of a pos­si­ble Turk­ish con­nec­tion with the “Arab Spring,” I found not a sin­gle men­tion of “Ger­many.“Only from a link in one of those arti­cles – to an arti­cle on the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC) which, with its indict­ment of Muam­mar Gaddafi and issue of a war­rant for his arrest, pro­vid­ed the “legal” basis legit­imiz­ing NATO’s bomb­ing of Libya — which gave the rebels their vic­to­ry and end­ed the Gaddafi regime – did I find men­tion of Ger­many. From that arti­cle, “A Law­less Glob­al Court” by John Rosen­thal (Pol­i­cy Review Feb. 1. 2004 No.123), one learns that the ICC is a project ini­ti­at­ed, pro­mot­ed and, to a con­sid­er­able extent, fund­ed by Ger­many. Giv­en this, the idea that the ICC serves Ger­many’s pur­pos­es is com­mon sense. Through the ICC con­nec­tion, Ger­many’s pro­mo­tion of the “Arab Spring” is clear. Yet it is nev­er or almost nev­er men­tioned. This silence calls for expla­na­tion.

Lat­er, I did come across an explic­it ref­er­ence to Ger­many’s role in it — specif­i­cal­ly in the war against the Assad regime in Syr­ia — in John Rosen­thal’s arti­cle “Ger­man Intel­li­gence: al-Qae­da all over Syr­ia” in the online Asia Times ­­­­­­­­­­­­ — which reports that the Ger­man gov­ern­ment sup­ports the rebels and their polit­i­cal arm, the Syr­i­an Nation­al Coun­cil (SNC), against Assad; that the Ger­man gov­ern­ment clas­si­fied [made secret] “by rea­son of nation­al inter­est” the con­tents of sev­er­al BND (Ger­man for­eign intel­li­gence) reports that the May 25, 2012 mas­sacre of civil­ians in the Syr­i­an town of Houla, for which Assad has been blamed, was in fact per­pe­trat­ed by rebel forces; and that “the Ger­man for­eign office is work­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion to devel­op ‘con­crete plans’ for a ‘polit­i­cal tran­si­tion’ in Syr­ia after the fall of Assad.” So far the Ger­man pol­i­cy of keep­ing hid­den its lead­er­ship role in the attempt to recon­sti­tute the Ottoman Empire seems to have suc­ceed­ed.

Each U. S. mil­i­tary action in Europe and the Mid­dle East since 1990, how­ev­er, with the excep­tion of Iraq, has fol­lowed an overt pat­tern: First there is an armed con­flict with­in the coun­try where the inter­ven­tion will take place. Amer­i­can news media heav­i­ly report this con­flict. The “good guys” in the sto­ry are the rebels. The “bad guys,” to be attacked by Amer­i­can mil­i­tary force, are bru­tal­ly anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic, and com­mit­ters of war crimes, crimes against human­i­ty, and geno­cide. Pres­ti­gious pub­lic fig­ures, NGOs, judi­cial and qua­si-judi­cial bod­ies and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions call for sup­port­ing the rebels and attack­ing the regime. Next, the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent orders Amer­i­can logis­ti­cal sup­port and arms sup­plies for the rebels. Final­ly the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent orders mil­i­tary attack under the aus­pices of NATO in sup­port of the rebels. The attack usu­al­ly con­sists of aer­i­al bomb­ing, today’s equiv­a­lent of the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies’ gun­boat which could attack coastal cities of mil­i­tar­i­ly weak coun­tries with­out fear of retal­i­a­tion. The ulti­mate out­come of each Amer­i­can inter­ven­tion is the replace­ment of a sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment with an Islamist regime in an area that had been part of the Ottoman Empire.

Why the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States would active­ly pro­mote Ger­man aims — the destruc­tion of Yugoslavia (both World Wars I and II saw Ger­many invade Ser­bia) and the re-cre­ation of the Ottoman Empire — is a ques­tion that needs to be answered.

3. Weigh­ing the oper­a­tional his­to­ry of the Grey Wolves, we repeat FTR #59 (April of 1997), not­ing that the orga­ni­za­tion had func­tioned as the Turk­ish com­po­nent of Oper­a­tion Stay Behind. This was a NATO oper­a­tion that cre­at­ed under­ground cadres to fight any left-wing gov­ern­ment that may have come to pow­er in one of the orga­ni­za­tion’s mem­ber nations. With the Grey Wolves hav­ing served as an under­ground exten­sion of the NATO order of bat­tle, we should eval­u­ate their activ­i­ties in the con­text of the Earth Island “op” appar­ent­ly under way.

The arti­cle com­pris­ing much of the dis­cus­sion can be found here.

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #879 Further Update on Pan-Turkism, Islamism and the Earth Island Boogie”

  1. Here’s an analy­sis of the jet shoot­down time­line in Harpers that’s based on the data pro­vid­ed by Rus­sia and Turk­ish radar maps. It will be inter­est­ing to hear if the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment responds to the analy­sis because it comes to the kind of con­clu­sion that isn’t going to please Erdo­gan: The shoot­down was an ambush:

    Harpers
    Moun­tain Ambush

    “Look­ing at the detailed Russ­ian time­line of what hap­pened,” says defense ana­lyst Pierre Sprey, “I’d say the evi­dence looks pret­ty strong that the Turks were set­ting up an ambush.”

    By Andrew Cock­burn

    On Novem­ber 24, a Turk­ish F‑16 fight­er jet shot down a Russ­ian Su-24 bomber near the bor­der of Turkey and Syr­ia. In the imme­di­ate after­math, offi­cials from the two coun­tries offered con­tra­dic­to­ry ver­sions of what tran­spired: Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin claimed that the plane was fly­ing over Syr­i­an ter­ri­to­ry when it was downed; Turk­ish pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan coun­tered that it was inside Turkey’s bor­der and had been warned ten times to alter its course. Hours lat­er, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma threw his sup­port behind Erdo­gan. “Turkey,” he said, “has a right to defend its ter­ri­to­ry and its air­space.”

    I asked Pierre Sprey, a long­time defense ana­lyst and mem­ber of the team that devel­oped the F‑16, to exam­ine what we know about the down­ing and deter­mine what actu­al­ly occurred that morn­ing.

    The Rus­sians have claimed the Novem­ber 24 down­ing of their bomber was a delib­er­ate pre-planned ambush by the Turks. Is there any mer­it in that argu­ment?

    Look­ing at the detailed Russ­ian time­line of what happened—as well as the much less detailed Turk­ish radar maps—I’d say the evi­dence looks pret­ty strong that the Turks were set­ting up an ambush. They cer­tain­ly weren’t doing any­thing that would point to a rou­tine air patrol along the bor­der. Their actions in no way rep­re­sent­ed a rou­tine, all day long type of patrol.

    How can we tell that?

    Well, let’s set up the sit­u­a­tion and it’ll be a lit­tle eas­i­er to under­stand. The Russ­ian pilots were assigned a tar­get very close to the Turk­ish bor­der, about ten miles in from the Mediter­ranean coast and about five miles south of an impor­tant bor­der cross­ing at a lit­tle place called Yay­lada­gi. That’s a bor­der cross­ing that the Turks have used to slip jihadists into Syr­ia, or to allow them to slip in. It’s also a place where there’s quite a bit of truck traf­fic, a fair amount of it prob­a­bly oil tankers. It’s the only cross­ing for many, many miles around. This is a pret­ty sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed, well forest­ed and hilly area occu­pied by Turkmen—Turkish speak­ing Syr­i­an tribes­men who are sym­pa­thet­ic to al-Nus­ra and the Islam­ic State, who har­bor Chechen ter­ror­ists and who we know have been sup­port­ed by the Turks.

    The tar­get area the Rus­sians were inter­est­ed in was about five miles south, along the road lead­ing to this cross­ing. That was the tar­get area that they assigned to these two Su-24s on the day of the shoot-down. The crews were assigned the mis­sion at about nine-fif­teen in the morn­ing, Moscow time. They took off about a half hour lat­er, head­ed for an area about thir­ty miles inland from the Mediter­ranean coast—in oth­er words well east of this tar­get area—to loi­ter until they got fur­ther instruc­tions on hit­ting a tar­get in the tar­get area. At this point they’re just cruis­ing and loi­ter­ing at eigh­teen thou­sand, nine­teen thou­sand feet, try­ing to con­serve gas while they’re wait­ing to be assigned a spe­cif­ic tar­get.

    The flight to their hold­ing area was very short, because they were fly­ing out of a Russ­ian base south of Latakia. It was like a ten-minute flight. They were only about thir­ty miles away or so. After they reached their loi­ter area—at rough­ly a quar­ter to ten—they were well in view of Turk­ish radar cov­er­age because they were up high and not far from the bor­der, rough­ly six­teen miles south.

    They got assigned their tar­get, which was the road south of this impor­tant bor­der cross­ing, and exe­cut­ed a first strike, each of them attack­ing sep­a­rate tar­gets at about a quar­ter after ten. They then made a U‑turn, so to speak, to fol­low a race­track pat­tern back toward where they had been loi­ter­ing to get ready for a sec­ond attack. They in fact exe­cut­ed the sec­ond attack about sev­en or eight min­utes lat­er. One of the two Su-24s hit its tar­get right at about ten twen­ty-four and was almost imme­di­ate­ly shot down as he was pulling off the tar­get.

    What about the Turk­ish air force, what were they doing mean­while?

    The Turks had launched two F‑16s quite a bit ear­li­er than the time we’re talk­ing about, from Diyarbakir, a major base for the Turk­ish Air Force about two hun­dred and fifty miles away, to loi­ter just in from the Mediter­ranean over a moun­tain­ous area that was about twen­ty-five miles north of this bor­der cross­ing. Inter­est­ing­ly, they arrived in that area to loi­ter just about the time that the Russ­ian pilots were being assigned their tar­gets, and the F‑16s loi­tered over that moun­tain­ous area for about an hour and fif­teen min­utes.

    Here’s the cru­cial thing. They were not loi­ter­ing up at high altitude—say twen­ty to thir­ty thou­sand feet—to con­serve fuel, which is where you would nor­mal­ly be loi­ter­ing if you were sim­ply doing a rou­tine bor­der patrol. They were loi­ter­ing quite low, at about sev­en thou­sand five hun­dred to eight thou­sand feet, which, first of all, is below the cov­er­age of the Syr­i­an and Russ­ian radars that were down around Latakia, and which is a very fuel-inef­fi­cient alti­tude to loi­ter. You suck up a lot of gas down at those low alti­tudes.

    That tells you right away, if they hung out there for sev­en­ty-five min­utes, they must’ve been tanked on the way in to that mis­sion, because they were quite far from their home base—two hun­dred and fifty miles—so they must’ve topped up on fuel to have enough to even last for an hour and a quar­ter at this inef­fi­cient low alti­tude. The Turk­ish Air Force does have a num­ber of Amer­i­can tankers that they own, so they cer­tain­ly could’ve and almost beyond a shad­ow of a doubt did tank these F‑16s before this whole engage­ment.

    They’re hang­ing out at low alti­tude over this moun­tain­ous area north of the bor­der, and it’s now about a quar­ter after ten. The Russ­ian fight­ers, the Su-24s, are just fin­ish­ing their race­track pat­tern after their first strike and are about to re-attack from this hold­ing posi­tion well east of the tar­get. At that point, the two F‑16s break out of their loi­ter pat­terns to fly in a straight line south, quite cer­tain­ly under Turk­ish ground con­trol because they clear­ly are not hunt­ing for the Su-24s and fol­low­ing a curved path, they’re head­ing straight for an inter­cept point that appar­ent­ly ground con­trol has pro­vid­ed them—a point that’s very close to the tar­get that the Su-24s have just bombed. That’s clear­ly the point they’re com­ing back to bomb again.

    The F‑16s arrive quite nice­ly and pre­cise­ly timed to a mis­sile-shoot­ing posi­tion very near the bor­der and three to four miles from the sec­ond Su-24—who has just fin­ished bomb­ing his sec­ond target—at about ten twen­ty-four. One of the F‑16s locks onto him, launch­es a missile—an infrared mis­sile accord­ing to the Russians—and imme­di­ate­ly dives down to get back under the Syr­i­an radar cov­er­age. The F‑16 makes a hard div­ing right turn and is back down under eight thou­sand feet in no time at all and head­ing north away from the scene of the engage­ment. In that turn he actu­al­ly is pen­e­trat­ing Syr­i­an air­space before he heads north to go home to Diyarbakir, prob­a­bly at that point out of fuel and hook­ing up with a tanker again in order to make it home.

    Would he have been in Syr­i­an air­space when they fired the mis­sile?

    Not nec­es­sar­i­ly. It’s hard to tell at this point. All this action is pret­ty close to the bor­der, and there’s no rea­son to believe either the Turks or the Rus­sians about dis­tances of half a mile or a mile north or south of the bor­der, but there’s no ques­tion that the Turk­ish F‑16 pen­e­trat­ed Syr­i­an air­space in exe­cut­ing his div­ing turn to get out of the area. He was head­ing due south to attack the east-west track of the Su-24 that had just fin­ished bomb­ing the tar­get. That Su-24 augured in almost imme­di­ate­ly, about a mile and a half south of the bor­der.

    The bone of con­tention here is not the tar­get area. The tar­get area is rough­ly four or five miles south of that famous bor­der cross­ing we were just talk­ing about. The bone of con­tention is a nar­row fin­ger of Turk­ish land about five miles long, stick­ing straight down into Syr­ia, about a mile and a half at its widest at the north­ern end and taper­ing down to a half mile at the south­ern tip. That fin­ger is a good six miles east of the tar­get area. So when head­ing west on their way to attack their tar­gets, the Su-24s nec­es­sar­i­ly had to pass very close to the south­ern tip of the fin­ger. In oth­er words, the whole con­tro­ver­sy about whether this shoot-down was legit­i­mate or not is whether the Su-24s on the way to the tar­get hap­pened to cross that fin­ger for a few sec­onds.

    Remem­ber again the set­up. You’ve got a tar­get that’s like ten miles in from the Mediter­ranean to the east. Anoth­er six miles or so east of there is this fin­ger of land. It’s well east of the tar­get area. The loi­ter area that the Sukhois were com­ing from is anoth­er six­teen miles to the east of that. They’re fly­ing from their loi­ter area, which is well south of the bor­der. They’re fly­ing past the fin­ger, maybe they crossed it, maybe they were just below it, and head­ing for the tar­get.

    But if the Rus­sians were in Turk­ish air­space, as the Turks claim, wouldn’t it be rea­son­able for the Turks to inter­cept them?

    There’s a lit­tle detail that’s very telling. The alleged bor­der-cross­ing took place on the first bomb­ing run from the loi­ter area to the tar­get, and accord­ing to the Turks the Rus­sians were rough­ly half a mile north of the tip of the fin­ger and so they were in Turk­ish air­space for about sev­en­teen seconds—a tiny, short, brief time—on their way to hit­ting the first tar­get. The Rus­sians, of course, say they were south of the fin­ger by about a mile. God knows who’s right. I’m sure if we had access to the radar records we could tell very prompt­ly who’s lying and who’s not, but nobody is going to give us access to the exact radar plot.

    Here’s the very inter­est­ing thing. This bor­der-vio­lat­ing incur­sion was on the first run to the tar­get at around quar­ter after ten a.m. On the sec­ond run to the tar­get the Russ­ian planes were clear­ly fur­ther to the south. This is accord­ing to the plots and maps released in the Russ­ian brief­ing, which are very, very detailed with exact time marks every minute. The sev­en­teen-sec­ond cross­ing of the bor­der alleged by the Turks hap­pened at about a quar­ter after ten, but the Turks wait­ed. They didn’t come in and attack the air­plane that had crossed the bor­der at that point. They sim­ply sat and wait­ed until the plane flew a long re-attack pat­tern and came back on a sec­ond run sev­en or eight min­utes lat­er, and that’s when they attacked and shot him down.

    Between the fuel-guz­zling low alti­tude of the hold­ing pat­tern of the F‑16s, which mirac­u­lous­ly coin­cid­ed with the flight times of the Russ­ian air­planes, and the fact that they didn’t even chase the air­plane imme­di­ate­ly upon its alleged bor­der incur­sion, all that smells very much like a pret­ty pre-planned oper­a­tion. The Turks allowed the Russ­ian plane to hit a tar­get and make a long sev­en or eight minute re-attack pass and then came in from their hid­den low alti­tude posi­tion. They came up a lit­tle high­er to gain a good fir­ing alti­tude, came whistling south, hit the Su-24, dove under the radar cov­er­age at the same time that they entered Syr­i­an air­space and head­ed north out of radar cov­er­age to head back to Diyarbakir.

    Such an ambush wouldn’t have been hard to pull off, because the Rus­sians, in their detailed account of this, state very clear­ly that they had coor­di­nat­ed with NATO, with the Amer­i­cans, announc­ing this attack well in advance, and had fol­lowed the pro­to­col of lis­ten­ing on the NATO-agreed fre­quen­cy for any warn­ings or alerts from NATO or from the Turks. There was plen­ty of time for the Amer­i­cans to inform the Turks that this mis­sion was tak­ing place. They might’ve even been informed by the Rus­sians the day before it was going to take place. All the pre­req­ui­sites for a set­up were there.

    The Turks made a big deal about the ten warn­ings they said they issued to the Russ­ian planes. What do we make of that?

    Again, that’s one of those things where it’s hard to tell and hard to know which side to believe. The Rus­sians in their brief­ing, in their detailed brief­ing, are very clear and very adamant that the F‑16s them­selves, the attack­ing F‑16s nev­er trans­mit­ted any warn­ing. Nor are the Turks or the Amer­i­cans claim­ing that the F‑16s warned the Russ­ian fight­ers. But of course the inter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols for defend­ing against incur­sions of your air­space require the attack­ing fight­ers them­selves to inform the target—visually or by radio—whether it’s an air­lin­er or a fight­er or what­ev­er, that they are now vio­lat­ing air­space and need to turn away.

    The Turks do say they trans­mit­ted their warn­ings from a ground-con­trol sta­tion. They also claim they trans­mit­ted those radio calls on both the civil­ian inter­na­tion­al emer­gency “guard” UHF-band fre­quen­cy and on the mil­i­tary VHF-band fre­quen­cy pre­vi­ous­ly agreed to by NATO and the Rus­sians. The Amer­i­cans were quick to con­firm that their mon­i­tor­ing equip­ment picked up the Turk­ish ground-sta­tion radio warn­ing calls, but they’ve been care­ful not to say what fre­quen­cy they heard. Now it so hap­pens that Su-24s have no radios onboard for receiv­ing UHF-fre­quen­cy sig­nals, a fact which is well known to Amer­i­can, NATO, and Turk­ish intel­li­gence.

    There’s a lot of outs to this that could be the fault of either sider. It’s quite like­ly true that the Turks radioed warn­ings, but those warn­ings may have been delib­er­ate­ly trans­mit­ted only on the inter­na­tion­al civil­ian fre­quen­cy so that the Su-24s would nev­er hear them. Or it may be that the Su-24’s mil­i­tary fre­quen­cy radios were on the fritz, which is easy to believe giv­en the well-known unre­li­a­bil­i­ty of Russ­ian elec­tron­ics.

    I do believe that the F‑16s nev­er issued any warn­ings, because it would be aston­ish­ing if they did. Here they went to all the trou­ble of tank­ing up and fly­ing at a very low alti­tude, stretch­ing their fuel endurance just to stay out of radar cov­er­age of the Rus­sians and the Syr­i­ans, and then why would they sud­den­ly announce that they were there by warn­ing the fight­ers when they had so obvi­ous­ly set up a sit­u­a­tion where they were hid­ing? The ground-con­trol sta­tion in Turkey prob­a­bly did issue warn­ings, but they may have been warn­ings that were intend­ed not to be received.

    ...

    Between the fuel-guz­zling low alti­tude of the hold­ing pat­tern of the F‑16s, which mirac­u­lous­ly coin­cid­ed with the flight times of the Russ­ian air­planes, and the fact that they didn’t even chase the air­plane imme­di­ate­ly upon its alleged bor­der incur­sion, all that smells very much like a pret­ty pre-planned oper­a­tion. The Turks allowed the Russ­ian plane to hit a tar­get and make a long sev­en or eight minute re-attack pass and then came in from their hid­den low alti­tude posi­tion. They came up a lit­tle high­er to gain a good fir­ing alti­tude, came whistling south, hit the Su-24, dove under the radar cov­er­age at the same time that they entered Syr­i­an air­space and head­ed north out of radar cov­er­age to head back to Diyarbakir.”

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 6, 2015, 6:51 pm

Post a comment