Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

COMMENT: Recent days have seen expand­ing pop­u­lar protests in Turkey, touched off by the Erdo­gan gov­ern­men­t’s project to raze a pop­u­lar urban park and replace it with a shop­ping mall and a repli­ca of an Ottoman-era mil­i­tary bar­racks.

Turned back by heavy-hand­ed tac­tics by the coun­try’s Fetul­lah Gulen-dom­i­nat­ed police estab­lish­ment, the demon­stra­tions appear to embody a broad­er pop­u­lar dis­sat­is­fac­tion with Erdo­gan’s Islamist gov­ern­ment. 

Far from the “mod­er­ate,” “demo­c­ra­t­ic” insti­tu­tion it has been called by West­ern media syco­phants, the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, an Islam­ic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion allied with the Axis in World War II and nur­tured by ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence in the post­war peri­od. 

His regime and its min­is­ters have more or less open­ly man­i­fest­ed a neo-Ottoman, irre­den­tist agen­da.

In past dis­cus­sions, we have not­ed that the U.S. has been pro­vid­ing the mil­i­tary mus­cle for the insti­tu­tion of Islamist regimes in parts of the for­mer Ottoman Empire and that Ger­many and the Under­ground Reich are the appar­ent ben­e­fi­cia­ries of this polit­i­cal dynam­ic.

Many of the pro­test­ers, as can be seen in the excerpt­ed, linked sto­ries and posts below, are fed up with Erdo­gan’s posi­tion­ing him­self as a neo-Sul­tan and his ruth­less crush­ing of polit­i­cal and jour­nal­is­tic oppo­si­tion. It has been wide­ly trum­pet­ed that the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment is an excel­lent mod­el for the sup­posed emerg­ing democ­ra­cies in the Mid­dle East fol­low­ing the “Arab Spring.”

In the mas­sive, intense For The Record series about the “Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring,” as we call it, we not­ed that the upheavals were the prod­uct of a GOP/Underground Reich fac­tion of U.S.intelligence exe­cut­ing a covert oper­a­tion begun dur­ing the clos­ing days of the sec­ond Bush admin­is­tra­tion,  and con­tin­ued under Oba­ma, whose polit­i­cal for­tune would  fall vic­tim to the fall­out and blow­back from that oper­a­tion. Indeed, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has been ascen­dant in the affect­ed coun­tries since that series was pro­duced. (That series is FTR #732 through FTR #739.)

Designed to bring “cor­po­ratism” to much of the Mus­lim world and aimed at peel­ing off much of the oil-rich Cau­ca­sus from Rus­sia and resource-rich Xin­jiang Province from Chi­na, that covert op enlists jihadists as proxy war­riors. Ulti­mate­ly, the U.S., the U.K. and Israel will fall vic­tim to these Under­ground Reich prox­ies as well.

There are a num­ber of impor­tant points to pon­der in con­nec­tion with the unrest in Turkey:

• Main­tain­ing a defi­ant tone, Erdo­gan char­ac­ter­ized the con­fronta­tions as hav­ing been influ­enced by unnamed “for­eign inter­ests.” He did not spec­i­fy who they might be. One won­ders if this was a sub­tle ref­er­ence to “Da Joos.”! (Erdo­gan’s Islamist/Muslim Broth­er­hood fel­low trav­el­er Mohamed Mor­si also blamed pop­u­lar unrest [in Egypt] on unnamed “for­eign inter­ests.”)
• After return­ing to Turkey from abroad, Erdo­gan also blamed “bankers” for the unrest. This may well be a veiled ref­er­ence to “Da Joos,” deriv­ing momen­tum from finan­cial mar­kets’ lack of con­fi­dence in the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the Turk­ish real estate-dri­ven econ­o­my.
• Among the casu­al­ties in the riot­ing was Ahmet Sik, a jour­nal­ist who has writ­ten crit­i­cal­ly of the Fetul­lah Gulen pen­e­tra­tion of the Turk­ish police. He was wound­ed by a tear gas can­is­ter fired at close range by police offi­cers.
• One of the appar­ent sore-spots for many of the pro­test­ers is the reliance of the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment on real estate projects to dri­ve the econ­o­my.  Some feel that this will lead to a real estate bub­ble, such as the one that col­lapsed the U.S. econ­o­my.
• With­in a few days of the begin­ning of the pop­u­lar protests and upris­ings, finan­cial mar­kets demon­strat­ed a sig­nif­i­cant lack of con­fi­dence in the Turk­ish econ­o­my and real estate bub­ble.
• Among the con­struc­tion projects Erdo­gan has cham­pi­oned is a lav­ish mosque built in the Unit­ed States.
• Inter­est­ing­ly, and per­haps sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Youssef Nada of the Al-Taqwa com­plex is a con­struc­tion mag­nate, with many of the Al-Taqwa-relat­ed enter­pris­es engaged in that indus­try. One won­ders how many of the Erdo­gan con­struc­tion projects are relat­ed to the Nada com­plex of firms.
• Turkey was among the coun­tries in which Mar­tin Bor­mann set up the cor­po­rate fronts that were repos­i­to­ries for the stolen liq­uid wealth of Europe and the foun­da­tion of Ger­many’s so-called “eco­nom­ic mir­a­cle.”
• Turkey is a major busi­ness part­ner of Ger­many’s and the Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed EU. Cor­po­rate Ger­many is dom­i­nat­ed by the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.
• Erdo­gan’s vis­it to the Amer­i­can mosque his gov­ern­ment has built was attend­ed by key Mus­lim Broth­er­hood fig­ures.
• Erdo­gan’s government–perhaps in coop­er­a­tion with the alleged­ly CIA-con­nect­ed Fetul­lah Gulen organization–has alleged­ly been infil­trat­ing a large num­ber of Turk­ish nation­als into Native Amer­i­can ter­ri­to­ries in the U.S. One won­ders if they will be advanc­ing the Under­ground Reich/UNPO agen­da of frag­ment­ing the U.S.
• Erdo­gan was accom­pa­nied on the vis­it by a rel­a­tive of one of the casu­al­ties in the Gaza Flotil­la episode. The IHH, the orga­ni­za­tion behind the Gaza Flotil­la, enjoyed heavy sup­port from the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment.
• The IHH is a jihadist orga­ni­za­tion. One of its founders is sus­pect­ed of hav­ing fund­ed Al-Qae­da.
• Erdo­gan, him­self, was men­tored by Necmet­tin Erbakan and his AK Par­ty is evolved from Erbakan’s Refah Par­ty.
• As can be seen below in the excerpt from Dol­lars for Ter­ror, Erbakan was close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the Al-Taqwa com­plex, its direc­tor Ahmed Huber and the Under­ground Reich.
• Erdo­gan’s gov­ern­ment enjoys the pro­found sup­port of transna­tion­al cor­po­rate inter­ests, deriv­a­tive of what we have termed “the Turn to the Broth­er­hood.” The lais­sez-faire eco­nom­ic ide­ol­o­gy of the Broth­er­hood has enam­ored them to the World Bank and is sim­i­lar in nature to that of the pow­er­ful right-wing Chris­t­ian group “The Fam­i­ly.”
• Ulti­mate­ly, the “turn to the Broth­er­hood” under­ly­ing Erdo­gan’s gov­ern­ment will be to the ben­e­fit of The Under­ground Reich, as dis­cussed in a pre­vi­ous post.

“Police Retreat as Protests Expand Through Turkey” by Tim Arango; The New York Times; 6/1/2013.

EXCERPT: Vio­lent protests against the gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan engulfed Istan­bul, Turkey’s largest city, on Sat­ur­day and spread to oth­er cities, includ­ing the cap­i­tal, Ankara, as tens of thou­sands of demon­stra­tors took to the streets in a sec­ond day of civ­il unrest and faced the tear gas and water can­nons of a harsh police crack­down. By late after­noon, the police with­drew from Istanbul’s cen­tral Tak­sim Square, allow­ing the demon­stra­tors to gath­er unim­ped­ed in the place that set off the protests last week with gov­ern­ment plans to turn a park into a repli­ca Ottoman-era army bar­racks and mall.

The depar­ture of the police, who had been wide­ly crit­i­cized for vio­lent tac­tics on Fri­day, set off scenes of jubi­la­tion and destruc­tion, as some drank and par­tied while oth­ers destroyed police vehi­cles and bull­doz­ers. While the protest began over plans to destroy a park, for many demon­stra­tors it had moved beyond that to become a broad rebuke to the 10-year lead­er­ship of Mr. Erdo­gan and his gov­ern­ment, which they say has adopt­ed author­i­tar­i­an tac­tics.

Some saw the police pull­back as a his­toric vic­to­ry. “It’s the first time in Turkey’s demo­c­ra­t­ic his­to­ry that an unplanned, peace­ful protest move­ment suc­ceed­ed in chang­ing the government’s approach and pol­i­cy,” said Sinan Ulgen, the chair­man of the Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic and For­eign Pol­i­cy Stud­ies, a research group in Istan­bul. “It gave for the first time a strong sense of empow­er­ment to ordi­nary cit­i­zens to demon­strate and fur­ther their belief that if they act like they did the last few days they can influ­ence events in Turkey.” Still, it was far from clear on Sat­ur­day whether they could cap­i­tal­ize on that suc­cess.

The Islamist-root­ed gov­ern­ment retains wide sup­port among reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives, and Mr. Erdo­gan insist­ed Sat­ur­day that the rede­vel­op­ment of the square would con­tin­ue as planned. By night­fall, as the crowds in Tak­sim Square grew row­di­er, a sense of fore­bod­ing crept in as many wor­ried that the police would return. In the Besik­tas neigh­bor­hood, the police were still fir­ing tear gas, and pro­test­ers were erect­ing bar­ri­cades in the streets.

The Inte­ri­or Min­istry said it had arrest­ed 939 peo­ple at demon­stra­tions across the coun­try, and that 79 peo­ple were wound­ed, a num­ber that was prob­a­bly low. After Friday’s protests, which were small­er and less vio­lent than those on Sat­ur­day, a Turk­ish doc­tors’ group report­ed near­ly 1,000 injuries.

The scenes car­ried the sym­bol­ic weight of spe­cif­ic griev­ances: peo­ple held beers in the air, a rebuke to the recent­ly passed law ban­ning alco­hol in pub­lic spaces; young men smashed the wind­shields of the bull­doz­ers that had begun raz­ing Tak­sim Square; and a red flag bear­ing the face of mod­ern Turkey’s sec­u­lar founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was draped over a destroyed police vehi­cle. But despite the com­par­isons made in some quar­ters with the street chaos of Egypt’s rev­o­lu­tion, no viable polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion here seems capa­ble of seiz­ing the dis­en­chant­ment of sec­u­lar-mind­ed Turks and mold­ing it in to a cohe­sive move­ment. . . .

“Turk­ish Pre­mier Blames Extrem­ists for Protests as Two Are Killed” by Seb­nem Arsu; The New York Times; 6/3/2013.

EXCERPT: . . . .“If we set aside those that joined upon their inno­cent motives and infor­ma­tion they got from the media, there are also ones that attend­ed an event orga­nized by extrem­ists,” Mr. Erdo­gan said in a speech. He sug­gest­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of for­eign provo­ca­tion, although he did not spec­i­fy its ori­gin.

“Our intel­li­gence agency has their own inves­ti­ga­tion on that — there is no need to dis­close them as this or that,” he said. . . .

“Erdo­gan Calls for End to Turkey Protest” by Ele­na Beca­toros and Suzan Fras­er [AP]; Yahoo News; 6/6/2013.

EXCERPT: . . . . In his last speech in Tunisia before fly­ing to Istan­bul, Erdo­gan had said that ter­ror­ist groups were involved in the protests, say­ing they had been iden­ti­fied.

In a twist, Erdo­gan implied that bankers were also part of a con­spir­a­cy that was fuelling the protests. He added that the flames of dis­sent had been fanned by oth­er groups too. . . .

“Peace­ful Protest Over Istan­bul Park Turns Vio­lent as Police Crack Down” by  Tim Arango and Cey­lan Yegin­su; The New York Times; 5/31/2013.

EXCERPT: . . . . . Anoth­er referred to Mr. Erdo­gan and the grow­ing num­ber of shop­ping malls being built around the city. “Let all shop­ping malls crum­ble and let Tayyip get crushed by their rub­ble,” the ban­ner read. In build­ing new mosques and empha­siz­ing Turkey’s Islam­ic past over its Byzan­tine and Roman lega­cies, Mr. Erdo­gan has been referred to as a lat­ter-day Ottoman sul­tan, with lit­tle regard for seek­ing pub­lic input on the projects. On Wednes­day, the gov­ern­ment held a ground­break­ing cer­e­mo­ny for a third bridge over the Bosporus that is being named for an Ottoman sul­tan.

“It’s all about supe­ri­or­i­ty, and rul­ing over the peo­ple like sul­tans,” said one of the pro­test­ers, Seckin Bar­baros, 26, a for­mer jour­nal­ist who is now unem­ployed. “When were we asked what we want­ed? We have three times the amount of mosques as we do schools. Yet they are build­ing new mosques. There are eight shop­ping malls in the vicin­i­ty of Tak­sim, yet they want to build anoth­er.” In a speech ear­li­er in the week, Mr. Erdo­gan dis­missed the pro­test­ers and said the destruc­tion of park would go ahead, “no mat­ter what they do.”

The anger in the streets is also a rebuke to the eco­nom­ic poli­cies of the gov­ern­ment, which have relied heav­i­ly on con­struc­tion and new hous­ing in Istan­bul to pow­er eco­nom­ic growth. Turkey has had a resilient econ­o­my that emerged rel­a­tive­ly unscathed from the glob­al finan­cial cri­sis, eclips­ing the per­for­mance of Europe and many oth­er nations. But some ana­lysts wor­ry the government’s focus on con­struc­tion projects could lead to a bub­ble much like the one in the Unit­ed States that led to the eco­nom­ic col­lapse of 2008. Ms. Bar­baros said, “What about the day when all these shop­ping malls will be emp­ty like in Greece and then they will wish they nev­er con­struct­ed them.” . . .

“Finan­cial Fears Gain Cre­dence as Unrest Shakes Turkey” by Lan­don Thomas, Jr.; The New York Times; 6/5/2013.

EXCERPT: It is not often that the rock-throw­ing street pro­test­er and the sea­soned bond investor see eye to eye.

This curi­ous hap­pen­stance — where both fear that the pro­fu­sion of glass tow­ers and shop­ping malls now over­whelm­ing the clas­sic Istan­bul sky­line is not only ugly but unsus­tain­able — under­lies the con­vul­sive upris­ing in Tak­sim Square.

The once soar­ing Turk­ish stock mar­ket has fall­en about 9 per­cent in the past week, inter­est rates are on the rise and, cru­cial­ly, after a peri­od of strength, the cur­ren­cy, the lira, has lost 8 per­cent in recent months and 1 per­cent just since the protests began.

For more than two years, a very small sub­set of investors and econ­o­mists has warned that, as with oth­er eco­nom­ic booms built on a moun­tain of debt — like the prop­er­ty spikes in Japan in the 1980s and more recent­ly in the Unit­ed States, Spain, Ire­land and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries — the one in Turkey would reach a painful end.

Until recent­ly, their warn­ings were ignored.

In con­trast to a Europe stag­nat­ing through­out most of the past decade, Turkey has grown at a 5 per­cent annu­al rate while keep­ing its pub­lic finances in check.

In fact, with a bud­get deficit that is below 2 per­cent of gross domes­tic prod­uct and over­all pub­lic-sec­tor debt of less than half its eco­nom­ic out­put, Turkey chal­lenges pow­er­house Ger­many for best-in-class sta­tus when it comes to these crit­i­cal bench­marks of broad eco­nom­ic health.

For Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, the polit­i­cal cri­sis he is fac­ing seems man­age­able pre­cise­ly because of Turkey’s eco­nom­ic suc­cess, which has buoyed a pious entre­pre­neur­ial class that forms the core of his con­stituen­cy. As the protest move­ment has unfurled, few ana­lysts have sug­gest­ed Mr. Erdogan’s hold on pow­er is in jeop­ardy, argu­ing that he main­tains the sup­port of the reli­gious mass­es that pro­pelled him to pow­er.

But that dynam­ic could change quick­ly should the econ­o­my fal­ter, as a grow­ing num­ber of ana­lysts now say is pos­si­ble.

Hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars of short-term loans have been flow­ing into the coun­try from investors in search of high­er yield­ing assets, financ­ing the very malls and sky­scrap­ers that have so dis­mayed the small but grow­ing coali­tion of sec­u­lar intel­lec­tu­als, left-of-cen­ter polit­i­cal activists and a smat­ter­ing of the pro­fes­sion­al class­es.

What wor­ries finan­cial experts is that this so-called hot mon­ey can leave the coun­try just as quick­ly as it arrived, touch­ing off a cur­ren­cy cri­sis and, even­tu­al­ly, a col­lapse in the prop­er­ty mar­kets that could threat­en the nation’s banks.

“This is a clas­sic cred­it boom, with mon­ey being thrown at Turkey, espe­cial­ly the banks,” said Tim Lee, an inde­pen­dent econ­o­mist at Pi Eco­nom­ics in Green­wich, Conn., who has warned for years of a Turk­ish finan­cial bub­ble. “At some point, though, you reach a moment when the music stops.”

It is per­haps too soon to say if that moment has come, but the finan­cial jit­ters that have fol­lowed the protests have been notice­able, espe­cial­ly with regard to the wob­bly lira . . .

“Turkey Stakes Claim in Amer­ica With $100 Mil­lion Mega-Mosque” by Ryan Mau­ro; The Clar­i­on Project; 5/21/2013.

ENTIRE TEXT: The gov­ern­ment of Turkey is build­ing a 15-acre, $100 mil­lion mega-mosque in Lan­ham, Mary­land. Turkey’s Prime Min­is­ter Erdo­gan vis­ited the site on May 15 as part of his offi­cial vis­it to the U.S.. The state of Mary­land was offi­cially rep­re­sented at the event by its Sec­re­tary of State John McDo­nough. The event was also attend­ed by the lead­ers of two U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood enti­ties.

The mega-mosque is called the Turk­ish Amer­i­can Cul­ture and Civ­i­liza­tion Cen­ter and, accord­ing to the Mus­lim Link, it “will like­ly become the largest and most strik­ing exam­ples of Islam­ic archi­tec­ture in the west­ern hemi­sphere” when it is fin­ished in 2014. The Mus­lim Link explic­itly says it is “a project of the gov­ern­ment of Turkey.”

On May 15, Prime Min­is­ter Erdo­gan spoke to hun­dreds of peo­ple at the con­struc­tion site and said he’d come back for the open­ing cer­e­mony next year. He warned the audi­ence that there are groups pro­mot­ing “Islam­o­pho­bia,” brand­ing poten­tial crit­ics as para­noid big­ots. Erdo­gan recent­ly said that “Islam­o­pho­bia” and Zion­ism are equiv­a­lent to fas­cism and anti-Semi­tism, say­ing they are a “crime against human­i­ty.”

On this trip to the U.S., Erdo­gan brought the father of one of the Islamists killed while on a Turk­ish flotil­la which was try­ing to break Israel’s weapons block­ade on Gaza. Gaza is con­trolled by Hamas, which is a des­ig­nated ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion by the U.S. State Depart­ment. Erdo­gan report­edly want­ed to him to meet Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. (In the end, the father met with Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry.)

The lead­ers of two U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood enti­ties in atten­dance includ­ed Naeem Baig, is the pres­i­dent of the Islam­ic Cir­cle of North Amer­ica (ICNA). A 1991 U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood memo lists ICNA as one of “our orga­ni­za­tions and the orga­ni­za­tions of our friends.” The memo says its “work in Amer­ica is “a kind of grand jihad in elim­i­nat­ing and destroy­ing the West­ern civ­i­liza­tion from with­in.”

The memo even refers to meet­ings with ICNA where there was talk about a merg­er. ICNA is also linked to the Pak­istani Islamist group Jamaat-e-Isla­mi and its con­fer­ences fea­ture rad­i­cal speak­ers. A for­mer ICNA pres­i­dent was recent­ly indict­ed for hor­rific war crimes com­mit­ted dur­ing Bangladesh’s 1971 suc­ces­sion from Pak­istan – the tor­ture and mur­der or 18 polit­i­cal oppo­nents.

The sec­ond offi­cial from a U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood enti­ty that attend­ed the event was Mohamed Magid, pres­i­dent of the Islam­ic Soci­ety of North Amer­ica (ISNA). ISNA and sev­eral of its com­po­nents are list­ed as U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood fronts in the same 1991 Broth­er­hood memo.

ISNA was also an unin­dicted co-con­spir­a­tor in the Holy Land Foun­da­tion case, dubbed the largest Islam­ic ter­ror-fund­ing tri­al in the his­tory of the U.S. Fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors in the case also list­ed ISNA as a U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood enti­ty. The Turk­ish gov­ern­ment has been qui­etly spread­ing its influ­ence in the U.S., but Erdogan’s pub­lic invovle­ment in the build­ing of this cen­ter takes Turkey’s “out­reach” in Amer­ica out of the realm of the sub­tle.

The Clar­ion Project recent­ly report­ed on the grow­ing ties between the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment and Native Amer­i­can tribes. With Con­gress’ help, thou­sands of Turk­ish con­trac­tors and their fam­i­lies may be flood­ing into America’s heart­land and set­tling in semi-autonomous zones of the Native Amer­i­cans, well out of the reach of Amer­i­can author­i­ties.

The Clar­ion Project also report­ed on the Turk­ish Fethul­lah Gulen school net­work in Amer­ica, which is cur­rently under FBI inves­ti­ga­tion. The net­work is the largest char­ter school net­work in Amer­ica. It is the same net­work that has been a crit­i­cal com­po­nent in Turkey’s on-going trans­for­ma­tion from a sec­u­lar democ­racy into an Islam­ic state. Erdo­gan and his Islamist gov­ern­ment calls Hamas a “resis­tance” group, despite the fact that Hamas specif­i­cally tar­gets Israeli civil­ians with sui­cide bomb­ings and rock­et attacks. Not sur­pris­ingly, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal is a big admir­er of Erdo­gan.

Since tak­ing office in 2003, Erdo­gan has been imple­ment­ing his Islamist agen­da, slow­ly but steadi­ly chang­ing Turkey from a sec­u­lar democ­racy to an Islamist state: Col­lege admis­sions have been changed to favor reli­gious stu­dents, the mil­i­tary has been gut­ted of its sec­u­lar gen­er­als (with one in five gen­er­als cur­rently in prison on dubi­ous charges) and women have been rout­ed out of top gov­ern­ment jobs. Hon­or killings in Turkey increased 1,400 per­cent between 2002 and 2009. Per­se­cu­tion of artists and jour­nal­ists has become com­mon­place as oppo­nents are charged with “crimes” like “den­i­grat­ing Islam” and “den­i­grad­ing the state.”

Accord­ing to the Mus­lim Link, the new cen­ter will have five build­ings, includ­ing a mosque “con­structed using six­teenth cen­tury Ottoman archi­tec­ture that can hold 750 wor­shipers.” The Turk­ish Amer­i­can Cul­ture and Civ­i­liza­tion Cen­ter will be the largest Islam­ic site in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. The fact that it is being built by the gov­ern­ment of Turkey rep­re­sents the next step in Erdogan’s desire to increase the Islamist influ­ence in Amer­i­ca.

“Turk­ish IHH Pres­i­dent Inves­ti­gat­ed for Financ­ing Al-Qae­da”; Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Report; 6/17/2012.

EXCERPT:  Turk­ish media is report­ing that the Pres­i­dent of the Human­i­tar­i­an Relief Foun­da­tion (İHH), spon­sor of the June 2010 Gaza flotil­la that was involved in a vio­lent alter­ca­tion with Israeli naval forces, is being inves­ti­gat­ed for alleged­ly financ­ing al-Qae­da through his orga­ni­za­tion. Accord­ing to the report:

. . . . Human­i­tar­i­an Relief Foun­da­tion (İHH) Pres­i­dent Bülent Yıldırım is being inves­ti­gat­ed for alleged­ly financ­ing al-Qae­da through his orga­ni­za­tion, dai­ly Habertürk has report­ed. The probe, led by an Istan­bul spe­cial­ly autho­rized pros­e­cu­tor, accus­es Yıldırım of ‘pro­vid­ing finan­cial aid to al-Qae­da via his foun­da­tion’ with absolute secre­cy, report­ed­ly with­out offi­cial num­ber­ing and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. A Diyarbakır spe­cial­ly autho­rized pros­e­cu­tor has also been lead­ing a sim­i­lar case into Yıldırım, Habertürk report­ed. Yıldırım was the İHH’s head dur­ing the 2010 Mavi Mar­mara flotil­la inci­dent . . . .

. . . There is strong evi­dence for Turk­ish gov­ern­men­tal involve­ment in the Gaza flotil­la inci­dent, with Turk­ish gov­ern­ment sup­port chan­neled through the Turk­ish Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work. Since 2006, Turkey has become a new cen­ter for the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The IHH was not act­ing alone but rather was an inte­gral part of a Turk­ish Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work.

The Gaza flotil­la inci­dent brought into sharp focus an even more sig­nif­i­cant long- term devel­op­ment: the grow­ing rela­tion­ship between the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment and the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which has giv­en rise to some of the most noto­ri­ous Islamist ter­ror­ist groups – from al-Qae­da to Hamas. Since 2006, Turkey has become a new cen­ter for the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, while the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip act­ed as the main axis for this activ­i­ty. . . .

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184–0309–8; pp. 135–136.

EXCERPT: . . . .Sev­en hun­dred and fifty new cor­po­ra­tions were estab­lished in the last months of the war under the direc­tion of Reich­sleiter Bor­mann, using the tech­nique per­fected by Her­mann Schmitz [of I.G. Far­ben]. A nation­al of each coun­try was the nom­i­nal head of each cor­po­rate struc­ture and the board was a mix of Ger­man admin­is­tra­tors and bank offi­cials, while the staffing at senior and mid­dle man­age­ment lev­els was com­prised of Ger­man sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cians. In the back­ground were the shad­owy own­ers of the cor­po­ra­tion, those Ger­mans who pos­sessed the bear­er bonds as proof of stock own­er­ship. The estab­lish­ment of such com­pa­nies, usu­ally launched in indus­tries requir­ing high tech­ni­cal skills was wel­comed in Spain and Argenti­na, to give two exam­ples because those gov­ern­ments appre­ci­ated that Ger­man com­pa­nies would gen­er­ate jobs and imple­ment a more favor­able bal­ance of trade. Coun­try by coun­try, a break­down by U.S. trea­sury inves­ti­ga­tors of these new 750 Ger­man firms was as fol­lows: Por­tu­gal, 58; Spain, 112; Swe­den, 233; Switzer­land, 214; Turkey, 35; Argenti­na, 98. . . .

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

EXCERPT. . . . 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. . . .

“U.S. Trails Va. Mus­lim Mon­ey, Ties” by Dou­glas Farah and John Mintz; Wash­ing­ton Post; 10/7/2002.

EXCERPT. . . . A wealthy con­struc­tion mag­nate, Nada con­trols firms across Europe and the Arab world. Nasred­din, of Ethiopi­an descent, oper­ates a busi­ness empire inter­twined with Nada’s out of Milan. Found­ed in Egypt, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has over the decades helped stir a revival in Islam­ic pride and mil­i­tant oppo­si­tion to sec­u­lar Arab regimes. Gov­ern­ments in Egypt, Syr­ia and Iraq have harsh­ly cracked down on the group since the 1950s. The orga­ni­za­tion, viewed as hero­ic in much of the Arab world, has recent­ly mod­er­ated some of its rad­i­cal stances. . . .

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

EXCERPT: . . . . 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. . . .

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

EXCERPT: . . . . 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. . . .

“A Moscow Show Tri­al on the Bosporus” by Dani Radrik; “Con­science of a Lib­er­al” by Paul Krug­man [The New York Times]; 3/12/2012.

EXCERPT: In what is prob­a­bly the country’s most impor­tant court case in at least five decades, hun­dreds of Turk­ish mil­i­tary offi­cers are in jail and on tri­al for alleged­ly hav­ing plot­ted to over­throw the then new­ly-elect­ed Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty back in 2003. The case also hap­pens to be one of the most absurd ever pros­e­cut­ed in an appar­ent democ­ra­cy. The evi­dence against the defen­dants is such an obvi­ous forgery that even a child would rec­og­nize it as such. Imag­ine, if you can, some­thing that is a cross between the Moscow show tri­als and the Salem witch­craft hys­te­ria, and you will not be too far off.

The government’s case rests on a set of doc­u­ments (most­ly Word files) that describe in gory detail prepa­ra­tions for the coup (code­named Sledge­ham­mer), includ­ing false-flag oper­a­tions to set the stage for the takeover and a list of cab­i­net mem­bers to be appoint­ed. These are unsigned dig­i­tal doc­u­ments on elec­tron­ic media (CDs, a detached hard dri­ve, a flash dri­ve) that have nev­er been traced to actu­al mil­i­tary com­put­ers or oth­er­wise authen­ti­cat­ed. The mil­i­tary has vehe­ment­ly denied that such plans ever exist­ed.

Most telling­ly, a tor­rent of evi­dence has come out since the doc­u­ments first emerged that points to their fraud­u­lent nature. The doc­u­ments con­tain hun­dreds of anachro­nisms – names of NGOs, mil­i­tary instal­la­tions, or firms that did not yet exist – that make clear beyond any rea­son­able doubt that they were pro­duced years lat­er and back­dat­ed to impli­cate the offi­cers on tri­al. Some of the defen­dants have shown that they were out­side the coun­try at the time they are alleged to have pre­pared these doc­u­ments or attend­ed plan­ning meet­ings.

An Amer­i­can foren­sic spe­cial­ist has deter­mined that the “hand writ­ing” on the CDs was actu­al­ly pro­duced by mechan­i­cal­ly repli­cat­ing indi­vid­ual let­ters from the note­books of one of the defen­dants. Devi­a­tions from mil­i­tary for­mat­ting sug­gest the doc­u­ments were pre­pared by indi­vid­u­als not ful­ly famil­iar with the army’s style require­ments. As long-time Turkey ana­lyst Gareth Jenk­ins put it to the New York­er: “It’s absolute­ly clear that these doc­u­ments have been forged.” . . . .

. . . . The Turk­ish mil­i­tary has a his­to­ry of polit­i­cal inter­ven­tion and has often clashed with the Islamists. So the alle­ga­tions have been a god­send for Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has exploit­ed the tri­al to gain con­trol over mil­i­tary pro­mo­tions and to break the army’s polit­i­cal pow­er.

But the real mov­ing force behind this and a num­ber of oth­er sim­i­lar tri­als is the Gülen move­ment, a key ally of the Erdoğan gov­ern­ment made up of the fol­low­ers of the Penn­syl­va­nia-based Turk­ish Mus­lim preach­er Fethul­lah Gülen. Gülenists have a long track record of fram­ing their per­ceived oppo­nents and engag­ing in judi­cial dirty tricks. Their con­trol of key posi­tions in the nation­al police and judi­cia­ry enables them to mount tar­get­ed oper­a­tions dis­guised as legal inves­ti­ga­tions. Pros­e­cu­tors scru­ti­niz­ing them, whistle­blow­ers reveal­ing their activ­i­ties, crit­i­cal jour­nal­ists, and even busi­ness­men have been among their vic­tims, in addi­tion to mil­i­tary offi­cers. As Ahmet Şık, a jour­nal­ist who wrote an expose about the move­ment and then found him­self fac­ing pre­pos­ter­ous charges of help­ing ter­ror­ists even before the book was pub­lished, exclaimed on his way to jail: “he who touch­es [them] burns.”

The police and pros­e­cu­tors who have staged the coup plot tri­al are known Gülen sym­pa­thiz­ers. And Gülenist media have worked over­time to shape pub­lic opin­ion, whip­ping up hys­te­ria against the defen­dants and pro­duc­ing a steady stream of dis­in­for­ma­tion about the case. The occa­sion­al judge who has ruled in favor of the offi­cers and com­men­ta­tors point­ing to prob­lems with the pros­e­cu­tors’ evi­dence (includ­ing me) have become tar­gets of Gülenist defama­tion. . . .

“Erdo­gan Over the Edge” by Claire Berlin­s­ki; City Jour­nal; 6/3/2013.

EXCERPT: . . . .Nor was it like­ly a coin­ci­dence that they fired a tear-gas can­is­ter “at close range” at the head of jour­nal­ist Ahmet Şık, best known for writ­ing about the infil­tra­tion and cor­rup­tion of Turkey’s police forces by the fol­low­ers of the Turk­ish imam Fethul­lah Gülen. For this, Şık was jailed as a “coup-plot­ter.” This time, he wound up in the hos­pi­tal, though he is expect­ed to recov­er. . . .