Remember the bizarre coup a year ago in the summer, which Turkish President Erdogan said was fomented by his arch rival Gulen and his network?
This coup is an example of just how dirty and evil geopolitics really is. The truth is that geopolitics is a dirty game where only sociopaths need apply. If you’re not already a sociopath, you will have to act like one in order to play this nasty game. If you’re not a sociopath, I have a hard time seeing how you can even engage in geopolitics considering all the dirty business you will have to engage in.
Back to the coup.
Actually Gulen and the Gulenists had nothing whatsoever to do with the coup. The coup was actually staged by secular Ataturkist Turkish nationalists in the military over Erdogan’s attempt to Islamicize a secular state and his disgusting corruption. It looks like Erdogan was warned about the coup beforehand by someone, possibly the Russians.
It also looks like the US was involved in the coup and definitely had foreknowledge. The US motivation for the coup would have been to punish and remove Erdogan for his recent moves cozying up with the Russians, as Erdogan had started making friendly with them only a week before the coup. This infuriated the Deep State, so they activated their coup network in the Turkish military. This network already had their own reasons for wanting Erdogan out.
It looks like Erdogan knew that the coup was going to go down and simply allowed it to happen so he could use it to his devious advantage. Erdogan already had lists with tens of thousands of names on them of his enemies to be arrested in case of a coup. Obviously these lists had been made up long beforehand and were sitting in some drawer just waiting to be used.
So he whipped them out and arrested ~40,000 of his enemies, mostly people who were part of this Gulen Network, which actually had nothing whatsoever to do with the coup. Gulen is an Islamist just like Erdogan and in fact, he was close to Erdogan until they had some sort of falling out, which resulted in Gulen’s becoming Enemy #1. Gulen does indeed have a network in the military and all around society, but they are not secular and were not involved in the coup. We can tell who the coup plotters were by the language used in the statements they issued during the coup. The wording used would only be used by Turkish secular Ataturkist nationalists. Many of Erdogan’s enemies were killed in the roundups. Much more were arrested and thrown in prison, where many of them were tortured.
Anyway, Erdogan immediately blamed Gulen (falsely) and then set about dismantling his network in Turkey while also shutting down most of the opposition press and arresting most of the opposition politicians. As of now, Erdogan is simply dictator of Turkey. Turkey is also an untouchable member of NATO of all things.
