Egypt & Turkey Don't Mix

[man]

After the fall of Mursi in Egypt;

 

"In the end, the army sided with the protesters and the cruel joke was on the president: whether it was tragedy or comedy, placards reading 'Egypt and Mursi don't mix' got the biggest laugh on Tahrir Square"

 

Will Ordogan also fall because "Ordogan and Turkey don't mix now" after the recent protests against him"??

 

Like Mursi Ordogan was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood but he resigned from the Brotherhood as soon as he was elected to political office. The Turks kept Ordogan in office because he brought economic prosperity in Turkey however Turks now are saying that that prosperity does not give Erdogan a mandate to act in a dictatorial manner and are declaring that their honeymoon with Ordogan is over. Who is going to be the next Turkish leader? Is there someone in Turkey able to fill in Ordogan's shoe after he put the Turkish Army in his pockets?

[man]

As if the protests against the Muslim rule in Turkey were not enough, currently that country is faced with another crisis coming from Egypt where Islamist have fallen by military intervention; Turkey has been pro-Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt since the beginning and helped Brotherhood fighters and mercenaries, financed largely by Qatar, to infiltrate from Turkey into Syria in order to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad and replace him with a Muslim Brotherhood regime, like in Libya, having Egypt’s Morsi already calling for a Jihad against Syria.

 

But it was the Muslim Brotherhood that fell in Egypt and not Syria's government. Soon after Turkey's FM Ahmet Davutoglu declared:

"Whatever the reason is, it is unacceptable that a democratically elected government was overthrown by illegitimate means, even more, with a military coup" (Hurriyet Daily News quotes Davotuglu) as the FM went to meet PM to discuss the Egyptian developments.

 

Davotuglu have forgotten that the Brotherhood introduced a constitution and formed a parliament in Egypt all by ILLEGITIMATE MEANS and was about to introduce Sharia Law in Egypt. And that during a year of MB rule in Egypt most of the people went more hungry and more poor than before and the numbers of protesters in the streets against Morsi reached the 14 million mark among whom where many who voted for Morsi a year ago but had a change of heart now. Clearly Morsi has not become a president for ALL Egyptians as he promised to be when first he came to power.

 

What is clear also now that pro-Morsi Turkey has to apologize to Egypt's new rulers or face the consequences --a rupture between Egypt and Turkey since Turkey previous support has caused more blood to be shed on the streets of Cairo and Tahrir Square. Is Ordogan man enough to extent this apology to the Egyptian people? The recent news from Turkey is that Turkish authorities called Egyptian army's actions which resulted in overthrow of Mohamed Morsi unacceptable. Will Turkey order its Navy to invade Egypt in order to restore Morsi to power? With Ordogan anything is possible!

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/07/04/washington-islamist-strategy-in-crisis-as-morsi-toppled/

[man]

Cairo tells Turkey not to meddle in Egypt’s internal affairs

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/07/16/314150/cairo-tells-turkey-not-to-meddle-in-egypt/

The new Egyptian government has warned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government officials against meddling in the North African’s internal affairs.

 

In an interview with Turkey’s English-language daily Today's Zaman on Sunday, Erdogan said that ousted leader Mohamed Morsi is the only legitimate president of Egypt.

"Currently, my president in Egypt is Morsi because he was elected by the people," he stated. "If we don't judge the situation like that it is tantamount to ignoring the Egyptian people.”

In separate statements, Turkish government officials recently denounced the Egyptian military's removal of Morsi, the country's first democratically elected leader, as an "unacceptable coup”.

On Tuesday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry expressed "strong resentment at comments like these, which… represent a clear intervention in internal Egyptian affairs," said Badr Abdelatty, the ministry spokesman.

Later in the day, Egyptian presidential spokesman Ahmed Elmoslmany also issued a statement about the issue, saying, “I consider the (Turkish) statements inappropriate and I consider it interference in Egyptian internal affairs.”

"I clearly say to Ankara, it should respect Egyptian sovereignty and the will of the Egyptian people. Egypt did not interfere in what happened in Taksim Square," Elmoslmany said, referring to anti-government protests in Istanbul last month.

"Turkey has to understand it is speaking about a big country with a great history," he added.

[man]

Turkish PM Erdogan has criticized the EU for not condemning the violent crackdown on [Muslim Brotherhood] demonstrators in Egypt, which resulted in dozens of deaths, strongly enough. He believes the EU’s stance on less violent Turkish protests was unfairly tough.

--
Commenting on the bloodshed, the office of the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, issued a statement, which said that she “deeply deplores the loss of life” during the demonstrations and "calls on all actors to refrain from violence and to respect the principles of peaceful protest."

Still, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at the EU for too soft an approach towards the deaths of Egyptian protestors....

 

http://rt.com/news/erdogan-slams-eu-reaction-egypt-695/

[man]

Are We On the Brink of World War III?

Once again we are drawn ineluctably into the vortex of destruction of 1914-18

by Justin Raimondo, June 03, 2013

Several commentators have pointed to the similarities between the pre-World War I era and our own. While every historical analogy is, by definition, inexact, they are right to raise the alarm.

 

In 1914, Europe was divided into two camps: the Entente, consisting of Britain, France, and Russia, and the Central Powers, predominantly Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Italy was formally a member, but went neutral when the war started, eventually joining the Entente). While this division had its roots in the long history of inter-imperialist rivalry over the acquisition of colonies in Africa and the Far East – with the “haves” being Britain and France, and the “have nots” being Germany and Austria – by the turn of the century the conflict began to re-focus on the European theater, where the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in Southeastern Europe – the Balkans – put the rival camps on a collision course.

 

Intent on penetrating the region and promoting its pan-Slavic agenda, Russia was fanning the flames of Serbian nationalism in the region, and the Kingdom of Serbia was the logical launching pad for this campaign. Serbia was a cauldron of ultra-nationalist sentiment, where – at the instigation of Russian agents – secret societies sprang up militantly agitating for a “Greater Serbia.” A pseudo-mystical ultra-nationalist narrative was elaborated for popular consumption, based on the idea of restoring the old “Greater Serbia” of the pre-Ottoman era, a supposedly glorious chapter in the history of the race that ended with the defeat of Prince Lazar on the famous Field of Blackbirds: Lazar died heroically, fighting off Turkish Janissaries. The great problem of the Serbian nationalists, however, was – and is – their expansive concept of what “Greater Serbia” consists of: every spot on which a Serbian Orthodox church or monastery ever existed is, today, considered Serbian territory by these radicals, and back in 1914 they were far more numerous – and powerful – than they are at the present moment. Indeed, as Ralph Raico points out:

 

“The immediate origins of the 1914 war lie in the twisted politics of the Kingdom of Serbia.[1] In June, 1903, Serbian army officers murdered their king and queen in the palace and threw their bodies out a window, at the same time massacring various royal relations, cabinet ministers, and members of the palace guards. It was an act that horrified and disgusted many in the civilized world. The military clique replaced the pro-Austrian Obrenovic dynasty with the anti-Austrian Karageorgevics. The new government pursued a pro-Russian, Pan-Slavist policy, and a network of secret societies sprang up, closely linked to the government, whose goal was the ‘liberation’ of the Serb subjects of Austria (and Turkey), and perhaps the other South Slavs as well.”

 

The foreign policy of the Serbian government, with ultra-nationalist Prime Minister Nicolas Pasic at its head, “aimed at the creation of a Greater Serbia,” writes Raico, “necessarily at the expense of Austria-Hungary.” The Russians, the British, and the French all backed the Serbs’ expansionist claims, and, with Russian help, a series of Balkan wars saw the doubling in size of the Serbian kingdom as the decibel level of Serbian revanchist agitation picked up. It was in this volatile context that a Bosnian Serb fanatic, one Gavrilo Princip, shot and killed Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo. Princip and his collaborators were members of the “Black Hand,” an extreme nationalist group headed up by the chief of Serbian intelligence.

 

The Austrian annexation of Bosnia had added fuel to the fire, and set off a series of assassination attempts on Austrian officials by the “Black Hand.” When the Archduke visited Sarajevo, Austrian troops were massing on the Bosnian-Serbian border, backing up an Austrian demand that the Serbs renounce all claims to the territory. The Serbs complied, but the actions of Princip and his co-conspirators set off an explosion that ended with the destruction of European civilization.

 

What turned a regional conflict over narrowly defined issues of chiefly local interest into a global conflagration was the system of alliances and resulting intrigues that plagued world politics. I won’t go into the longstanding controversy over who bears the chief burden of “war guilt”: suffice to say here that the structural logic of the two rival alliances had an escalating effect, one that dragged the rest of Europe – and us – into the vortex of destruction. From the trenches of the Great War sprang the worst monsters of the twentieth century: fascism, national socialism, and Bolshevism. The death toll was in the millions.

In its broad outlines, we face a similar situation today. The Balkans of the new millennium is undoubtedly the Middle East....

 

Of course, the specifics are quite different: yet the broad outlines of the Balkan scenario fit the Middle East to a tee. We have the modern day Entente – the “haves,” i.e. the Western powers of the US, Britain, and France, versus the “have nots,” those being Russia, Iran, and Syria. Standing warily on the sidelines is China, a formerly “have not” nation on its way to becoming a superpower, which is increasingly tilting toward the latter. And of course the Western allies have their Middle Eastern protectorates, or what’s left of them, in Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states.

 

Under normal conditions, the narrowly defined issues of whether the Ba’athists should continue to rule Syria, or the status of the occupied territories of Palestine, would be of chiefly local interest. Under the conditions of inter-imperialist rivalry, however, every local ethnic-religious-territorial dispute has the potential to become an issue of global import. That’s what gave Gavrilo Princip the opportunity to fire the first shot of the Great War and achieve a malign immortality. It’s not hard to imagine a similarly explosive incident somewhere in the Middle East signaling the first volleys of World War III. The region is so crowded with tripwires that it’s only a matter of time before Uncle Sam stumbles over one and is driven by the structural logic of its alliances into a war with Iran: indeed, the first shots of that war have already been fired, in Syria, where the World War I analogy seamlessly segues into a parallel with World War II.

 

The end of the cold war did not lead to a “unipolar world,” as Charles Krauthammer and his fellow neocons celebrated it in the early 1990s. Instead of the “benevolent global hegemony” envisioned by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan in their nineties foreign policy manifesto, we are back to the pre-WWI era of old-fashioned inter-imperialist rivalry. Instead of the “end of history,” we stand at the beginning of a new era of nationalism, religious fanaticism, and ideologically-driven violence. Combined with the structural incentives for conflict inherent in our system of alliances and the built-in dangers of a policy of “collective security,” this is a recipe for another world war.

 

In reading various accounts of the origins of World War I, I am struck by the leitmotif of unintended consequences that runs throughout that tragic story: it is a narrative of events that took on a life of their own, and created such a momentum for war that all the combatants were dragged along the road to destruction in spite of themselves.

 

As the Russians send missiles to Syria, and the US (and its Gulf allies) support and arm the Islamist rebels, the involvement of Iran is bound to drag in the United States sooner or later....

 

In short, the Middle East is a tinderbox, even more explosive than the Balkans of 1914 ....

 

Having failed to learn the lesson of history – even relatively recent history – our politicians are repeating the mistakes of 1914. Disdaining the sage advice of the Founders, we are once again going abroad in search of monsters to destroy: impelled by our system of entangling alliances, we are drawn ineluctably into the vortex of destruction.

 

[man]

While generals in Turkey have been put under control, generals in Egypt have come to power.

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World from Berlin: Erdogan's 'Political Show Trial'

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-press-reaction-to-ergenekon-verdicts-in-turkish-court-a-915057.html

Aug 6, 2013

Turkey's mammoth five-year trial of 275 defendants in the alleged "Ergenekon" coup conspiracy failed to deliver convincing evidence. It will deepen divisions in Turkish society, write German commentators.

When it began in 2008, Turkey's trial of the so-called "Ergenekon" network of alleged ultra-nationalist conspirators plotting to military coup with assassinations and murders won praise as an important move to curtail the military and strengthen the rule of law.

 

But by the time it finished on Monday, the trial had been discredited because the prosecution failed to present irrefutable evidence and because of ever new waves of arrests -- not just of military members but of opposition parliamentarians, journalists and academics as well.

 

The Ergenekon network, named after a mythical Central Asian valley where a wolf saved Turks from annihilation, is said to have been linked to the "Deep State," militant secularists in the establishment who are believed to have influenced political life in Turkey for decades. [so the Turks know that they have come from Central Asia and know that they are telling lies when they claim to be from Middle East]

 

German media commentators say that while some of the guilty verdicts may be justified, the trial ended up looking like a settling of scores by the increasingly autocratic government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

 

The commentators write that the verdicts will further divide Turkish society, beset by a widening rift this year following Erdogan's heavy-handed treatment of young anti-government protestors in the wake of a dispute over the redevelopment of Istanbul's Gezi Park.

 

Left-wing Berliner Zeitung writes:

"Many Turks lean towards conspiracy theories, which isn't totally unfounded because the country is an eldorado for conspirators. There is convincing evidence of secret, criminal political networks. But they only rarely come to light. High hopes had been pinned on the trial of the Ergenekon conspiracy -- and they were disappointed, as expected. Criminals like the former head of the notorious JITEM, the Gendarmerie Intelligence Organization, were rightly sent to jail, but with many of the approximately 254 guilty verdicts of officers, academics, politicians and journalists, there are question marks."

"Many liberal Turks welcomed what once started out as a plausible investigation into the shadow networks of the 'Deep State.' It helped to curb the excessive power of the Turkish military. But the evidence remained thin and the trial failed to live up to judicial norms. After five years it didn't even provide unquestionable evidence that Ergenekon existed."

"But above all, the conservative-Islamic government of Erdogan didn't use the trial to investigate the possible conspiracy and to strengthen democracy. It misused the trial to settle scores with its opponents and to create new conspiracy theories. The Ergenekon trial has divided Turkish society even more than it already is."

 

Center-left Suddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"With some defendants the situation was clear: Veli Kucuk, the founder of the unscrupulous gendarmerie secret service JITEM, got a life sentence. The former general is seen as responsible for many unsolved murders. Mafia boss Sedat Peker's 10-year sentence is also likely to have been justified. But the judicial proceedings against the 'Deep State' were discredited by ever new waves of arrests of opposition politicians, media critics of the Ergenekon trial and professors who had previously been beyond reproach. The arrests didn't result in prosecutions every time. But they created the suspicion that the 'trial of the century' was also being used as a general settling of scores with the critics of Erdogan."

 

"All this happened before the recent wave of protests against Erdogan and his government -- meaning 'before Gezi,' before the nationwide demonstrations that followed the brutal police crackdown on a few Istanbul protestors who wanted to protected green space. 'After Gezi,' the prime minister claims, Turkey suddenly has a lot of new enemies. They're mostly young, well educated and most of them were apolitical until now, and they yearn for the freedom Erdogan once promised them."

 

Left-wing Die Tageszeitung writes:

"This was a political show trial that has nothing to do with the rule of law. The prosecution's charges, which ran to more than 2,000 pages, didn't deliver a single piece of convincing evidence that the Ergenekon secret alliance existed. Witnesses were hauled in whose identity was kept secret. Their statements were fit for the theater. At the same time some defendants were abe to prove during the trial that data and documents that incriminated them were loaded into their computers by the police after their arrests. 'Accidentally,' it was said."

"The once-powerful Kemalist elite had a compliant judiciary. It once sent the current prime minister to jail for reciting a poem. Today Erdogan too has a compliant judiciary which is waging a campaign of revenge against its predecessors."

 

Conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"The start of the trial in 2008 was still seen as a sign of democratization. It was targeted against the 'Deep State,' a network of paramilitary gangs that didn't shy away from murder. But curious investigation results, diffuse waves of arrests and the worsening of the political climate in Turkey raised doubts about the trial. It will only be possible to judge in a few years whether it lived up to judicial norms. The European Court of Human Rights, which the convicted defendants will surely turn to once they've exhausted the appeal processes in their own country, will pass judgment on Monday's verdict."

-- David Crossland

[man]

Ergenekon Verdicts Erdogan Silences Dissent in Divided Turkey

By Hasnain Kazim in Istanbul

A Turkish court on Monday announced verdicts and long prison sentences for dozens of defendants in the so-called 'Ergenekon' plot to overthrow the government. The rulings expose how uncertain and divided the country is.

Ergenekon is the name of a valley in Central Asia. Legend has it that the few Turks who survived a disastrous defeat [from China] fled there, grew into a strong nation and emerged under the leadership of a gray wolf to found a great empire. Many Turk nationalists like the story. The wolf is their emblem. [Ataturk was called Grey Wolf because he retreated when Greeks attacked him after WW1, then like the legendary Grey Wolf of the Turks of Central Asia, turned around and attacked the Greeks destroying them]

 

Now, in a mammoth trial -- one of the most controversial in Turkey's history -- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has killed the wolf. The proceedings came to an end on Monday with verdicts and long jail sentences for dozens of the 275 defendants in the so-called "Ergenekon" trial.

 

From the government's point of view, Ergenekon is a network that was plotting a coup. Murders and attacks were to spread fear and chaos --and give the army an excuse to bring down Erdogan to restore peace and order.

 

The alleged members were described as traitors and terrorists. The defendants mainly included members of the military but also lawyers, authors, journalists and opposition politicians.

 

'Tragicomic' Accusations

The highest ranked defendant, former chief of staff General Ilker Basbug, was sentenced to life in prison. The court ruled that he was the leader of the Ergenekon group and was primarily responsible for the planned coup. Basbug called the accusations "tragicomical." Several other officers had already been convicted last year for supposedly plotting a coup.

The convictions would seem to be consistent with Erdogan's stated goal of curtailing the political influence of the once all-powerful generals. Indeed, at first glance it's an understandable aim given that the army staged three coups in recent decades and regards itself as the true guardian of the national interest.

But the evidence was questionable, and in some cases non-existent. The government hasn't targeted a small, secret group of conspirators but half the military leadership. Many author, journalists, lawyers, businesspeople and opposition politicians are in jail. Erdogan, many critics are convinced, is waging a witchhunt against his political opponents.

 

Crackdown on Critics

The trial is symptomatic of an insecure, divided republic where modernisation and Islamization are advancing in equal pace. The divisions aren't always clear and they often zig-zag: here the ordinary people, there the intellectuals; here the religious, there the secularists; here the Kemalists, there the Erdogan supporters. Erdogan has turned the former military dictatorship into a police state.

 

The story that Ergenekon was part of an even greater conspiracy called "Deep State"-- aimed at bringing the generals back to power -- has become steadily less credible. Erdogan, who has been in power since 2003 and who won a third term in july 2011, increasingly resembles a power-obsessed ruler bent on silencing all opposition. Critics say his aim isn't to submit the military to democratic rule but simply to cement his own grip on power.

 

The intimidation and the number of arrests has steadily risen in the last 10 years. Many journalists no longer dare to report what's really happening, authors avoid making public appearances and government critics need bodyguards. The anti-terrorism law is an effective instrument of power for the government as the supposed terrorist threat is an accusation that's hard to disprove. It plays on a deep-rooted fear among Turks that someone is trying to destabilize and damage the nation.

 

While intellectuals deplore the curbs on press freedoms, many Turks continue to applaud Erdogan when he cracks down on supposed enemies of the state. "We show a firm, courageous stance in order to free our country and our people from being troubled by gangs and mafiosi," he said recently, according to the Turkish daily Hürriyet. "No one stands above the law. We are determined to combat illegal gangs."

 

It is indeed difficult to ignore the string of political murders that Turkey has seen in recent years. The journalist Nedim Sener says the attacks and killings were masterminded by people in government agencies. "The latest protests in Turkey and the reaction show the mindset this government still has," he says.

 

He has been punished for his criticism: He spent a year in jail and is alleged to be a member of the Ergenekon network.

New York author Paul Auster said a year ago he wouldn't visit Turkey because so many authors and journalists are in prison there for no reason. Erdogan retorted that he had no idea who Auster was and sarcastically remarked: "Oh, we need you very much!"

The general secretary of the ruling, conservative-Islamic AKP party sided with Erdogan. Auster, he said, was probably part of the Ergenekon plot.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/verdicts-in-turkish-ergenekon-trial-reflect-deep-divisions-a-914924.html

Edited August 6, 2013 by man