Assid of Syria. Turkey should be kicked out of NATO.

https://news.vice.com/article/a-look-at-president-erdogans-opulent-615-million-palace-four-times-the-size-of-versailles

I love when they make bold proclamations of an action being an attack on NATO only to have a NATO spokesperson later clarify it isn't.

should have never been in it in the first place.

Secretary of State John Kerry said that the United States will assist Turkey in the investigation of a failed coup and invited Ankara to share any evidence it has against a US-based opposition figure Fethullah Gulen.

Speaking in Luxembourg, Kerry said Washington had not yet received a formal extradition bid for the expatriate cleric, but added: "We fully anticipate that there will be questions raised about Mr Gulen."

Gulen, a reclusive Islamic preacher with a worldwide following who is regularly accused of a behind the scenes role in Turkish politics, lives in a tiny town in the Pocono Mountains of the US state of Pennsylvania.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/16/turkey-coup-president-erdogan-says-military-elements-guilty-of-t/

an ally. We might not call it "turning him over" though.

Turkey has the right to present an extradition request, listing charges and asking that we render him up.

Gulen has the right to go to a US court and file a habeas corpus petition. This would require more than a foreign conviction in a kangaroo court.

Now picture this. You are a US district court judge. This man comes before you, claiming his constitutional rights are being violated. Are you going to accept the claims made by a foreign government that is arresting journalists, scientists, and thousands of judges? No. It's expanded review.

There's a lot of background here - this thing with Gulen has been going on for years. In 2013 a corruption case caused Erdogan to claim that Gulen was attempting a coup then.
http://ufilter.blogspot.com/2015/02/will-us-deport-or-extradite-fethullah.html

More about the 2013 corruption case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Turkey

At some point, Obama and Kerry may have to get tough.

I have family members who are diplomats in foreign embassies in Turkey and they've been talking about Gulen's people setting up a shadow government in Turkey and encouraging a coup for several years now.

They have been monitoring and collecting information on Gulen's activities. We were in touch with them all night and the embassies are preparing to turn over the information to the Turkish and American governments to assist in his extradition back to Turkey.

schools in the US and 1,000 worldwide. He has a compound in the Poconos.

His whole alleged, "moderate and modern" spin on the Quran is the basis of his teachings to mediate between East and West.

Gulen's parallel structure setup is part of agorist thinking about how to set up societies that are alternatives to decadent Western societies, as they allegedly fall apart.

And so his charter school system exists, the largest privately owned, publicly funded charter school system in the US.

and it is one of the top schools in chi. and model citizens as far as making their buildings available to the community.

when the fbi raided their offices in illinois a while back, i suspected it had more to do w turkey than w the schools. nothing has come of the raids afaik. but perhaps now we will see what they were really looking for.

They are a massive scam, but we needed a fifth column inside Turkey. Having local taxpayers pay for it is easier on their budgets.

Looks like we have not gotten better at this thing since Bay of Pigs. I just hope our nukes are safe.

Like in that stupid Demolition Man movie, it's all Edgar Friendly's fault.

probably knows.


My take is that this whole thing is about who is going to control the world's money transfer systems -- East or West. Kerry's sitting in Luxembourg, where a lot of intel networks converge on all that stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala

http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-turkey-coup-2016-7

I think it was more a call for stability than anything else. Given the long border Turkey has with Syria and Iraq, I assume their number one concern was that anything that destabilized Turkey could have incredibly serious consequences -- with ISIS moving into a country that is half in Europe.

Kerry had been in intensive talks with Lavrov all day, following long talks that they had the previous day also including Putin. His comment at the news conference in Moscow, first said that both he and Lavrov were just learning about Turkey.

Both Obama and Kerry had the addition concern - if that was not enough - that there are many American military people at the base that they have used to fight against ISIS - which now has the power out and they are not allowed to fly. I assume that this has constrained their comments.

Business Insider tends to RW/neo con oppinions. Here, their editorializing "clear support" rather overstates what is a pretty minimal statement -

"The President and Secretary agreed that all parties in Turkey should support the democratically elected government of Turkey, show restraint, and avoid any violence or bloodshed. The Secretary underscored that the State Department will continue to focus on the safety and security of US citizens in Turkey. The President asked the Secretary to continue to keep him updated as the situation unfolds."

Kerry also issued a separate statement of support, adding that the US was viewing the situation with "gravest concern."

Note that restrain and avoiding violence is not applied to just one side. You could say that firing scores of judges is NOT restraint.

Wonder if Turkey will revert to Ottoman Empire status?