Overnight Turkish president Erdogan’s counter-coup witch hunt continued, when thousands of police officers were suspended on Monday, widening a systemic purge of Erdogan’s enemies first in the armed forces and then judiciary after a failed military coup, now focusing on the interior police force, and raising concern among European allies that it was abandoning the rule of law. Turkey’s state-run news agency says the nation has detained or suspended 20,000 personnel across the country, following Friday’s foiled coup attempt.
Anadolu Agency says a total of 8,777 employees attached to the ministry were dismissed, including 30 governors, 52 civil service inspectors and 16 legal advisers
Thirty regional governors and more than 50 high-ranking civil servants have also been dismissed, CNN Turk said. Thousands of members of the armed forces, from foot soldiers to commanders, were rounded up on Sunday, some shown in photographs stripped to their underpants and handcuffed on the floors of police buses and a sports hall. Several thousand prosecutors and judges have also been removed.
Bloomberg summarizes as follows: more than than 7,500, including more than 6,000 soldiers from various ranks detained by police, Turkish PM Binali Yildirim says in televised remarks. Those detained include 755 judges and prosecutors, 650 civilians and 100 police officers. Separately, about 9,000 from the Interior Ministry, 3,00 judges and prosecutors and 1,500 staff members of Finance Ministry have been removed from duty.
In total, approximately 20,000 political opponents “purged” just days after the conclusion of the failed coup.
At the same time speculation that the terribly planned “coup” was anything but came from the European Commission itself. As Reuters adds, the swift rounding up of judges and others after a failed coup in Turkey indicated the government had prepared a list beforehand, according to EU commissioner dealing with Turkey’s membership bid, Johannes Hahn, said on Monday.
“It looks at least as if something has been prepared. The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage,” Hahn said. “I’m very concerned. It is exactly what we feared.”
Turkey may restore the death penalty so Erdogan can liquidate his political enemies the state can execute the coup plotters. The EU, in turn, says that restoration of the death penalty would mean kissing Turkey’s already slim chances at EU membership goodbye. I wonder how much, at this point, Erdogan actually wants EU membership, which might interfere with his plans to fully Islamacize Turkey. Indeed, Erdogan’s Islamist AKP party floated, then withdrew a new Islamist constitution.
That is just normal operating procedure for Erdogan, who started as a penniless youth in a slum and is now allegedly a billionaire. When prosecutors found millions of dollars in cash while investigating his associates and sons, Bilal and Burak, for bribery, corruption, fraud, money laundering, and gold smuggling, 350 police officers and all the prosecutors involved were simply removed from their jobs. Only interested in his relentless Islamization of Turkey, Erdogan’s core party followers evidently attach no value to democratic principles or legality as such and think it only natural that he and his sons should have enriched themselves on such a huge scale.
Edward Luttwak is another observer who feels (like myself) that the “Gulenist” plot angle is just a red herring:
When Erdogan foists the blame for anything that goes wrong — including his very own decision to restart the war against the country’s Kurds — on foreigners, the United States, and you-know-who (the “Saturday people“), his followers readily believe him. That is also true of his wild accusations of terrorism against the U.S.-based Turkish religious leader Fethullah Gulen, once his staunch ally. Having previously blamed Gulen for an aborted corruption investigation, which he had described as a “judicial coup,” Erdogan is now blaming Gulen and his followers for the attempted military coup as well. That could be true to some extent, but Turkish military officers scarcely needed Gulen to egg them on: They blame Erdogan and his AKP followers for dismantling Ataturk’s secular republic; for having built up the murderous Sunni extremists of Syria who are now spilling back into Turkey to conduct suicide bombings; and for deliberately restarting the war against the country’s Kurds in 2015 for crass political reasons — a war that is costing soldiers’ lives every day and threatens the survival of Turkey itself within its present borders. (Kurds are a net majority in the eastern provinces.)
The Turkish coup appears to have collapsed almost as quickly as it began, with government forces backing Turkish President (and Islamist scumbag) Tayyip Erdogan in the process of mopping up the last coup forces.
There’s a conspiracy theory floating around that Erdogan staged the coup for his own benefit so he could consolidate his grip on power. This I don’t believe, because the sort of effort required to carry this off (multiple military movements in both Ankara and Istanbul, control of tanks, helicopter and fighter aircraft units, coordination of seizing bridges, airports, TV stations, etc.), plus the significant amount of bloodshed involved, all strongly suggest that it wasn’t staged.
However, the speed with which is was carried out, and the even more rapid way in which it collapsed, suggests a more plausible conspiracy theory: It was a real coup carried out by elements of the Turkish military, but one that was compromised almost from the beginning from Erdogan sympathizers. Erdogan let the coup happen so he could consolidate his grip on power in the aftermath, which is precisely what happened, with purges of the military and judiciary (which doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with the coup).
Some puzzles:
Why bomb the parliament building, a target of no military significance with great negative connotations? (See also: Reichstag fire.)
How did the military censor FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube? I can’t imagine that there’s a giant switch in Ankara that says “Censor Social Media.” That’s more a National Intelligence (MIT) function, and presumably Erdogan has a had a chance to install his own people there. So how would the coup plotters infiltrate that, or the telecoms?
For that matter, who are the coup plotters? Except for the Emmanuel Goldstein-like character of Fethullah Gulen (who condemned the coup), none have been named. (Supposedly seven have escaped to Greece, AKA Turkey’s traditional enemy. How convenient.)
Why was there evidently no attempt made to kill Erdogen? If you have even partial control of the air force (which the coup apparently did), why not shoot him down as he’s flying back? Taking out the head of state is one of the biggest goals of a successful coup, and it doesn’t even seem to have been attempted here.
It’s entirely possibly that the failed coup is just what it appeared to be as it unraveled: an attempt by a faction of the military that fell just short of seizing control which was underdone by Erdogan’s remaining popularity among the general populace. But there are still a lot of unanswered questions…
After lots of government claims they were winning against the coup, we now have some hard evidence of pro-coup forces surrendering on the Bosphorus bridge in Istanbul, as shown in this video:
While the situation in Ankara may very well be different, this is pretty direct evidence that government forces are winning and that the coup has failed in Istanbul.
Strange that we still haven’t heard anything about who the plotters were, except Erdogan’s assertion that Fethullah Gulen is involved, something Gulen himself (who denounced the coup) has strongly denied…
Lots of conspiracy theories that Erdogan launched his own false flag operation to further consolidate power. Like just about all conspiracy theories, it’s unlikely and way too pat. Though bombing the Parliament building did seem a rather heavy-handed “Reichstag fire” moment…
The military regime is at least making noises about protecting human rights and the constitutional state, which is a good sign.
The army already controls the TV stations and bridges, shut down the airport, successfully disarmed police in Istanbul, and are doing low “fuck you, we’re in charge” plane and helicopter passes over Ankara. I’d say it’s probably all over but the shouting and moping up token resistance from Erdogan’s Islamist AKP party, despite Erdogan’s spokesmen claiming that the coup attempt has been “repelled.”
This is not the first coup in Turkey’s history; indeed, historically they’ve played the roll as a check and balance to Islamic fundamentalism and maintaining Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s vision of a secular Turkish state. Unlike the rest of the Middle East, after a few months or years, the Turkish military relinquishes control back to a (secular) government.
Erdogan tried to prevent this through repeated purges of the military. It appears that he failed.
Meanwhile, Obama continues his amazing streak of backing losers.
The scene there seems a bit chaotic, with intermittent small arms fire:
If this video is any indication, people out on the streets seem more festive than resistant:
Video of Turkish tanks (I’m guessing Leopard 2s, the most modern tanks in Turkey’s armed forces) rolling in the streets:
Here, on the other hand, we see (I think) an M-60 Patton tank just tell protestors “Fuck you and fuck your car” while they beat at it ineffectually with (I kid you not) long sticks (and later an APC does the same thing):
This “death from above” video is getting a lot of play on YouTube. The title says this is an AH-1 Helicopter attacking a police station, which makes more sense than it being an F-16 (as labeled in other copies of the video):
“Until blacks start changing these pathologies, the whole ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, with its insistence that everyone has to change except for blacks themselves is nothing more than Progressive kabuki theater aimed at diverting attention from the fact that Democrats are facilitating self-destructive behaviors in the black community and that blacks are using the Democrat propaganda machine as an excuse to avoid the terrible (but not insurmountable) challenges that really claim black lives.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Who, exactly, is in charge of these cities and city agencies about which African Americans do have many legitimate complaints? Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago: Not exactly famous enclaves of conservative Republican political dominance. Because Dallas is in Texas, people sometimes forget that it is a city like any other American city, and Democrat-dominated. In Dallas, as in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Detroit, that Democrat domination is due in great part to a black Democratic voting bloc.
Eventually, someone is going to figure out that the black progressives protesting municipal arrangements in places such as Baltimore are protesting the municipal arrangements created by black progressives working for the interests of the Democratic party. Dallas’s racial politics aren’t as one-sided as Detroit’s, and neither are its party politics; it is Democratic, but not as lopsidedly Democratic as, say, Philadelphia. It even has had a Republican mayor (the office is technically nonpartisan) within living memory. No doubt somebody in Dallas already is trying to figure out a way to blame that mayor for the murder of those five police officers.
“Friends and family tell us that Alton Sterling was a great guy. That may well be the case, but he is also a convicted sex offender felon with a violent temper, who had six arrests for battery, two domestic violence charges, multiple illegal weapons charges, and who had fought with police over weapons before.”
SuperGenius tries to rob gas station, ends up shooting himself in the groin. I also wonder if he’s the towering intellect that managed to clip his own driver’s side mirror at the pump in the video…
Another week, another Texas flood. Try to stay dry and enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
Paglia on Clinton: “If it were a Republican in the crosshairs, Hillary’s shocking refusal to meet with the Inspector General (who interviewed all four of the other living Secretaries of State of the past two decades) would have been the lead item flagged in screaming headlines from coast to coast. Let’s face it—the genuinely innocent do not do pretzel twists like this to cover their asses.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
New York Magazine massively re-edits article on why Hillary won’t debate because the original wasn’t fawning enough.
Eight reasons Hillary sucks. Including Obama: “she does not seem to want to run on Ben Rhodes’s foreign policy, Jonathan Gruber’s Obamacare, Lois Lerner’s IRS, Lisa Jackson’s EPA, Eric Holder’s Justice Department, or Barack Obama’s racial healing. And yet she needs Obama’s hard-left base. So far she has rejected her 2008 Annie Oakley, Reagan-Democrat schtick, gambling that her Black Lives (alone) Matter and transgenderism pandering can ensure that she will match Obama’s historic share of the minority vote. But so far it seems just as likely that she will lose more voters among the white working class than she can lease from Obama’s core.”
More on the same theme. Alas, this morning I just don’t have time to explicate all the manifest idiocies on display by the Social Justice Warrior Campus Cadets…
Well, this is interesting: UT and A&M are part of a consortium bidding to help run Sandia nuclear weapons lab:
A consortium that includes the Texas A&M University System and the University of Texas System announced Tuesday that it will compete for the contract to operate one of the nation’s nuclear weapons labs.
The two university systems, along with the University of New Mexico, the Boeing Co. and the Battelle Memorial Institute, will bid to run Sandia National Laboratories, based in Albuquerque, N.M., officials said. Sandia, which is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy, has a $2.9 billion annual budget and is currently operated by a unit of Lockheed Martin Corp.
“This collaboration is a perfect fit, leveraging the research power of stellar universities as well as the expertise of Battelle and Boeing to elevate the already remarkable development coming out of Sandia National Laboratories,” UT System Chancellor Bill McRaven said in a written statement.
The UT System, the A&M System and the University of New Mexico would provide research expertise, workforce training and independent peer review of the work done at Sandia, officials said.
I was previously unaware that UT had missed out on running Los Alamos in 2005…
“Trump is the warning shot. He’s the food riots before the revolution. He’s the stack of letters to the editor in protest over some issue. People do not go from happy to bloody revolt overnight. It’s a process and the early stages are warnings, at least they should be viewed as warnings. If the people in Washington insist on flooding the country with helot labor, despite what’s happening in the election, the people are going to insist on building scaffolds in Washington. The Trump phenomenon is the warning.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“The Hillary Story is far less entertaining than The Trump Story…Clinton is rich, and morally and ethically corrupt. So is Trump. But at least he’s entertaining.” Note: That’s from Jonah Goldberg, with whom Trump has exchanged numerous rounds of insults and putdowns. Goldberg seems much further along the Kubler-Ross cycle than his NRO compatriots…
Larry Correia visits Europe. “I would like to institute autobahn style rules on I-15 in Utah. Sure, a few thousand people would probably die in the first weekend, but after that it would be awesome….The Czechs are a fun people. They have this kind of to hell with it sense of humor that meshes really well with mine. They’re big on long meals and animated conversations. They really hate socialists.”
Research following contestants on The Biggest Loser brings bad news about dieting: “As the years went by and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not recover. They became even slower, and the pounds kept piling on. It was as if their bodies were intensifying their effort to pull the contestants back to their original weight.”
For all the depression over an ascendant Donald Trump, let’s remember remember that a lot of other countries, much further down the road to serfdom than we are, have it much worse.
Take, for example, Venezuela, where The Magic Power of Socialism™ has so wrecked the economy that soldiers are stealing goats to survive:
Over the weekend, six members of the Venezuelan military were detained by local authorities for stealing goats, the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional reported Sunday. It said the soldiers confessed to stealing the goats and said they did it to feed themselves, since they had no food left in their barracks.
“It’s not a good sign when your military doesn’t have enough food, and when the military has been relegated to guarding and protecting food lines,” said Jason Marczak, director of the Latin America Economic Growth Initiative at the Atlantic Council. “This is endemic of the problems going on across the country.”
A military without enough food to eat. Boy, that’s a swell recipe for happiness in Latin America. (Hat tip: Instapundit.) As the Washington Post‘s Wonkblog put it: “It’s a grim race between anarchy and civil war.”
Venezuela’s right-wing opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), turned over 1.8 million signatures in support of a recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro to the National Electoral Council (CNE) on Monday.
As part of the initial requirement to solicit a recall, the MUD was given 30 days to collect signatures from 1 percent of the electorate in each of the 23 states– 197,721 total signatures nationwide– a target which the coalition managed to surpass in a matter of days, accruing as many as 2.5 million overall.
There are still considerable barriers to a recall election even if the government doesn’t cheat (and what are the odds of that?).
So cheer up, America! We have to face the horror of a Clinton-Trump presidential race, but at least we’ll do so with food, water, electricity and beer…