Posted on 10/05/2010 7:28:27 PM PDT by rmlew
In just about three months, 196 active-duty and retired officers are scheduled to go on trial in Turkey, charged with plotting in 2003 to overthrow the then-newly elected Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. The alleged coup plot—codenamed Operation Sledgehammer—involved horrifying acts, including the bombing of mosques and the downing of a Turkish fighter, aimed at destabilizing the government and paving the way for martial law and eventual takeover.
If the charges prove to be well-founded, the country’s powerful military establishment will stand disgraced for harboring violent, anti-democratic elements among its senior ranks. And it will be the first time that civilians have brought it to account for its frequent political intervention. Turkish democracy will have gone through a rite of passage, emerging stronger. Conservative-Islamist groups—the AKP and their ally the Gülen movement, a network of the followers of the Muslim spiritual leader Fethullah Gülen—will be vindicated and their political dominance assured.
But if the prosecutors’ case crumbles, it is the government, the Gülenists, the prosecutors, the media, and much of the country’s intelligentsia that will find itself discredited. For these groups have fought hard in recent months to convince Turks (and Turkey’s friends abroad) of the veracity of the Sledgehammer coup plot.
The sad irony is that the facts of the case leave no doubt as to where the truth lies: Operation Sledgehammer is a fiction. Its authors are not the defendants in the case but unknown malfeasants who fabricated the documents sometime after 2008. Anyone with a couple of hours to spare—and a good command of the Turkish language—can see it for themselves. That the charges have been allowed to stand for so long—and that a trial will take place at al—is testimony to the intensity of the disinformation campaign waged by the AKP and its supporters. http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/turkish-tragedy-4138
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
Is the world elite so blind as to think the Islamist AKP and Gullen to be liberals here? Turkey is become Pakistan, if not Iran.
Agreed. Things began to go obviously bad about the time that the Generals led Bush on until the last minute and then refused to let him use Turkish territory for the invasion if Iraq. That killed the planned northern front and led to serious extension of the war.
The Generals were, I suspect, encouraged to put a monkey wrench into the invasion by Chirac, who had a close working relationship with Saddam, and told Turkey that if they stiffed the U.S. it would help them get into NATO.
Well, Turkey was disappointed on that one. But meantime the Generals allowed a Muslim government to increase in power. The dream of joining the EU was scotched. And the Muslim government proved a lot stronger and more dangerous than the generals expected.
It’s a bad business. Turkey was the enemy of Europe and the Christian West until the deposition of the Sultan in the First World War. Now it looks as if they want to go back to being our enemy again. NATO no longer can count on Turkey to guard its flank.
A bad business.
If Erdogan gets awaywith ending Kemalism, and the mullahs get in the saddle Turkey will go backwards 150 years in a year just like Iran.
What an interesting speculation— How would America respond if only this piece was written about american Military Officers
and a plan to remove the threat of the man from Kenya now defended by our mere politicians?
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