Posted on 02/23/2018 10:27:12 PM PST by Texas Fossil
The number one concern for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan while meeting with visiting Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Feb. 15 was whether he and his family members were in legal jeopardy with the long reach of the US criminal justice system. The Turkish president wanted to take Washington’s pulse from the top US diplomat and assess what risks he may be facing for cozying up to Russia and Iran in violation of US laws and in open defiance of Turkey’s long-standing membership in transatlantic alliance.
First, he was apparently quite anxious to learn whether it would be possible to contain the fallout from an Iranian sanctions busting case in US federal court that incriminated him and his associates while convicting senior official at Turkish state-lender HalkBank Mehmet Hakan Atilla. Although the trial of one defendant was wrapped up, additional indictments and new cases may be in the pipeline. Second, the Turkish president was also curious to learn if special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe could be extended to his own clandestine operations on US soil that might have very well run afoul of US law.
The meeting was unusually long, three hours and 15 minutes, even with translation time factored in. There were neither official translators nor note takers at the meeting, which is also bizarre as it would mean a departure from the standard operating procedure we used to see for such high-level meetings. I suppose it should come as no surprise given the patterns we see in Erdoğan’s governance, which discarded many state traditions and replaced a parliamentary democracy with a one-man regime with no accountability and no checks and balances.
(Excerpt) Read more at turkishminute.com ...
Great detail on the background of Erdogan's problems.
You could probably write a 300 page book on the spiral of Turk-US relations, and how there are too many problems existing.
Just to mention that Flynn has this direct connection back to Erdogan’s son-in-law, and Mueller knows that some kind of money changed hands....is a problem.
The patience of the US when the Turks go after Kurds in Syria....that’s a problem.
The fact that Gulen still walks freely in the US...that’s a problem.
The fact that a Russian-like troll/bot operation is being run by the Turks, and is active toward the US and Germany....that’s a problem.
This fake act of pretending a war situation might exist between Greece and Turkey....that’s a problem.
The last thing you really need at this point is some brief fake war to occur with some Turkish naval ship firing on a couple of Greek fishing vessels, and starting some two-week fake conflict.
The problem is that Erdogan needs all this hyped-up but fraudulent leadership behavior to convince Turks that he’s Reagan-Thatcher-Putin all rolled into one.
All you need to know about Erdogan is that he takes his Islam seriously. That is why Turkey has been stripped of its secular ways and has now become merely another Islamic tyranny.
Please consider this: if war does break out between two NATO members, Greece and Turkey, what does NATO do? Bonus question: How long can Turkey remain in NATO?
I don’t think you’d ever come to full-up war on Turkey-Greece. It’d some stupid episode where a Turkish junior captain on a vessel fires on some fishing vessels, and some brief ten to twenty day conflict would exist on paper (in the fake sense).
The US would pretend that nothing never really escalated. The French and British would mostly want to talk. Germany might want to send three vessels down for Greece but two will be broke down for six weeks, awaiting parts, and the third which does deploy...has a Turk-German captain in charge of the vessel, with a Greek-German as number two.
Putin would eventually get involved and suggest that he’ll set up a no-fly zone over the region and shoot down any Turkish aircraft. After that....things will cool off real quick, and the whole incident will be forgotten in six months.
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