Turkey: Atlanticism versus Rabiism
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- Published on Thursday, 28 July 2016 22:15
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1286 .... July 29, 2016
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Turkey: Atlanticism versus Rabiism
Sungur Savran
The dramatic events that unfolded in Turkey on the night of 15 to 16 July have been excessively confined to the internecine struggle of two different Islamic currents, that of the AKP under the iron fist of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and its latter day nemesis the Gulen fraternity. This is misleading in two senses. On the one hand, it hides from view the distinct possibility or even more and more certitude that other tendencies within the Turkish armed forces (the TSK in its Turkish acronym) were involved in the planning if not the final execution of the failed putsch. On the other, it prevents us from seeing the more fundamental contradiction that besets Turkey today -- a contradiction that... relates to the country's position in the world system.
We have already taken up the first question in an earlier article titled "Turkey: A War of Two Coups." We held there that, in addition to the Gulenists, the coup organizers included "a whole gamut of sensibilities in the armed forces which could be called pro-NATO and pro-U.S. for that is the common denominator that brings them together." We also added that, hence, "it is an alliance of the pro-U.S. seculars and the adepts of a religious fraternity under the protection of the U.S. that led the putsch. There is evidence to show that the defeat of the coup owes, partially, to the seeds of dissension within this alliance contre nature."
Additional evidence that has since surfaced not only confirms this observation, but in effect sheds new light on the coup that radically alters the earlier impression that the coup was organized outside the chain of command. In effect, both the intelligence agency (the MIT) and the top brass hid for hours on end intelligence regarding the coup that had reached the MIT by 4 p.m. and both also refused to respond to the phone calls made by Erdogan. The latter claims he learned about the coup around 8 p.m. from his "brother-in-law," probably short-hand for the intelligence agency of a friendly power, say Qatar. Erdogan's prime minister has also said that he learned of the coup from "friends and relatives." The commander of the air force, for that matter, claims he was alerted by his wife!