Spain and the Erdogan Playbook

Over the past decade many have openly complained about the brutal and authoritarian political moves of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  From his alleged supplying of ISIS jihadist in their effort to assist in the overthrow of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and his helping them to smuggle oil from Iraq and Syria to world markets, to the way in which he dealt with the failed coup attempt against him by arresting his opponents, and closing all their affiliated institutions. There is also the referendum he won to serve both as head of government and the head of state at the same time. However even before this, many came to learn and understand his ruthlessness through his interaction with the Kurdish minority of Turkey, their political representation the Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP) and more notably, the Kurdistan Workers, party.

Recently he detained two leaders of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish HDP along with many others accusing them of being supportive of the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) and spreading propaganda. Instead of addressing the vile hazardous actions of ISIS, Turkey under Erdogan has selected to go to war with the Kurds and has been on a continuous exercise attacking Kurdish militias in Syria and bombing Kurdish villages in the region. This is Turkey and how the Turks and Erdogan express their fear of Kurdish independence and self-determination for an ethnic group that make up between 15 and 25 percent of Turkey’s population (8 to 9 million) with an equally long and storied history. 

Now let us imagine a similar ethnic group both in number (6 to 7 million) and disposition with an equally long and storied history (1100 ACE), however they comprise 28 percent of the population. Like the Kurd’s they have their own language and seek to be independent, and practice self-rule. Moreover, as in the case with the Kurds, they have faced continuous opposition  for having such a desire and even more so for promoting the use of suffrage to determine such. This group of people since then has had many local elected officials arrested by the state government, with the regional police force under orders to arrest mayors if they refuse to appear for questioning by the state investigating their desire to hold a vote for independence.  In addition, the nation’s constitutional court has suspended the prosecutor of the region and central authorities have taken over all spending. Although this ethnic region of the nation is responsible for more than 20 percent of the more than 1 trillion-euro economy, the state central government has threatened to take away all its spending and budgetary authority.  This is Spain and this is how the central government in Madrid and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy express their fear of Catalonian independence and self-determination.

Historically, Catalonia is not a part of Spain just as Kurdistan was not a part of Turkey or Iraq.  This isn’t a new proposition for as in both cases war dictates who draws the boarders of conquered, occupied or colonialized nations. This was true with Catalonia as it was with Turkey, Iraq and Kurdistan after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I and both nations’ modern borders being demarcated in 1920 by the League of Nations via the Treaty of Sèvres.  However, just as in Turkey, likewise the Spanish government consider holding an independence referendum illegal and that such a vote would be in violation of the Spanish Constitution. To accentuate his point, the federal authorities have arrested scores of local politicians, seized tens of thousands of ballots and are continuously trying to block the official web site for the independence referendum.

It appears as if Spain under the direction of Prime Minister Rajoy is following the script designed and practiced by Erdogan word for word and action by action. Just this week in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Turkish President Erdogan warned that an independence referendum among Iraqi Kurds would have serious consequences. He stated, “Steps such as demands for independence that can cause new crises and conflicts in the region must be avoided. We hereby call on the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government to abort the initiative they have launched in that direction.”  Not to be out done in dictatorial prowess, Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy and his Constitutional Court has not only suspended the Catalonia and legislature but has also blocked all and any measures taken by the pro-independence Catalan government. These strong-armed tactics of intimidation did not end there. The Constitutional Court also levied fines of up to €12,000 a day on members of the Catalan electoral board and Prime Minister Rajoy defends detaining accused separatist politicians for promoting “civil disobedience” and acting “profoundly antidemocratic.” Rayjoy has also ordered all Catalan mayors to appear before the state to answer questions about the move toward independence, however the majority have declare exercised their right to remain silent before the court.

One consistent perspective presented by the Spanish authorities is that the referendum would be unconstitutional because all Spanish citizens would not be able to vote.  This is strange since the Spanish Government along with other western nations supported the 1991 Kosovo, Slovenia and Croatia referendums for independence in which Serbian’s were not allowed to vote, nor did they make this sort of argument when the South Sudan was created without all Sudanese not being allowed to vote. In fact, since this time, the Spanish Government has recognized 26 new states the majority which were established independently (a unilateral referendum) of the input of others since that time.

Then there is the issue of when did this become unconstitutional. Some have advocated that the Spanish Constitutional Court’s decision to strike down key elements of the 2006 Catalan statute of autonomy was the actual unconstitutional action that has resulted in what is happening between Spain and Catalonia presently.  Since then, like the big neighborhood bully, Spain has refused to even talk or discuss anything regarding politics (including possible Catalonian succession) with the people of Catalonia and instead forced its opinions and decisions on the citizenry of Catalonia by fiat (speaking of undemocratic).

I used to believe that one of the foremost tenants of democracy was self-determination. The people of Catalonia think in this vein or else they would not have (through their vote) given the Parliament of Catalonia a mandatefor a Proclamation of Independence. Spain and Rajoy may need to find another path of action, for the more they stay on this road, the more they become the mirror image of Turkey and Erdogan.

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Mosul: A Game of Risk

Once upon a time before this age of video games, cell phones and 24 hour continuous cable television, there were four television stations and they all went off around midnight to a hollow vapid medium pitch tone with the picture of an Indian in the background.  This was a period in which if you were not outside playing and being active, if you were inside and not reading you were playing a game with your family of friends. Typically this was either in cards but mainly board games.  One such board game which was one of my favorites was Risk. Made by Parker Brothers, Risk is a strategy board that has three main objectives: to control entire continents to get reinforcement armies, to protect and watch ones borders and to protect and defend against other neighboring armies/nations that could attack you and building up ones military on their own borders for defensive purposes.
It was a heated game and brought the best and worst out in most people whom played it, with each player accumulating and stacking up those little squares in anticipation of a possible impending attack. In risk, a player has the best chance of winning if the hold continents since this is the best way to increase reinforcements. Players often attempt to gain control of Australia early in the game, since Australia is the only continent that can be successfully defended via heavy fortification (continents with fewer borders are easier to defend).

The battle for Mosul is on after Obama announcing out loud it would be eventually taking place before the end of 2016. The way I am seeing this adventure in Mosul is just like a game of Risk.  To take the city you have to first get past all of the villages on the outskirts of the city. Imagine having to go through Newnan or Smyrna, Georgia to get to Atlanta.  But in this city, every road like Peachtree Street has IEDs buried all through them and on every roof there is a sniper. If you manage to get through this, in the back of your mind you know that the cats that have been there have been dug in for two years, that they have the advantage.

The West of Mosul is the old city and from what I have been told, it will be difficult for anyone to go in and fight there – can’t drive Humvees or Tanks because the roads are too tight and thin and ISIS is going to put a stiff front against the U.S.- Iraqi coalition forces as they enter.

This doesn’t even include considering the post conflict environment in Mosul, which will be a very difficult path itself to navigate. I mean, you can’t remove 1.5 million Mosul residents for a few thousand ISIS militants and we can’t make the same mistakes we did by allowing Iraqi security forces to completely demolish everything in sight as we did in Fallujah, Ramadi or Tikrit (or it will set the same conditions that allowed ISIS to grow in the first place), unless it is the Obama Administration goal to push ISIS west into Syria. The danger of this however is that it will take a very long time to get ISIS out of Mosul and the civilians will suffer disproportionately.

How Mosul will be governed after or if ISIS leaves is another query.  Has the Obama team thought about it – a city predominantly Sunni and Iraqi security forces predominately Shia? This will be a very extremely complicated task for we will approach this act as if it is a typical Western intervention and a typical Arab city.  Unfortunately Mosul isn’t your average Arab city. It is a very multi-cultural city centered between Syria and Turkey.  It is a very diverse city filled with Sunni, Shiite, Kurds, Christians. Taking one bank of the Tigris River will be easy, but to take the entire city, will be something that will take a long time.  Which reminds me again, what the after plan is if and/or after Mosul falls?  How will the US coalition deal with a large Iraqi Force, a large Kurdish force and the desire that Shia militia have to get in on the action? All which are paramount issues that worry the Turks (Sunni), who are as we speak training anti-ISIS fighters in the strategic town of Bashiqa and want to enter Mosul and engage in battle. They are vehemently against Shia militias taking part in any fighting in the city; for Erdogan has openly said he thinks Mosul should be a city for Sunni Turkmen, Sunni Kurds and Sunni Arabs.

Turkey already has troops in Iraq and they are not welcomed nor were invited by the Iraqi government. They are not very diplomatic because they claim that Mosul is a Turkish city while at the same time Kurds want autonomy in Iraq, especially Mosul and display even stronger and similar feelings as it pertains to in Norther Iraq.

Turkish military is also training Sunni tribes with the hope of keeping a migration from Mosul to Turkey from occurring. The Peshmerga (Kurds) are coming in from the east heading west to make sure they keep folk from going to Kurdistan and Shia militias are on the West to keep ISIS from going into Syria. Yes, this is a big old game of Risk.

And what of the U.S.? Well after getting rid of Saddam Hussein, they city still lacks consistent running water and consistent electricity due to the U.S. invasion as is the case for most of Iraq and the anti U.S. animosity remains high. For many Iraqis, the U.S. has not only failed to make life better than it was under Saddam Hussein, it has made daily living worse. Strangely, before ISIS took root in Mosul, it was touted as being more secure than Baghdad. Presently, ISIS has every vehicle, building, child, cat and dog rigged with explosives and if success is to be had in Mosul, it will be a street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, house by house dog fight.

If America continues on this path of the feckless Obama-Clinton – Bush-Rumsfeld foreign policy approach, President Obama could be leaving his predecessor another Aleppo. Not only is the Iraqi government corrupt as all get out, none of the cats doing the fighting trust each other (U.S. military, Kurdish Peshmerga, Turks or Shia militias).

In all honesty, if Mosul is liberated, it will be the start of a bigger war and an excuse for the Obama administration to move into Syria which I believe is his true desire albeit we ALL know Washington hasn’t planned properly nor is ready for such an event (See Libya and Yemen). I may be wrong, but you tell me if the present administration, like the prior, has outlined any strategic goals or objectives for achieving such and dealing with the aftermath other than aerial bombardments? And if I am correct, it will be more wasting of the loot of the American people when our problems should be first and foremost on the table for solution finding regarding our struggling economy.

Mosul is problematic. Not only is there no central command, without the U.S., Kurds and Shia militias, the Iraqi Security Forces would never be able to take the city on their own and would probably run as they did when ISIS first entered Iraq. Add this to the tangible hatred between all involved, it would be highly unlikely for everybody, in particular when you throw the Turks in the mix, not to just end up shooting at each other. Even if this doesn’t manifest, what is consistent is that it will represent regardless of the outcome, more failed U.S. foreign policy and more dead bodies and destroyed communities since our only answer is to just give out weapons to whoever we decide to support, not based on logic nor the interest of the people living in the Middle east

And you can best believe if Hillary Clinton becomes the president elect, the D.C. neocon and neoliberal foreign policy establishment will be salivating for more U.S. intervention which would probably be in the form of a no-fly zone, that would not save anyone or help the people on the ground or get rid of ISIS, but rather cause more problems and maybe even a direct confrontation with Syria, Russia and Iran. But if I were optimist I would speculate that, we may get rid of ISIL in Mosul, eventually, but what will come next after them to fill the void is my concern.

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Obama's Failed Putsch

A coup is a sudden and violent, seizure of power from a government. On occasion it has also been called a putsch.  A little more than two months ago there was such a violent attempt to overthrow the government in the nation of Turkey.  I heard about and read of several theories regarding the effort ranging from it being a theatrical production of Erdogan to a plan of secular aspects of the nation’s body politic as formalized via the exiled leadership of the Turkish preacher, former imam Muhammed Fethullah Gülen. However, none of these are even able to approach being reasonable and logical in my estimation, notwithstanding they are somewhat plausible.

If you asked me, I would say it was planned by the Obama Administration in concert with NATO and implemented in the splendid tradition of the standard U.S. ‘overthrow a democratically elected leader’ playbook under the direction of the C.I.A. of course.  And no, I have no explicit proof of this but history does support the tenable likelihood that I may be right and such is not farfetched at all.

Although I could give numerous examples, I would prefer to remind the reader of what we saw after World War II. After the defeat of Japan in 1945 when it was forced to leave Indochina. At the same time a movement was underway to free peasants in the region was taking off being led by Ho Chi Minh. Although US globalist history will claim that this was a communist led effort, the facts were that it was a grass roots operation.

As Howard Zinn noted, Minh, after he led the overthrew the Japanese, he established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam issued a declaration of independence based on the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen.  It was the first time ever Vietnam was free from foreign rule (and nearly foreign occupation) in history - however the West wasn’t about to let this happen. At the time, the English was occupying South Vietnam, which they eventually returned to the French. Concurrently, Nationalist China under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek controlled the northern part of Indochina, which the U.S. persuaded them to return it to the French.

To make a long story short, the U.S. did all it could to prevent Minh’s desire of Vietnam unification and created South Vietnam as an American protectorate making Saigon as head of the government under the rule of a former Vietnamese official living in New Jersey named Ngo Dinh Diem. Unfortunately Diem’s rule was unpopular not to mention he was a Catholic in a country where most were Buddhists. And for that extra icing on the cake, he imprisoned all who criticized his administration.

In 1961 Kennedy became president and continued the policies of Truman and Eisenhower in the region. But by 1963 Diem had become even more autocratic and when a Buddhist monk set himself afire in Saigon to protest the artificially established U.S. government, it led to more monks committing suicide by fire to demonstrate their opposition to the government. With the approval and permission of the U.S. by Kennedy, American Ambassador Henry- Cabot Lodge and a State Department official named Roger Hilsman, a group of Vietnamese generals began plotting a coup to overthrow Diem. The result was the assassination of Diem and his brother.

Now many may not see the similarities but for the purpose of brevity I will explain.  The manner in which the opportunity arose in Vietnam for the U.S. to take advantage of a leader, whom in this case they selected and supported until his over-the-top autocratic rule and push for control was perceived as unacceptable by his citizenry, is ironically similar to the comportment of the citizens of Turkey with respect to Erdogan, albeit he was not handpicked by the U.S. he had been working on behalf (to what extent) of the military and geopolitical interest of the U.S., Europe and NATO.

Historically, when democratically elected governments (as with the case of Iran in 1953) or puppet autocratic states (as in Vietnam) and even states in between (as in present day Turkey and the Ukraine), the US will not hesitate to do whatever it can to protect the globalist oligarch and plutocrats of the political establishment and military industrial complex – even an invasion (as in the case of Iraq).

Historically for the U.S., the Coup has been and will continue to be the weapon of choice aside assignation to topple any nation that place their people before American and even western concern. Vietnam was just one example.  We saw the same in Iran in 1953, where America (the CIA) spent millions to hire thugs and professional protestors to act out a real life overly violent protest across the streets of Tehran and this is based on the words of the CIA's Kermit Roosevelt. When loyal troops to the democratically elected leader of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh it became even more violent resulting in the deaths of hundreds eventually leading the forced resignation of Mosaddegh by members of parliament and others whom had been bribed by Roosevelt some weeks before.  Why were these actions taken, so America and the U.K. could install their puppet Shah whom had agreed to restore Western ownership of the oil industry which Mosaddegh vowed to take from the west and nationalize it? 

Then there is the example of Haiti in 2004 when hundreds of U.S. Special Forces worked with, trained and invaded the country from the Dominican Republic with anti-Lavalas.  U.S. Special Forces were used to trained FRAPH militiamen andanti-Lavalas forces in the Dominican Republic.  Upon which they invaded northern Haiti to set the groundwork for the overthrow of President Aristide. This approach is typical for carrying out a CIA ignited coup, in particular for Latin America, where they target nations that desire political and economic independence from the U.S. We saw this in Venezuela in 2002 and may be witnessing it currently. When successful, participants are rewarded with loot or positions of leadership (see Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for one such example).  In the end, the new leadership always ends up with the funding, backing and support of the U.S.

In the case of Turkey, I suspect that Erdogan bombing of U.S. supported Kurd's supposedly fighting ISIS in the North, and his increasingly dictatorial control on the country in concert with Americas need to have access to Incerlik airfield, everything came to boil.

Nonetheless, finding and instructing opposition forces and the promotion of violence and unrest in the streets is how the U.S. via the CIA create a state of emergency as a way to get rid of an elected or government and to gain power such that U.S. interest are paramount over the will and desires of said nation states.  All that is left is the right time to take action to remove the government and install the coup puppet leaders in its place. We saw this work to perfection in the Ukraine where the Obama coup machine had its most successful outcome (too early to say regarding Yemen).

In January 2014 street protests turned violent in Ukraine.  Most of it was by the hands of the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and the Right Sector militia.  Ironically the Right Sector militia had only been in existence for less than a year at the time and documents show that it is funded by Ukrainian exiles living in the west – mainly the U.S. and Europe (another typical CIA ploy).  We know that the Obama administration via Assistant Secretary of State Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt that the Obama Administration were waiting for and anticipating a coup to happen in Ukraine. 

These are just a few past and recent historic examples that are extremely well documented.  This is why I am of the firm and assured belief that the Obama Administration was behind this.  Then there is the photographic evidence that shows US Ambassador to Turkey, John Basse meeting with Turkish NATO Colonel Ali Yazici (in Photo) the day before the Coup attempt on the afternoon of August 7th.  For the record Col. Yazıcı was one of the leaders of the coup and former military adviser to President Erdogan. According to reports, they met at Cengelkoy café the day before the coup.

The fact is that I may not be able to prove it completely, but what we just saw in Turkey had U.S. DNA all over it. It was a mirror image of what was observed in the Ukraine and to a lesser extent Iraq. And If may be honest, Syria as well, for we all know it is not improbable that the Obama Administration is supporting ISIS against Assad.  I say this in all sincerity, for we knew Erdogan was sending weapons to ISIS and said nothing and Syria (Russia) just intercepted conversation between US forces and ISIS right before we bombed and killed scores of Syrian military fighters.

So say what you may, but I do believe the Obama Administration was behind this, what else can one expect from a president who is also a Nobel Peace Prize recipient?

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