Posted on July
27, 2016 by Yves Smith
[Yves’ Introduction]
One has to infer that Erdogan
is furious that the US has not turned over the exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen,
who Erdogan has depicted as the mastermind of the failed coup, and is giving us
the biggest poke in the eye he can come up with. This one is awfully big if
Erdogan follows through with more cooperation with Russia. And this may tie
into the increased demonization of Putin of late. I’ve only been following the
various theorizing as to whether the US was behind the coup. I doubt it, and
the Russians appear to doubt it. Per Helmer by an earlier e-mail:
This is the best Russian
account so far, and it shows evidence of Russian military monitoring of
communications during the coup:
The gist is important – if the
coup plotters and participants were confused about what they wanted to achieve,
except for removing Erdogan, why wasn’t his aircraft shot down? Answer from the
Russian side: there was no command and control of the various ground and air
units engaged – they couldn’t talk to one another, and couldn’t coordinate. By
failing to strike Erdogan first, they allowed him time to mobilize his party
apparatus and the mosques. Once they moved people into the streets, the
soldiers inside the tanks couldn’t act.
You can see from SecState
Kerry’s hesitant, non-committal statement from Moscow on Friday evening, Moscow
time, in favour of “security and stability” that he and Washington weren’t sure
how many of their “assets” were engaged, and on whose side. It took hours for
Obama to come out in favour of “democracy” – that’s to say, the winning side.
By then Erdogan had decided some of the plotters were on the US side. It is
clear this is so from the attempt by General Van to seek asylum from the US at
Incirlik; imagine how many hours it took for Washington to say no, and hand him
over.
That this was a CIA plot is
not how the Russian intell is reading, for the moment. That there may have been
CIA assets engaged in the plot as it unfolded looks likely – and Erdogan is
going to exploit that.
So far, the Greek intell
version, based on what the asylum seeking officers are saying and other
methods, isn’t out in the open, and I’m waiting for my friends to let me know.
The Israeli versions are also
contradictory and confused because that’s how it’s been.
If one must keep score, it’s
essential to know which goalposts you consider yours. From this perspective,
the outcome is the best possible one for those who consider Turkey to be an
irredentist enemy to Europe, to Greece and Cyprus in particular. The outcome is
a score against the Nuland schemes; against the Merkel refugee scheme; against
US schemes to overthrow Assad.
[End of Yves’ Introduction]
By John Helmer, the
longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only
western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or
commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an
advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the
first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to
establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears
On August 9, in St.
Petersburg, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will meet Turkey’s President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The moment is revolutionary. There has not been a
comparable political turning-point in the 67 years since the establishment of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); not in the century since the
Ottoman Empire sided with Germany against Russia in World War I; nor in the two
centuries since Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II and the Russian Tsar Alexander I
aligned against Napoleon and the British.
Russian sources say they are
sure the Russian secret services did not warn Erdogan or help his forces
prevail in the July 15-16 coup against him. After Erdogan began his
counter-coup, and in the fight still continuing between Erdogan’s Islamic
forces and the regular Turkish military, the sources add, there has been, and
there will be, Russian help. It is more for the future, they explain, than for
last week’s outcome that Turkish deputy prime minister Mehmet Şimşek told his
counterpart Arkady Dvorkovich in Moscow on Tuesday: “I would like to thank you
for support regarding recent events in Turkey, for supporting democracy and the
Turkish government.”
The Russian sources say it is
already agreed the two sides will pay a soon-to-be settled price in two-way
trade; gas, nuclear and other energy projects; plus tourism. Much more is at
stake, though, one of the sources adds. “Putin and his advisors believe Erdogan
is still in danger. They support him now for the opportunity to reorganize the
relationship with Turkey. They mean to secure Russia from encirclement on the
southern frontier and the Black Sea, dismemberment of the Caucasus, and attack
on the Kremlin by its enemies. Right now, as Europe collapses, the enemy is the
US with NATO in support. If Turkey breaks with the US, NATO is a paraplegic. We
shall see how Putin and Erdogan choose to portray the new Rome*, the new
Byzantium* next Tuesday.”
The new alliance agenda was
formalized at a Security Council meeting on Monday afternoon. The Kremlin
announced: “The President briefed the permanent members of the Security Council
on his recent telephone conversations with President of Turkey Recep Tayyip
Erdogan and Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu in the context of
preparations for the visit by the President of Turkey to Russia scheduled for
early August.”
Omitted were the military and
intelligence briefings Putin received from Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and
Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief, Mikhail Fradkov; the deputy director
of the council, Rashid Nurgaliyev; and the head of the Federal Security Service
(FSB), Alexander Bortnikov.
Russian sources dismiss the
foreign press narrative of last week’s military coup attempt suggesting Arab
and Israeli foreknowledge of the coup. “Plotting, bribing, and wishful thinking
there were,” one of the sources comments. “But knowing and participating –
that’s not what happened.”
In an analysis of the military
operations in Istanbul and Ankara, Yevgeny Krutikov, correspondent of Vzglyad
in Moscow, has reported there was no coordination between the Turkish
Army, Navy and Air Force; poor command and control within each of the services;
and inadequate troops and firepower on the streets to combat the turnout in
Erdogan’s favour.
“There were simply not enough
rebels. There was no chain of command. The ‘capture units’ for important
facilities consisted of a maximum of 10 people under the command of officers
from captain’s rank to lieutenant colonel. Among the insurgency leadership
there wasn’t anyone above the rank of colonel. The entire ‘[rebel] company’ has
done what it could. To try to seize power in a highly militarized country’s
forces [you need] more than a tank battalion and a pair of helicopters. For
bigger divisions they [rebels] just could not give any orders — without bumping
into the requirement they answer a reasonable question: who are you anyway?”
Did the Russian intelligence
services help Erdogan? “That’s unreal,”according to Krutikov. “There was no
agreement at all between the Russian and Turkish intelligence services.
Besides, all contacts were frozen after the downing of the Russian aircraft
[SU-24]. Radio signals of the manoeuvres of the coup’s armed forces were
monitored by our military troops. There is a little likelihood this information
was transmitted to the Turkish special services.”
Russian sources are
non-committal on what role US military and intelligence agencies played during
the July 15 events at the Incirlik airbase and elsewhere to encourage, or not
to discourage, the attempt at overthrowing Erdogan. What is certain now, as
Erdogan tries to mop up, according to Greek and Cypriot analysts, is that
Turkey has turned against the US and the NATO alliance. “Turkey is now moving
away from western dependence,” says a well-informed region source who asks not
to be identified. “This makes sense geopolitically because the west has lost
control in the Middle East. Other close western allies in the region, like
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, are becoming autonomous, in the sense that
they don’t obey the US. This is because the US can no longer act as a hegemon.
Washington can’t dictate, or even recommend solutions to conflicts or
rivalries, like Iraq, Syria, Libya, or Palestine. Now, with or without direct
US involvement in the Turkish coup, Erdogan sees his chance to make Turkey more
autonomous, so he is taking it.”
Russian sources agree.
Referring to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (right), whose plan
of attack against Russia in Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, and Cyprus have been
reported here and here, a Moscow source
concludes: “The Nuland plots have all failed. The US can no longer talk to the
Turks.
Losing Turkey to Erdogan and
his Islamists also means the US can dictate no longer in the region. You can’t
expect the Americans will take it lying down. There’s no government in
Washington right now. But if Clinton wins, there will be a US fight-back. It
will be too late.”
As French princesses and
Nuland have publicly suggested, revolutions require cakes, or at least cookies.
The short-term payoffs to Erdogan’s business constituents, and Putin’s, were
tabled swiftly at the July 26 meeting between Dvorkovich and Simsek
(below,left, right); and at the following meeting between Russian Energy
Minister Alexander Novak and Turkish Economic and Energy Ministers, Nihat
Zeybekci and Berat Albayrak. Details of their talks can be read here.
Military sources believe
Erdogan’s position is still far from assured. “The numbers and the spread of
the purges tell you this is a continuous coup, which could turn into ethnic or
communal revolts at any time, or civil war. Russia is positioning itself, as it
did in the past, in favour of the stability of the Turkish state – right now
this means Erdogan. The Kremlin is against breakup. In the 19th and early 20th
centuries, a weak Turkey meant to Moscow that Russia’s enemies gained control
of the vital Russian interests of the time, such as the Straits.”
Greek, Cypriot and Russian
sources questioned about the current course of events say the principal Russian
objectives are obvious. Erdogan should stop the export of jihadis, ISIS, and
sedition towards the Russian Caucasus in the form of the Chechens. He must also
stop his regime-changing tactics in Syria, and not less in the Balkans and in
Central Asia. The sources believe that in his current predicament Erogan is a
better bet for the Kremlin than the Turkish military, or the so-called Kemalist
or Gulenist political groups, encouraged by the US. If the pro-American or NATO
elements can be uprooted and destroyed, Russia is bound to feel more secure —
so long as Erdogan’s Sunni Islamic orientation will make its peace with Russia,
as the Shiites of Iran and Iraq are doing.
According to a Russian
military historian, “Putin today can’t be different from the Tsar [Nicholas II]
in 1914. Unpredictability and instability in Turkey are threats to Russia,
because they let more powerful enemies in.” For a western historian’s
conclusion on the same point, read this.
Political economists in Moscow
see the reciprocal benefit for Moscow and Ankara if the South Stream (aka
Turkish Stream) gas pipeline project can be revived. Gazprom will assure the
sale of larger volumes of gas south and westwards; Turkey can benefit from
becoming an energy hub, not only for Russian gas, but also for new flows from
Israel, perhaps Lebanon, potentially even Cyprus.
A well-known Cypriot analyst
observes: “Yes, Cyprus is better off, though the situation around us is tragic.
At least, hegemony, western hegemony, is finished. This is good because a large
part of the [Cyprus] problem came from that [Anglo-American] hegemony and its
efforts to maintain itself. Their subversion of Arab modernization has been the
greatest crime of the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century.”
“Back to Cyprus — with
multiple guarantees, not only from the west, and with Turkey more autonomous,
and no longer the pawn of anybody, the guarantees for [reunified] Cyprus will
be more realistic. They will reflect the real balance of power geographically,
and also of the future.”
There is regional support for
Putin’s rapprochement with Erdogan, even among the bitterest historical enemies
of the Turks. They view the Kremlin as a more reliable curb on Turkish military
adventures and expansion than the Americans, British or NATO have proved to be.
Says the Cypriot analyst: “Natural gas is the future of Cyprus for all
political wings. But moving the economy right now are tourism, and the
increasing role of Russian capital, and also the small but growing Russian
community. Russia has multiple roles to play in Cyprus. It is probably the
force that appeals to the broadest cross-section of the people — to the masses
on the left; lately to the centre, and to a section of the religious right,
after almost a century, though they aren’t an autonomous force themselves yet.
If now Russia becomes friends with Turkey, then we may even have Turkish
Cypriot friends.”
[*] Footnote: The doctrine of
the new or third Rome refers to the Russian Orthodox idea that Moscow has
succeeded, or will in God’s due course, succeed ancient Rome and Byzantine
Constantinople as the centre of true Christianity and its empire.
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