I lived in Turkey for over two years in the late 1960’s, studied Islam under an Imam (who lied) for a few months (and found it wanting severely). I also learned some Turkish, made many friends, and offended others. I came to know Turkey well, discovering things that I loved, and learning of other things less so. For the 45-odd years since I left Turkey, I have followed the ebb and flow of evolving Turkish politics, its changing culture, and more. I understand what is taking place in Turkey, and it is not good. I have devoted a part of my book EXPERIENCING ISLAM (get it from my web site, www.jamesehorn.com) to Turkey and my good and not so fun experiences there, including an attempt by Turks to murder me.
ATTENTION READERS: You will NOT find much mention of this in any mainstream media outlets such as the WSJ, the Times, the Globe, or any other major newspaper, news magazine, or TV news outlet such as FOX. The Turks have established harsh ground rules for the media that the media has bowed to, and our State Department is too feeble to do anything to protect the American media, or more importantly American news writers. If any news outlet publishes anything that the Turks dislike, that organization’s employees will be subjected to arbitrary and very harsh and unpleasant actions should they enter Turkey. Many Turks are serious thugs, and they play by their own rules.
The recent feeble coup attempt in Turkey failed. Many (including I) believe that it was likely engineered by Turkish strong man Recep Tayyip Erdogan to eliminate foes either perceived or real and to cement his absolute control over Turkey. I think that’s a done deal now.
Modern Turkey is a remnant of the Sunni dominated Ottoman Caliphate that once ruled the lands from the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco on the west to the Austrian border, Romania, and Russia to the north, to East Africa and Gulf of Aden in the South and East through Iran into parts of Eastern India.
That Caliphate started to crumble in 1492 when Christian King Ferdinand of Spain gave the Islamists, the Moors the boot after their seven centuries of rule; and after two hundred years of battling, the Shiia Persians finally pushed the Ottomans out of Persia in 1776. The Russians fought a series of wars that punished the Ottomans all of the way to the end of the First World War I. The end of WWI finished the Ottoman empire (who were allied with the Germans) off. The current Turkish borders were established by the victorious allies in 1923.
The loss of empire inspired the Turks to strike out against their Christian populations, the Armenians, the Assyrians, and the Greeks in a savage prolonged holocaust that brutally took the lives of more than two million innocent people.
Secularist Kemal Attaturk worked tirelessly to bring the barbarian Turkish people (kicking and screaming) into the 20th century. Attaturk banned the burka, the fez, gave women the right to vote, banned bigamy, and modernized the Turkish language with a Latin alphabet. A quasi-modernizing, partially civilized Turkey thrived politically, economically, culturally, and in many other ways for many years. That’s over now.
During the Cold War, Turkey was brought into NATO where they held the flank close to the Russian and Warsaw Pact’s southern frontiers where we Americans operated sophisticated intelligence gathering radar and eaves dropping operations all along those borders. With the breakup of the Warsaw Pact, and with more modern sophisticated electronics, those installations are no longer very effective or necessary.
NATO partner, Turkey joined the UN “Police Action” – the Korean War, as one of our allies. They earned a reputation for being absolutely fearless during battles with the North Koreans and Chinese. Let the truth be known: Those thousands of ferocious “Turk” soldiers were Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, and Kurdish conscripts who were prodded into battle with Turkish Officers and Noncoms at their backs holding machine guns to kill them if they faltered. Yes, those Kurd, Armenian, Greek and Assyrian conscripts were fighting for their lives, to not get killed by either the North Koreans, the Chinese, or the Turks.
Ataturk’s efforts at secularism were fairly successful until the dawn of the 21st century when Islamist fervor started to take hold and Turkey turned on the United States and NATO. Our leaders over the past 25-years have been too willfully ignorant and dim witted to recognize this treachery and to take action to boot Turkey from NATO, and prevent its entry into the EC.
During both of our wars with Sunni Iraq, the Sunni Turks blocked our use of our American bases in Turkey, and disallowing our flying over Turkish air space in the conduct of supply and combat operations. As an ally, Turkey failed miserably. They betrayed us.
Saudi Money and influence caused Obama and Hillary Clinton to support operations to recover weapons in Libya for delivery to Sunni ISIS forces in the Syrian civil war, and to ship those weapons through Turkey for delivery. The Turks betrayed us (again) by stealing and keeping some of those weapons for themselves, and then delivering other weapons to the ISIS factions that they supported, denying weaponry to ISIS factions that the US supported.
Throughout the ebb and flow of the Sunni ISIS forces battling the Shiia/Alawite Syrians and their Hezbollah allies, Turkey has provided considerable rear echelon support to the ISIS forces (ISIS forces that we opposed) with finances, logistics, munitions, supplies, hospitals, R&R facilities, and hundreds if not thousands of Turk recruits, most of whom have fought against the Yazidis and Kurds.
As things went against the Syrians, the Russians joined the fray and have been quite effective in hammering and dispersing the ISIS forces and humiliating America whose efforts were pitiful, perhaps by design engineered by Obama, who has been pretty close with Erdogan even though Erdogan doesn’t golf.
Let’s be clear. Erdogan is a sharia compliant fundamentalist Islamist who hates the west, especially America.
As we westerners, our political, religious, and cultural leaders have foolishly quibbled over moderate, radical, or mainstream Islam, Mr. Erdogan, an authority on Islam cleared the air, stating unequivocally that there is NO Moderate Islam, that there is NO Radical Islam, that Islam is Islam. Period. We should believe him.
With this feeble coup attempt, Erdogan has empowered himself to purge Turkey of anyone and everyone who does not adhere to his beliefs. He has cleared the courts and the judiciary of anyone who might even think along secular terms. He has jailed many of these people, and they will never return to their jobs. The entire court system of Turkey will become sharia compliant with Imams and holy men administering the courts, etc. He has closed businesses belonging to thousands of shop keepers and businesses. He has closed colleges, universities and other institutions and fired thousands of educators. As he investigates these people, anyone holding books and writings anywhere or who have expressed in any form any secular leaning thoughts will be doomed. It’s that simple.
As the Coup attempt unfolded, Turkish Air force planes bombed some Turkish government facilities. Those Turkish aircraft flew out of the joint US/Turkish air base at Incirlik which houses over fifteen hundred American military personnel, hundreds of American civilians, and contains a stash of nuclear weapons. The stash of nuclear weapons is apparently a past tense issue. I got this from Russian news, Pravda. Where have they been moved to? Nobody knows, or is saying, and it’s nobody’s business, either.
Erdogan’s minions organized a monstrous demonstration against the base. Thousands of Turks surrounded it and closed all access. American wives, children, teachers and some other non-essential personnel were immediately evacuated by air. The question needs to be asked is whether or not remaining Americans at Incirlik, Adana, Trabzon, and other American staffed bases in Turkey are or will be allowed to leave or will they become de facto hostages?
Of course, immediately after ending the coup attempt, Erdogan dismissed or arrested a broad swath of military personnel who may have been tainted with exposure to America through training in America, working with American military counterparts or any other such contacts, etc. These people will be the first on his list to make examples of. Extreme examples.
Images on the internet and in some news media have shown a large room (probably a gymnasium or a warehouse) with hundreds of near naked hog tied men who had reportedly been beaten (tortured), raped (a favorite Moslem tactic intended to humiliate), and suffering other deprivations. They were all laying prone.
With so many military, judicial, educational, and others arrested, Erdogan has amnestied thousands of Turkish criminals from jails – to make room to hold all of these new political prisoners.
Throughout their long, gory, bloody history, the Turks have viciously brutalized the vanquished just as is taught in the Koran. Things have not changed and will not change.
One-by-one, these officers will be dragged out, beaten, tortured and then forced to watch their wives, children and other loved ones be raped, tortured, and murdered before they, themselves are murdered. This will all be recorded on video and will be shown at military bases and numerous other venues to demonstrate what will happen to anyone who offends Erdogan and his henchmen. This is likely happening right now.
[After the 1979 Iranian takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran and seizing tons of classified CIA documents, this is what happened to thousands of Iranians who had ties to America.]
The intent of his purge, torture, murdering, and so forth of many thousands of tainted, educated, intellectual people is clearly to terrorize and subdue the entire citizenry of Turkey, to make them submissive “slaves” to allah, and, of course, Erdogan. I am certain that it will only be a matter of time before Erdogan crowns himself as the Grand Pubah, of his Turkish Caliphate, where 60 million mostly innocent human beings will find themselves behind a murky black curtain of fear, anguish, increasing poverty, illness and disease, ignorance, and suffering, a Mohammedan paradise on earth.
What action should we, in the west, the civilized world take? For starters, recognize that Turkey is NOT a friend, is NOT an ally, as in fact an enemy of American freedom and sovereignty. We ought to cut off all American assistance to Turkey - immediately. We should restrict the travel of Turkish officials (military and civilian) to and within the United States.
We must work hard to persuade the Europeans to not allow turkey into the EU. If the Turks were granted membership in the EU, they would only need a passport to travel freely anywhere in the EC. Undoubtedly, they Turks would provide thousands or even millions of passports to Islamists who would take advantage of this situation.
End Turkish membership in NATO. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Get them out of there. Get them away from NATO military battle plans, intelligence, and more.
Will Obama, Secretary of State Keary, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell or anyone else in a leadership position do anything about this?
*Obama hates America and will bend over backward to support Erdogan’s Caliphate;
*SecState Keary is simply too dim witted to think for himself;
*Ryan and McConnell are seemingly too weak willed or cowardly to stand up for America.
One thing is for sure, the more people who read and share this, who learn about this, who understand this, who care, the better it will be for our republic. We, the people can raise enough what-for to bestir some of our leaders, perhaps enough to cause them to sit up, pay attention, and do the right thing.
James E. Horn is a retired American Diplomat
He can be reached at james@portervillepost.com
