Saturday, February 20, 2016

Gordon Duff — Erdogan’s Plan, Islamic Empire or Armageddon

Turkey and Saudi Arabia have made their plans clear to an amazed world, a new Wahhabist empire, an “Islamic State,” not the one the puppet front organization ISIS is running, but a real one with up to a million men in uniform, over three thousand modern combat aircraft and nuclear weapons.
Syria will fall to them, as will Iraq. They will take Jordan in a snap, crushing it from the north and south. The Gulf States are already onboard, willing members while Egypt may hold out awhile, with Israel, as long as it survives, holding one flank while Libya is already “gone,” part of the secret Erdogan caliphate.
Erbil strongman dictator, Barzani has already split Iraq, a “done deal.” He has joined Turkey against not only the PKK but Turkish Kurds who are being wiped off the map and his Syrian brothers, who are being slaughtered to his silence, and of course the government in Baghdad that pays his salary.
Afghanistan is under attack, with ISIS recruiters and Saudi cash making significant inroads, not only there but in nuclear Pakistan as well. To his north, Ukraine is fully onboard, ready to declare war on Russia any day while Bulgaria and Romania remain silent partners, ready to knife both Russia and NATO in the back.
Georgia is a defacto client state of Turkey’s, a path for arms smuggling, the new “other silk road,” from Ukraine, by plane or Black Sea trawler from Odessa, into Georgia and through Turkey into Syria and Iraq, into the hands of Erdogan’s terror armies.
Israel woke up first and dumped Erdogan like a “hot potato.” He had them fooled the way he had Europe fooled. He even had Russia and Iran going for years with promises of trade deals and gas pipelines. Now it is clear, this is a madman bent on world domination, nothing less.…
A war is already going on. Turkey has invaded Syria, ISIS is a Turkish army, Muslim Brotherhood recruits, mercenaries, underwritten by the Saudis and Qatar, aided by rogue Western intelligence agencies, the CIA and MI6.…
No so long ago I would have written this off as either a rant or a conspiracy theory, but now.…. Duff is not the only one warning about Erdogan's ambitions. Pepe Escobar has been on his case for some time. Escobar got the ISIS connection right and the fact that the CIA was funneling weapons to both Al Qaeda and ISIS, while I was still thinking it was nonsense.

I still think that some of it is over the top. The US is going to let Israel fall to an Islamic Empire, and the Sunni states combined are no match for NATO or Russia, let alone the US and Russia together.

This is definitely the case, though.
Turkey is actively threatening Greece with continual air space violations and aggressive claims made against Greek islands in the Aegean.
Turkey is also blackmailing Europe and Germany in particular with refugees.
Erdogan has destroyed Germany’s Merkel, whose popularity is at an all-time low.
I would like to think that the nuclear threat he talks about is sheer fantasy. Even if this is a conspiracy theory, there are enough germs of truth in conspiracy theories to make them plausible. If even some of these germs are true, as I think they are based on other sources, that's bad enough.

NEO
Erdogan’s Plan, Islamic Empire or Armageddon
Gordon Duff

See also
What do you call it when a foreign power blasts the hell out of a group you've created, trained and equipped?
Russia Insider
Turkey Is Now Waging a Proxy War Against US in Syria
Marko Marjanović

6 comments:

MRW said...

I haven’t read Duff’s article in toto, but in the part you quote, he’s ignoring the fact that Russia and Syrian govt forces are beating back IS forces and their proxies, and destroying their supply lines. I’m willing to accept that he has Erdogan’s aspirations correctly, but the facts on the ground decry their success.

I find Pat Lang and some of the ex-military intel pros on his site to be clearer about what’s happening. (As Lang wrote, when you win on the battlefield, you get to dictate the negotiations. duh.) Lang and his intel cohorts say the opposite of Duff, and are more piercing in their details and briefer. But it may be because I’m seduced by plain hard-nosed military analysis, and blunt unvarnished unemotional assessments with data, dates, and maps. [I also have a congenital disgust for drama, hyperbole, and over-noodling under extreme pressure; drives me fuckin’ nutz, since I was three.]

Ditto Stephen Cohen’s broader Russian analysis, given every Tuesday night on The John Batchelor Show (ABC Radio-NYC). Cohen has the breadth of insight, experience, and historical references--not to mention that he speaks, reads, and writes Russian!--that only comes with age.

MRW said...

Moon of Alabama also gets it right, imo.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/02/us-ignores-own-unsc-resolution-tells-russia-stop-bombing-al-qaeda.html

Tom Hickey said...

Duff's article is chiefly about Erdogan's agenda for a neo-Ottoman empire, that is a Sunni empire that is lead by Turkey under a "sutlan.

Many observers have concluded that Erdogan is unpredictable and somewhat crazy. Duff suggests that this is not actually the case, but rather that Erdogan and Davutoglu have a clear agenda that is so extreme as to appear crazy to those who don't appreciate it for what it is as a grab for power in the region and eventually the establishing of an Islamic Empire capable of confronting the West.

It's possible that this is merely a conspiracy theory, but I am not ready to write it off yet. I tend to think that people in power are acting based on a clear rationale rather than just being erratic and acting crazy.

Duff may be exaggerating somewhat, but he may also have the thread.

MRW said...

Why would it be a conspiracy theory? Duff is attempting to read Erdogan’s mindset, and he uses his contacts in the area, which are profuse. (Lang, who speaks, reads, and writes Arabic, is constantly writing that the west does not understand how the eastern mind works.) On the other hand, I don’t agree with Duff's military conclusions when the opposite is happening on the ground right now. That’s all.

Peter Pan said...

A case of ambitions exceeding ability?
The Turkish dictator's days may be numbered if he doesn't play his cards right.

Matt Franko said...

He is really going to shit his pants if Trump wins...