ISTANBUL — Their happiness shines out of the photograph: 14 graduates of Turkey’s Air Force Academy celebrating their completion of a flight training program with a picture together in front of a fighter jet.

Within months, all but one of the group would be in jail, accused of joining a 2016 coup attempt that brought blood to the streets and threw the country into turmoil from which it has yet to emerge. Last November, 13 of them — the other was not on base, because he was getting married — were found guilty of trying to overthrow the constitutional order and sentenced to life in prison, their military careers, and their dreams of flying F-16s dashed.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faced down the coup attempt and cracked down hard in the aftermath, imposing a state of emergency for two years, detaining 100,000 people, and purging 150,000 public employees from their jobs. More than 8,000 military personnel were prosecuted for their part in the insurrection, including more than 600 trainees, cadets, and conscripts — most in their early 20s — whose misfortune was to have been given orders that night.

Their fate has been largely overlooked in Turkey, where government rhetoric against the coup perpetrators is strident and families and lawyers of the defendants have been scared to speak out. But after the 13 were sentenced to life in prison — 12 of them receiving “aggravated life,” the harshest form of life sentence, without parole — some of their families decided to break their silence.

A picture taken remotely of Alper Kalin’s parents, Kezban and Ali, at an office in Ankara.Credit…The New York Times

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But Akinci air base turned out to be the headquarters of the coup plotters, a collection of military personnel and civilians who that evening ordered troops to seize control of key installations, planes to bomb Parliament, and a unit of commandos to capture Mr. Erdogan.

The president evaded capture, and in a cellphone interview with a television station, he called on members of the public to face down the putsch. By morning, troops loyal to the government had regained control and attacked Akinci air base, detaining many of those involved.

The trainee pilots had been largely unaware of what was going on, according to their statements to investigators and in court, which the government challenged and which could not be independently verified.

Their cellphones had been taken away — which was normal during a military operation — and the television had been removed from the mess hall where they spent much of the night sitting around, they said. They moved chairs, made tea. Some stood guard on the back entrance to the squadron building, and three were sent to the front gate and handed rifles, although the court found that they had not used them.

As the base came under fire from special forces troops, the trainees were told to leave, which most of them did around 8 a.m., driving their own cars. Alper Kalin arrived home scared and exhausted, but his parents reassured him.

“I did not think anything would happen to those trainees,” Ali Kalin said. “They did not use firearms. They were not involved in anything — just Akinci base was their place of duty.”

Eleven days later, the group was called back to the base to give testimony about the events, and they were immediately detained. Within hours, their names had appeared on a list of personnel purged from the military.

That was a bombshell for the trainees and their families from which they are still reeling. The pilots have been in detention ever since. When their parents and siblings tried to find them at police stations and army bases, they encountered insults and abuse. From being proud parents of celebrated military achievers, suddenly they were branded traitors and terrorists.

“I did not go to the hearings,” said Sumeyra Soylu, 25, whose brother Ali was one of the 13 detained. “There was a certain group of people, known as the plaintiffs, who were cursing and swearing loudly at the relatives of the defendants, and he didn’t want us ever to hear them.”

Then followed four and a half years of legal proceedings as prosecutors indicted more than 500 defendants in the Akinci base trial. In a courtroom the size of a sports arena at Sincan, outside Ankara, 80 trainee pilots went on trial alongside senior commanders and civilians accused of leading the coup. The United States-based Islamic preacher, Fethullah Gulen, was charged in absentia of being the mastermind.

A picture taken remotely of Ali Soylu’s sister, Sumeyra, and parents, Mehmet and Mefaret, at their home in Manisa.Credit…The New York Times

Ali Soylu with his sister, mother and aunt. His sister said he hadn’t wanted his family to hear the court proceedings.Credit…via Soylu Family

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“Mr. Erdogan was listed among the victims of the events and was represented throughout the trial by his lawyer, Huseyin Aydin, who often clashed with the defendants and their lawyers.

The target of the crime of breach of Constitution that many defendants, including the trainee lieutenants, were charged with was President Erdogan,” Mr. Aydin said in written answers to questions from The New York Times.

The trainees were charged with being members of a terrorist organization, trying to overthrow the constitutional order, murder, and attempted murder since eight civilians died in clashes at the entrance of the base. But the prosecution did not produce evidence that implicated them in the coup plot or the clashes that occurred, their lawyer said. The lawyer asked not to be named to avoid legal repercussions for himself.

As trainee officers, they are still undergoing their education and can only take orders, not issue them, he said. Akinci base was their place of work, so they should not be considered guilty simply for being present there, and their own commanders testified in court that the trainees had played no part in the events, he said. Yet in the end, they were convicted, along with all of the others present at the base that night, of trying to overthrow the constitutional order.

“The top commander received the same sentence. The lowest-level soldier received the same sentence,” Ms. Kalin said. “How is that possible?”

Mr. Aydin said that trainee pilots had provided support services that night to the coup plotters in place of the usual staff, including transporting pilots and guarding buildings and captives. “There is no doubt that the trainee pilots contributed to the coup attempt,” he said, adding that the conviction was not final and still had to go through the appeal process.

Soldiers involved in the coup were beaten up and arrested in July 2016.Credit…Gokhan Tan/Getty Images

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Many Turks opposed the coup. But as the crackdown has continued for more than four years and swept up many with no connection to the events surrounding it, they have become deeply unhappy with the state of justice.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey’s largest opposition party, supported Mr. Erdogan against the coup plotters but has since accused him of orchestrating a civilian coup when he rounded up tens of thousands of political opponents, academics, lawyers, and journalists who had nothing to do with the coup attempt.

The purges in the armed forces were systematic, rooting out whole units and conducting yearly roundups. Only two pilots remain in the air force from the class of 2010, to which the group of 13 belonged, said a former classmate who was among those purged.

Mr. Kalin, who served much of his career in the gendarme, said: “Our trust in the law, in the courts, in justice, in the state, in the government fell to zero. Even below zero.”

By now, the purges and prosecutions have included thousands in the military — officers and cadets alike.

“Is it OK to darken the lives of that many people without discriminating between the innocent and the guilty?” said Hatice Ceylan, whose son Burak, 29, is among the 13 trainees sentenced. “They are just children. There are plenty like my son, rotting in jail.”

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Carlotta Gall is the Istanbul bureau chief, covering Turkey. She previously covered the aftershocks of the Arab Spring from Tunisia, reported from the Balkans during the war in Kosovo and Serbia, and covered Afghanistan and Pakistan. @carlottagall • Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on April 4, 2021, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Trainee Pilots, Not Generals, But Punished All the Same. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/world/europe/turkey-coup-trainee-pilots.html

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed threats to target Kurdish fighters Monday as he sent more troops to the border with Syria ahead of an imminent US withdrawal.

Turkey was in Syria “to return the freedom of our Arab brothers and sisters, to return the freedom of our Kurdish brothers and sisters”, he said during a speech in Ankara.

“Just as we did not leave our Syrian Arabs to Daesh (IS), we will not leave Syrian Kurds to the cruelty of the PKK,” he said during a speech in Ankara.

A Turkish military convoy arrived overnight on Monday at the border with Syria, with local media reporting that some vehicles had entered Syria.

In a telephone conversation Sunday between Trump and Erdogan, which both sides described as “productive”, they agreed to avoid a power vacuum in Syria after the US withdrawal.

The US leader tweeted that Erdogan had told him Ankara would “eradicate” the last IS elements.

Turkey has said any offensive targeting the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia and the Islamic State (IS) group will be launched in the coming months.

Ankara views the YPG as a “terrorist offshoot” of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.

Unlike several other allies of the United States, Turkey has praised US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw 2,000 his ground forces from Syria.

Trump stunned the US political establishment and allies last week with his decision, days after Erdogan had warned that Ankara would soon launch an offensive in northern Syria.

Critics of Trump’s decision fear that thousands of Islamic State (IS) group extremist members are still thought to be in Syria, despite Trump’s claim of having defeated IS.

– Convoy enters Syria –

A Turkish military convoy with howitzers, artillery batteries and several units of the armed forces, was deployed to the border district of Elbeyli in Kilis province, state news agency Anadolu reported on Monday.

Parts of the convoy had entered Syria, the private IHA news agency reported, which said the reinforcements would take place “gradually”.

The deployment began over the weekend with around 100 vehicles, Hurriyet daily said, and crossed into the Al-Bab region, headed towards Jarabulus and YPG-held Manbij.

Jarabulus and Al-Bab were areas captured from IS during Ankara’s first military operation in August 2016 which lasted until March 2017.

Military reinforcements had also been sent to the Akcakale border town and Ceylanpinar district, both in the southeastern Sanliurfa province.

Turkey conducted a second offensive with Syrian rebels against the YPG in its northwestern enclave of Afrin in January this year.

Turkish officials have previously said Ankara has no territorial ambitions in Syria.

– Warming Turkey-US relations –

In a tweet on Sunday, Trump said he discussed a “slow & highly coordinated pullout” of troops from Syria with Erdogan, even as some allies expressed they dismay.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he “deeply regretted” the US decision.

Trump’s move has also sparked turmoil within the administration. First Defence Secretary Jim Mattis resigned, then Brett McGurk, the special envoy to the anti-IS coalition, stepped down.

American support for the YPG, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, has long been a source of tension between NATO allies the US and Turkey.

But relations between the Turkish and American leaders appear to have improved substantially since a crisis in the summer over the detention of a US pastor, since released.

Last week, the US approved the sale of $3.5 billion in missiles to Turkey, after American outrage over Ankara’s major arms purchase from Russia.

But there are still strains over the US refusal to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based Muslim preacher who Turkey says ordered the 2016 failed coup.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-6527307/More-Turkish-troops-Syria-border-ahead-US-pullout.html

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janissary procession through the Brandenburg Gate on Türkischen Tag (Turkish Day), Berlin, photo via Wikimedia Commons

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 993, November 1, 2018

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Turkey, which hosts some 3.5 million refugees, is generally considered a transit or bulwark country in the ongoing refugee crisis. What is less known is that Turkey is also generating refugees of its own.

According to data from the Greek Asylum Service, over the past two years, the number of asylum applicants from Turkey has grown from 189 in 2016 to 2,463 in August 2018. This represents an increase of approximately 1,300%. Moreover, according to Eurostat, approximately 25,000 Turkish citizens applied for asylum in European countries between 2016 and 2017.

The most popular destination is Germany because there is already a substantial Turkish minority there. Between 2016 and 2017, more than 14,000 Turkish citizens applied for asylum in Germany alone. Compared to the number of applicants from countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, these numbers appear unimpressive. However, if we consider the alarming rate at which the number is increasing, and that Turkey is a relatively stable and somewhat democratic country, the refugee flows from the country are a cause for concern. Their causes and potential impact on the EU warrant examination.

Turkish refugee flows were caused, for the most part, by a combination of the abortive coup attempt in 2016 and the ongoing economic crisis. After the failed coup, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan embarked on a “crusade” to weed out all those suspected of being affiliated in any way with exiled religious leader Fethullah Gülen, whom Erdoğan believes was the coup’s mastermind. For the past two years, Erdoğan has persecuted soldiers, academics, teachers, journalists, and other citizens on suspicion that they are part of the Gülen network. Approximately 150,000 civil servants have lost their jobs and the Turkish police have made over 50,000 arrests.

The second major stimulant of Turkish refugee flows is the ongoing economic crisis. The country’s economy is in a shambles. After years of growth, low-interest rates, and massive, government-backed construction projects, the economy is now in freefall, and the consequences for Turkey’s stability are not yet known.

Since the beginning of 2018, the Turkish lira has lost 42% of its value against the dollar. Inflation rose from 7.2% in January 2015 to 15.9% in July 2018.Ankara also has a high level of debt due for repayment. According to the estimates of the Fitch credit rating agency for 2018, Turkey’s total financing needs will be almost $230 billion.

Despite the bleak economic situation, Erdoğan appears reluctant to implement tighter monetary and fiscal policies out of fear that he will lose the support of his political base. Instead, he has adopted inflammatory, conspiratorial rhetoric against the global financial markets, which he accuses of “waging a secret war against Turkey.” The country’s precarious economic situation is exacerbated by its strained relationship with the US.

These factors have provoked fears among the Turkish population of persecution, unemployment, and restrictions on travel due to the revocation of passports. In response to these fears, some Turkish citizens are attempting to migrate to the EU. The most common route is to cross the Greek border via the Evros River and then, with the help of smugglers, continue on to Europe.

According to data from the Migration Policy Institute, in 2016, the number of Turkish citizens who were granted protection status was 900. In 2017, that figure reached 5,555. This represents an increase of over 300%. These data represent the share of first-instance positive asylum decisions relative to all decisions made in each country. Positive decisions include refugee protection, subsidiary protection, and humanitarian protection. In 2017, the average rate of recognition of asylum applications from Turkish citizens in Europe was 36.0%. This means that in one out three cases, Turkish asylum seekers were granted refugee status.

(Of course, recognition rates vary significantly among European countries. Norway holds the highest rate of recognition with 89.7%. By contrast, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria have yet to reach a positive decision. Greece has a rate of recognition of 54.5%.)

This substantial increase is striking for two reasons. First, it reflects the speed at which the total number of asylum applications from Turkish citizens has risen. Second, it shows that European asylum services recognize that Turkish citizens are being persecuted.

The first major complication when dealing with Turkish refugees stems from the fact that the EU signed an agreement with Ankara in an effort to curb the flows of Syrian refugees. Under the agreement, all Syrians who reached the Greek islands after March 20, 2016, would be returned to Turkey. For each refugee returned to Turkey, one refugee from Greece would be accepted into the EU. Hence, under the agreement, Turkey is considered a “safe third country” that can accept incoming refugee flows.

But this no longer makes sense. European countries now grant refugee protection status to Turkish citizens, meaning they acknowledge that they are suffering persecution in their home country. How, then, can the EU continue to justify the characterization of Turkey as a “safe third country?”

The issue of Turkish refugee flows could be the final nail in the coffin of the agreement, which has been extensively criticized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as by non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders. The criticisms revolve around the fact that Turkey cannot be considered safe as it denies refugee status to non-Europeans and is unable to provide effective protection under international law. While some analysts view the agreement as “too big to fail,” it is uncertain whether Turkish refugee flows will allow the agreement to be maintained as is. Even if the EU chooses to uphold it, it cannot deny that Turkey is itself now a generator of refugees.

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Nikolaos Lampas is an Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Piraeus, Greece. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Peloponnisos, Greece.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/turkey-refugee-crisis/

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“I have just authorized a doubling of Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum with respect to Turkey as their currency, the Turkish Lira, slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar! Aluminum will now be 20% and Steel 50%,” Trump tweeted Friday. “Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!”

The Turkish lira, tumbled from 4.7 to the dollar to a depleted 6.4 to the dollar, for the first time in history breaking the 6 mark. The lira is reported to have more than 30 percent of its value throughout August, with the biggest hit – a fall of 14 percent – happening Friday. The yield on Turkish decade-long bonds has risen to over 20 percent and inflation is now running at over 15 percent compared to 11 percent one year ago, according to TradingEconomics.

At the crux of the diplomatic dispute is Turkey’s refusal to release American Pastor Andrew Brunson, who has been detained in Turkey for 21 months on “terrorism” charges – suspected of having ties to the outlawed Gulenist movement – along with alleged espionage accusations. U.S. State Department representatives have called the file against him as entirely uncreditable.

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Turkish authorities have ordered the dismissal of more than 18,500 state employees over alleged links to “terrorist” organisations, according to an emergency decree published in the country’s official legal database.

The Official Gazette said on Sunday that 18,632 people had been sacked as part of a crackdown following a failed military coup two years ago, including 8,998 police officers, 3,077 army soldiers, 1,949 air force personnel and 1,126 from the naval forces.

Some 1,052 civil servants and 199 academics were also among those dismissed, and at least three newspapers, a television channel and 12 associations were shut down.

The decree also said 148 employees who were dismissed in the past had been reinstated.

Turkish media dubbed the latest decree as the “last,” with officials indicating the state of emergency could end as early as Monday.

The state of emergency has been renewed seven times and the latest is officially due to end on July 19.

Turkey has been under state of emergency since July 2016 following an attempted coup that tried to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan to be sworn in

He was re-elected to presidency on June 24 and is set acquire some additional new powers on Wednesday as part of a transition to an executive presidency that will culminate on July 9 with his taking the oath of office for a new five-year term. Erdogan is expected reveal his administration on Wednesday too.

Under the newly introduced system, president, who leads the state’s executive branch, will be able to appoint vice presidents, ministers, high-level officials and senior judges, as well as dissolve parliament, issue executive decrees and impose a state of emergency. The prime ministry does not exist in the new system.

Lifting the state of emergency was one of the Turkish president’s election campaign promises.

The government has arrested or sacked more than 100,000 people, saying the purges and detentions are aimed at removing supporters of Fethullah Gulen, a religious leader Ankara blames for the coup attempt, from state institutions and other parts of society.

Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, has denied any involvement in the failed coup in which more than 230 people were killed.

Turkey’s Western allies and rights groups have repeatedly condemned the government’s detentions and purges, claiming that Ankara was using the state of emergency as a pretext to punish dissidents.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/07/turkey-sacks-18500-state-employees-alleged-terrorism-links-180708065111639.html

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Since the start of the Cold War, Turkey has been one of the United States’ top allies in a region not known for pro-American sentiment.

It joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1952, helping the U.S. build a bulwark against the Soviet Union. It opened its bases to U.S. warplanes during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the more recent fight against Islamic State. Its progressive Muslim democracy was once touted as a model for other Middle Eastern countries.

Now, the two sides can’t even agree on what was said in a phone call.

That call, held Wednesday between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was the Trump administration’s most recent attempt at repairing a relationship that reached a new nadir this week, with Ankara accusing Washington of establishing what it called a “terror corridor” in northern Syria.

Turkey also threatened military action against American soldiers standing in the way of an offensive, dubbed “Operation Olive Branch,” to rout a Syrian Kurdish militia that Ankara regards as a terrorist group — but which the U.S. has fashioned as its on-the-ground vanguard against the militant group Islamic State. (Ankara insists the Syrian Kurds have ties to a Kurdish separatist movement it has fought at home for decades.)

The offensive, which began late last week, developed into a no-holds-barred assault on the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin with ground troops and Syrian rebels fighting to breach Kurdish defensive lines.

The White House said Trump had “urged Turkey to de-escalate, limit its military actions, and avoid civilian casualties and increases to [the numbers of] displaced persons and refugees.” It went on to say that the president “urged Turkey to exercise caution and to avoid any actions that might risk conflict between Turkish and American forces.”

That last reference was to U.S. troops who patrol the Syrian city of Manbij, about 60 miles east of Afrin.

It was at least the third time the administration has complained about Turkish attacks, to no apparent effect, even as the Turkish military said two soldiers and more than 260 “terrorists” had been killed so far in the operation.

“We will not leave the blood of our martyrs on the ground and will continue our struggle until we root out terror,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

The White House said that Trump also “expressed concern about destructive and false rhetoric coming from Turkey,” eliciting a truculent rebuke from Ankara, which insisted that the American president did not raise objections to the Turkish military operation and that the two men merely “exchanged views.”

Also on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of Iraq’s Kurdish region, on the sidelines of the Davos, Switzerland, economic conference. To a reporter’s question, Tillerson denied he had proposed creating a roughly 18-mile-wide safe zone along the Turkish-Syrian border in an earlier conversation with Cavusoglu.

“We spoke about a number of possible options, but we did not propose anything,” Tillerson said.

Afrin has long been the site where the United States’ knotty policy toward the Kurds was most evident. In the earlier years of the Syrian war, Kurdish troops were trained and equipped by the Pentagon and fought against CIA-backed rebel factions in areas around the Kurdish enclave.

Then, as now, U.S. officials maintained they would support the Kurds in areas east of the Euphrates River as well as Manbij against Islamic State, but considered Afrin and the Kurdish militiamen stationed there to be a separate entity.

Those contradictions could be ignored as long as Islamic State was a factor. But the group’s defeat, not to mention the creation of a Kurdish-led Border Security Force, put the U.S. on a collision course with Ankara.

The Border Security Force was the last straw for Turkey’s political leadership, which touted the operation in Afrin as a war not just against Kurdish forces, but also against the United States.

“Obviously this is a tense situation,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said this week. “We are calling on the Turks to de-escalate the situation. We’re calling for a decrease in violence and that’s something that is extremely important to us.”

Yet there is little evidence that Ankara is in the mood for a de-escalation, especially before a Turkish public that views the operation as proof of a newfound bravado.

The country appears to be gripped by a patriotic frenzy. The Turkish religious affairs directorate organized special prayers for the soldiers taking part in the operation, with verses from the Koranic chapter entitled “Conquest” read out at tens of thousands of mosques the evening the operation began and the morning after.

Turkish news channels have covered the operation extensively, with anchors trumpeting troop advances in front of green screens depicting computer-generated fighter jets and tanks spitting fiery shells.

Pro-government and opposition politicians have also raced to applaud the offensive.

In Hatay province, where Turkish soldiers and armor are being staged for the incursion across the border in Syria, mothers cooked meals and passed them out to soldiers waiting to be deployed. Dozens of members of an Ottoman-style military marching band performed for soldiers.

“There have always been a few loonies who want to fight abroad, like in the Chechen war, or in Bosnia or Kosovo,” said Umut Ozkirimli, of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University, who studies Turkish nationalism. “But now it is more of a national hysteria.”

Meanwhile, anyone in Turkey questioning the operation, Erdogan said, was a traitor. He singled out the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, which has called for protests against the incursion.

“Nobody should take this call seriously,” Erdogan said. “They will pay the heavy price. This is a national struggle. We would crush anybody who opposes this. There will be no compromises or tolerance on this issue.”

Among more than 150 people detained since the start of the operation were two leaders from the party. Even though it is the second largest opposition party in parliament, more than a dozen of its lawmakers face terrorism charges because of views that the government says support the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

In Istanbul’s Kadikoy neighborhood, popular with opposition voters, police detained 11 people at a protest against the operation, and prosecutors later charged them with participating in an unlawful demonstration. Authorities in several provinces in the predominantly Kurdish southeast imposed a blanket ban on demonstrations against the operation.

The operation has also fanned anti-American fervor.

“That the U.S. … is targeting not only Syria and Iraq but also Turkey is no longer a debate,” wrote Ibrahim Karagul, a columnist with the Turkish daily Yeni Safak.

There are other fissures in the relationship between the two countries. Erdogan and his aides have accused Washington of protecting Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric who they say orchestrated a failed 2016 military coup and is a terrorist. The Justice Department has said there are no grounds to extradite the cleric, who has lived in rural Pennsylvania for nearly two decades.

Trump also complained that several U.S. citizens and local U.S. Embassy employees were among those targeted by a government-led crackdown after the coup attempt, when Turkish authorities arrested or fired tens of thousands of teachers, journalists, judges, human rights activists and others.

There is debate within the administration about whether the relationship with Ankara can be repaired. Some experts believe Washington will eventually slap Turkey with sanctions related to banking practices, weapons purchases and the detention of an American pastor.

“If the U.S. doesn’t attach repercussions to its concerns, and make those repercussions high enough, it is not likely they will be listened to,” Howard Eissenstat, an expert on Turkey at St. Lawrence University, said.

Special correspondents Farooq and Bulos reported from Istanbul and Aleppo, Syria, respectively, and Times staff writer Wilkinson from Washington.

tracy.wilkinson@latimes.com

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Michael T. Flynn, who was fired after just 24 days on the job, was one of the first Trump associates to come under scrutiny in the federal probe now led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

Mueller is applying renewed pressure on Flynn following his indictment of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, three sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News.

The investigators are speaking to multiple witnesses in coming days to gain more information surrounding Flynn’s lobbying work, including whether he laundered money or lied to federal agents about his overseas contacts, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.

Mueller’s team is also examining whether Flynn attempted to orchestrate the removal of a chief rival of Turkish President Recep Erdogan from the U.S. to Turkey in exchange for millions of dollars, two officials said.

A spokesperson for the special counsel had no comment.

Related: Mike Flynn’s Son Is Subject of Federal Russia Investigation

Flynn’s son, Michael G. Flynn, who worked closely with his father, accompanied him during the campaign and briefly worked on the presidential transition, could be indicted separately or at the same time as his father, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.

If the elder Flynn is willing to cooperate with investigators in order to help his son, two of the sources said, it could also change his own fate, potentially limiting any legal consequences.

The pressure on Flynn is the latest signal that Mueller is moving at a rapid, and steady, pace in his investigation. Last week, investigators unsealed indictments of Manafort and Manafort’s business partner Rick Gates. They pleaded not guilty.

Investigators also revealed Monday that former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to federal officials and had been cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.

If the senior Flynn is charged, he would be the first current or former Trump administration official formally accused of criminal wrongdoing by the Mueller team.

So far, the probe has only ensnared campaign officials, and the White House has argued that the connection to the president is minimal. An indictment of the president’s former national security adviser and his son would scramble that dynamic.

Related: Flynn, Manafort Are Key Figures in Mueller’s Russia Probe

A former senior law enforcement official said that in the weeks after Trump’s inauguration the FBI was asked to conduct a new review of Turkey’s 2016 request to extradite Fethullah Gulen, an elderly Muslim cleric living in the U.S. whom President Erdogan blames for orchestrating a coup to overthrow him.

The FBI pushed back on the request because Turkey had supplied no additional information that could incriminate Gulen since a review of the case during the Obama administration, the official said. It is unclear whether the request to investigate Gulen came from Flynn or through the typical diplomatic channels at the State Department.

The FBI is also investigating former CIA Director Jim Woolsey’s account to the Wall Street Journal — which he confirmed to MSNBC — that Flynn and Turkish officials discussed a potential plan to forcibly remove Gulen from the country in September 2016, according to sources close to Woolsey, who say the former director has spoken to FBI agents working for Mueller about the matter.

Flynn was fired in February following public revelations that he had lied to Vice President Pence about his dealings with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, declined to comment.

The younger Flynn’s lawyer, Barry Coburn, declined to comment.

Father and Son

Both Flynns have for months been subjects of the Mueller investigation.

The elder Flynn, an Army lieutenant general, was pushed out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 and retired from the military. He then founded a lobbying firm, Flynn Intel Group, where his son worked closely with him. The younger Flynn was involved in the daily operations of his father’s firm and functioned as his chief of staff. He often attended meetings with his father and would communicate with prospective clients.

The elder Flynn was paid $530,000 last year for work the Justice Department says benefited the government of Turkey. The elder Flynn did not register as a foreign lobbyist at the time, but did so retroactively this year. The issue has been part of Mueller’s probe.

His lawyer later said Flynn didn’t need to register because his client was a Turkish businessman and not a government official, but had opted to do so retroactively.

According to Flynn’s Justice Department filing, the Flynn Intel Group was hired to gather information about Gulen, and to produce a short film about its findings.

During the contract, which ended the day after Trump won the election, Flynn had at least one meeting, in September 2016, with Turkish officials, according to officials. Woolsey says that it included a discussion about kidnapping Gulen and flying him to Turkey.

Flynn also was paid some $35,000 in 2015 by Russian state television for a speech in Moscow at a gala where he sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The younger Flynn accompanied him on that trip. The trip raised concerns among federal officials.

NBC News has reported that others under scrutiny by Mueller include Carter Page, a Trump campaign ally; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser; and the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. They have denied any collusion with Russia.

President Trump has denied any collusion with Russia during the campaign and has called the investigation a politically motivated witch hunt.

Kelner has declined to comment when asked if Flynn denies colluding with the Russian election interference effort.

Turkey has long demanded the U.S. extradite tGulen, saying he is considered a terrorist. Erdogan forcefully renewed that request after the attempted coup against him in July 2016. U.S. officials have said the Justice Department has not found sufficient evidence linking Gulen to the coup attempt despite the boxes of documents Turkey has submitted to the U.S. that Ankara says back up its claim.

Extradition requests are processed through the U.S. justice system and are not determined by the White House or other agencies.

Any quid-pro-quo deal such as the alleged agreement between Flynn and Turkey would be illegal, officials said.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mueller-has-enough-evidence-bring-charges-flynn-investigation-n817666

The post Mueller Has Enough Evidence to Bring Charges in Flynn Investigation first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

That moves decisions to be made about his situation from the Spanish legal system to its Belgian counterpart. And the two are not identical twins. Even if both countries are EU members. This may expose a very large European problem: the lack of equality among justice systems. Citizens of EU member countries are free to move and work across the Union, but they are subject to different laws and constitutions.

The way the Spanish government tries to go after Puidgemont is exactly the same as the way Turkish president Erdogan tries to get to his perceived archenemy, Fethullah Gülen, a longtime resident of Pennsylvania. But the US doesn’t want to extradite Gülen, not even now Turkey arrests US embassy personnel. The Americans have had enough of Erdogan.

Erdogan accuses Gülen of organizing a coup. Spanish PM Rajoy accuses the Catalan government of the same. But they are not the same kind of coup. The Turkish one saw violence and death. The Spanish one did not, at least not from the side of those who allegedly perpetrated the coup.

Brussels should have intervened in the Catalonia mess a long time ago, called a meeting, instead of claiming this had nothing to do with the EU, a claim as cowardly as it is cheap. You’re either a union or you’re not. And if you are, the well-being of all your citizens is your responsibility. You don’t get to cherry pick. You got to walk your talk.

Belgian news paper De Standaard today makes an interesting distinction. It says the Belgian judicial system is not asked to “extradite” Puidgemont to Spain (uitlevering), but to “surrender” him (overlevering). Legal gibberish.

The paper also states that the case will go through three different courts, each of which has 15 days to announce a decision, so Puidgemont is safe for at least a month and a half. And then on December 21, Rajoy had called elections in Catalonia. For which, reportedly, he will seek to ban several parties. Don’t be surprised if that includes Puidgemont’s.

Moreover, even if the democratically elected president of Catalonia loses all appeals available to him, he could then ask for asylum in Belgium (apparently, Belgium is the only EU member country in which EU citizens can ask for asylum). And then you would really get into a mix-up of EU versus Belgian versus Spanish laws. In a way this is good, it would test a system that is not prepared at all for such divergences.

But what a disaster this is, once more, for the EU. It has shown zero leadership in the case, neither from the likes of European Commission head Juncker nor from Angela Merkel, its most powerful head of state. How can one not conclude that the Union is completely rudderless? This is just as bad as the refugee crisis, and the beheading of the Greek economy.

Threatening people with 30-year jail terms for organizing a peaceful vote is not what the EU should stand for. And now that is does, it threatens its own survival. Europe cannot be the land of Erdogan or Franco, it cannot look the other way and live.

That may be why the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, have prepared a report that looks at future scenarios for Europe, including worst-case ones. The article in Der Spiegel is in German only, and my command of the language is a tad rusty, but the translation through Google is surprisingly accurate, I only had to change a few words.

The authors don’t seek the worst case option in either Spain or Greece, but perhaps they should. Then again, some of their projections are stark enough to offer plenty food for thought.

Military planners think EU collapse is conceivable

According to SPIEGEL information, the Bundeswehr played through social and political trends until 2040 for the first time. Strategists are also developing a worst-case scenario. The Bundeswehr believes that an end to the West in its current form over the next few decades is possible. This is according to information from Der Spiegel from the “Strategic Perspective 2040”, which was adopted at the end of February by the top of the Ministry of Defense and since then kept under wraps.

For the first time in its history, the Bundeswehr’s 102-page document shows how social trends and international conflicts could influence German security policy in the coming decades. The study sets the framework in which the Bundeswehr of the future is likely to move.

The paper does not yet provide any concrete conclusions for equipment and strength. In one of the six scenarios (“The EU in Disintegration and Germany in Reactive Mode”), the authors assume a “multiple confrontation”. The future projection describes a world in which the international order erodes after “decades of instability”, value systems worldwide diverge and globalization is stopped.

“The EU enlargement has been largely abandoned, other states have left the community, Europe has lost its global competitiveness,” write the Bundeswehr strategists: “The increasingly disorderly, sometimes chaotic and conflict-prone world has dramatically changed the security environment of Germany and Europe.” In the fifth scenario (“West against East”), some eastern EU countries are freezing the state of European integration while others have “joined the Eastern bloc”.

In the fourth scenario (“multipolar competition”), extremism is on the rise and there are EU partners who “even occasionally seem to seek a specific approach to Russia’s” state capitalist model “. The document expressly makes no prognosis, but all scenarios are “plausible with the 2040 time horizon,” write the authors. The simulations were developed by scientists of the Federal Armed Forces Planning Office.

Funny, that ‘future projection’ looks a lot like how I see the EU today, not in 2040.

There’s a longer article behind a paywall at Der Spiegel, but this should be sufficient to get a conversation going. Angela Merkel may be all EU all the time, just like all her EU peers, but her own army has serious questions about that. And given the Catalonia swamp, who could doubt that they are right about having doubts?

Yanis Varoufakis’ DiEM25 movement is all set towards democratizing the EU, but how realistic is that goal? How divergent does a Union have to get before you give up on it? Poland, Hungary, Czechia all want completely different things from what Holland and Germany want. New French president Macron is finding out as we speak that he can only do what Merkel allows him to.

And then along comes Spain and tries to inflict Franco era laws and violence on its citizens. But Brussels does nothing, and neither does Berlin. Refugees can rot away on Greek islands if eastern Europe doesn’t want them, and Catalan grandmas can get beaten to a pulp by the remnants of Franco’s troops, Brussels has zilch.

The way the EU functions today is no accident, and it’s not some new development. Present-day Brussels is the culmination of 50-60 years of institutionalization. You don’t change that with an election here or there.

Will Catalonia be the endgame of Brussels? Will it be the refugee crisis? Brexit? It’s impossible to say, but what is certain is that in its present state, the Union has no future. And at the same time, there’s no solution in sight. The powers that be are deeply invested, and they’re not going to let go just because some country, or part of a country, or political party, or group of voters wants them to.

The EU is profoundly anti-democratic, and it intends to stay that way. But imagine that Belgium ‘surrenders’ Puidgemont, a man whose movement has lifted anti-violence to a whole new and modern level, and Rajoy jails him for 30 years, and the next day sits in on some meeting in Brussels, what picture does that paint for the 500 million EU citizens?

They’re crazy if they think they can get away with this.

By Raul Ilargi Meijer
Website: http://theautomaticearth.com (provides unique analysis of economics, finance, politics and social dynamics in the context of Complexity Theory)

© 2017 Copyright Raul I Meijer – All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

Source: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article60672.html

The post Preparing For EU Collapse first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.