The extent of U.S. meddling in the governments of other countries cannot be over-estimated. It is likely always to be far greater than can be predicated based on published reports, because so much is kept secret by the government and the government fabricates its own stories that go into news stories. The U.S. meddling finds traction in foreign countries because the U.S. has so many ways to pay off, bribe, extort, blackmail and influence foreign political players. It has a vast range of positive and negative inducements, such as loans, trade deals, market access, tariff changes, humanitarian aid, military supplies, not to mention public support. This is even without using the CIA or negative information gleaned from spying. The possibilities of controlling other countries through these means are endless.
Although I do not have a full account of the roles played by the U.S. and Israel in the 1997 bloodless coup (called the post-modern coup) in Turkey in which Prime Minister Erbakan was forced to resign by a set of military officials, I have some very interesting material to report that implicates the U.S. government in this coup and names names such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Furthermore, there is a report that the former ambassador to Turkey explained that Erbaken was overthrown for not being sufficiently a U.S. puppet. He is quoted as saying
“There is an unwritten code in Turkish-US relations. Erbakan violated this code. The US does not like unpredictable allies who cannot be easily controlled. Although he was asked not to do so, he paid his first foreign trip as prime minister to Iran. His following visits were to Egypt, Libya and Nigeria.”
Trials of the senior Turkish military officers have been going on since last year. When the arrests were made in 2012, the prosecutors said “the suspects also held meetings with US and Israeli officials seeking ‘support’ for the military intervention, which is usually known as a post-modern coup and was carried out without the use of arms.” The term “support” means an understanding that the kinds of inducements mentioned above will be forthcoming and especially that the U.S. will provide public recognition of the legitimacy of the military’s action. This shows one way in which U.S. power can be applied to produce results that the U.S. government desires.
I’ll add two more items that support and reveal the U.S. role. The first is comment by an aide to Erbakan, Recai Kutan. In sworn testimony, we have him stating this: “Feb. 28 was more organized and better planned than other coups. Countries on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and Tel Aviv contributed to the staging of the Feb. 28 coup.”
A much more specific smoking gun is provided by Cengiz Candar. This article quotes an interview he gave in 2012:
“The US did not support an open military coup but supported the Feb. 28 process. They did support the post-modern coup. I have witnessed this. I was in the US between 1999 and 2000. I participated in a joint book project on Turkey and we had meetings with several writers for different chapters of the book. The editor of the book was former US Ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz. Alan Makovsky, a senior fellow and director at the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy — which is considered a think tank of the Israeli lobby — also attended the meeting. During a coffee break, Makovsky asked Abramowitz why he did not attend the meeting on the 7th floor. When I asked about the meeting, they told me that on March 12, 1997 — only two weeks after the National Security Council (MGK) meeting in which the postmodern coup was staged — a meeting on Turkey was held on the 7th floor of the headquarters of the US Department of State on the demand of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Please think back to those days. The coalition government of Welfare Party (RP) and True Path Party (DYP) — known as the Refah-Yol government — was overthrown in June. It is reported that Bernard Lewis, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle were among those who attended the meeting. During this meeting, they discussed what kind of strategy they should adopt relating to Turkey and decided that ‘the government should be overthrown without a coup.’
“I said: ‘The US eliminates those who threaten its interests, but the Virtue Party (FP) leader Necmettin Erbakan had not done anything of the kind. On the contrary; Turkey’s relations with Israel were very strong. More importantly, he lent support to the US over the evacuation of 5,000 Kurds allegedly linked with the CIA when former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s forces entered northern Iraq.’
“Abramowitz answered: ‘There is an unwritten code in Turkish-US relations. Erbakan violated this code. The US does not like unpredictable allies who cannot be easily controlled. Although he was asked not to do so, he paid his first foreign trip as prime minister to Iran. His following visits were to Egypt, Libya and Nigeria’.
“It is not possible to understand the Feb. 28 process without seeing the close relations between the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and Israel and pro-Israel officials in the US. Unlike other coups, there are more complicated foreign links involved in the Feb. 28 process.”
The bottom line is that the U.S. role in Ukraine cannot be over-estimated. We already know this based on money flows, intercepted phone calls, trips to Kiev by CIA chief Brennan and Secretary of State Kerry, but we perhaps may under-estimate the detailed knowledge and support that the U.S. has and the tools that it has at its disposal to install people or control people in the Ukraine government. For example, we may suspect that the U.S. government is playing an important role in the statements being made by top Ukrainian officials and in their decision to launch a military offensive against Slavyansk.
3:13 pm on May 3, 2014
