Turkey’s Erdogan Cleans House to Form a More Perfect Islamic State

[rug]

By Riyadh Mohammed
July 26, 2016

The failed coup in Turkey on July 15-16 has done exactly what many experts predicted: It’s given Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a green light to implement the next stage of his plan to turn the country into an Islamic state. After quelling the insurgent military rebels, Erdogan did the following in short order:

Detained 42 journalists.

Arrested or suspended 57,000 soldiers, police, judges and civil servants suspected of complicity in the coup.

Arrested 62 children for treason from a military school. They were jailed and not allowed to speak with their parents.

Tortured detainees, according to Amnesty International.

What’s at stake is a long-time strategic relationship that has been pivotal to U.S. national security interests for decades.

Turkey has been a particularly important NATO ally of the United States because of its strategic geographic location between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. It was a key military base for the U.S. in the Middle East from the start of the Cold War up to the fight against ISIS. Turkey’s Incirlik air base was used by U.S. warplanes launching attacks against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. Incirlik was also used to enforce the no-fly zones in Iraq before the 2003 invasion.

More recently, the U.S. and Turkey have been at odds over the use of Incirlik in the war against ISIS. Erdogan was worried that strikes in Iraq would benefit the Kurds, who have long sought independence from Turkey. The relationship cooled but quickly recovered, even though the U.S. watched with dismay as the democratically elected Erdogan began to act as an autocrat after he was elected in 2014.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/07/26/Turkey-s-Erdogan-Cleans-House-Form-More-Perfect-Islamic-State

[Duckhunter935]

1. Sad indeed

[tonyt53]

2. He sees how well it has worked in so many middle eastern countries, so he wants the same.

[rug]

3. What's different here is that Turkey is already a bona fide state with all the attributes of a state

which happens to belong to NATO.