Monday, February 22, 2010

Islamist Military Purge in Turkey?

Turkish police arrested 50 military coup plotters in Turkey. Apparently, they planned to blow up mosques to trigger a military takeover. Coup plotters included ex-deputy chief Gen. Ergin Saygun, former Air Force chief Gen. Ibrahim Firtina and Navy Chief Adm. Ozden Ornek. I am a little suspicious of the plot itself, since I can't imagine too many Turkish soldiers wanting to blow up mosques. That sounds like something made up by the government to make these people sound evil. Think about it, if a fundamentalist Christian group took over the US, would you try to battle it by blowing up churches? That doesn't make much sense. However, it is possible they were plotting something, and I think it IS a tragedy that so many secular members of the Turkish military were all just arrested. If a former deputy chief of the army, a former chief of the Air Force and the current chief of the Navy were involved, you know they felt what the Turkish government was doing was very dangerous (e.g. betraying their friends the Israelis, moving towards Iran, and possibly countless other unseen to the public kind of moves.). Anyway, this is very bad news. I think the chance for Turkey to move more and more towards Iran has grown substantially, with nothing much left to stop it.

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