Hi Paul,

Isn't it fun to fight yesterday's wars ? If you do it often enough, maybe you can reverse history. No, it's more fun flogging dead horses.

Turkey, 2016. I'm not sure what Johnson's attacks on Vietnam have to do with that. Anyway, meanwhile in Turkey, Erdogan seems to be reprising the steps taken in one part of Europe eighty-odd years ago, to silence all opposition and impose the sort of dictatorship that you are so enthusiastic about: 'dictatorships trump democracies' ?

So first it's the military and the intellectuals and teachers, then who ? All remaining Jews ? Christians ? Non-Sunni Muslims ? Then onto the homosexuals ? Gypsies ? And certainly the Kurds ? So much for your 'popular dictatorships', Paul.

Just when we're about to get a fruit-cake in the White House, when China is about to flout international law, just when Putin is about to launch the big one against Ukraine, this happens. It's enough to make one half-believe in some Divine Conspiracy Theory. Or Divine Practical Joke: maybe Allah and God are competing to see who can bugger up humanity the most. Yuk yuk.

Joe

Paul,

I don't doubt that you believe it, as a greens supporter it is necessary to be able to believe a vast array of fantasies.

I'm starting to feel as though the coup may have been engineered on purpose not to remove Erdogan, but in order to allow him to purge the judges, change the constitution and invade Syria, in line with the United States 'Plan B' for Syria which Kerry has stated is due to begin August 1st.
- I don't have any news articles or videos to back this opinion up with, and I most certainly could be wrong, but it's just a feeling I've got.

Also I may have gotten it wrong earlier when I mentioned the US had gotten access back to the 50 B1 nuclear bombs stored at Incirlik, I'm not completely sure they have.

And as a side topic, since Vietnam was mentioned earlier...
I this morning remembered another conspiracy theory I heard ages ago.
I'll share it just for fun, it's about the missing US POW's.

Apparently at the conclusion of the war a deal was made where the US was to pay restitution to the North Vietnamese in exchange for the POW's.
Fearing that the US would not keep their end of the deal, the North withheld some of the POW's.
The US falsely claimed to the American people that all POW's had been returned when in fact they had not, and the restitution to the North had not been paid.
This created a political nightmare that got worse and worse as time went by in that if the unreturned soldiers came back, the government would have to admit it lied and didn't keep it's end of the deal.
So the restitution to the North was never paid, and the unreturned serviceman were hung out to dry...

True or Untrue? Who knows?

Armchair Critic,

"I'm starting to feel as though the coup may have been engineered on purpose not to remove Erdogan, but in order to allow him to purge the judges, change the constitution..."

"- I don't have any news articles or videos to back this opinion up with, and I most certainly could be wrong, but it's just a feeling I've got."

That was pretty much the first theory out of the blocks, hot on the heels of the actual attempted coup.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/turkey-coup-conspiracy-theory-erdogan-military-gift-from-god-soldiers-istanbul-a7140516.html

"Conspiracy theorists are saying the attempted military coup in Turkey was faked, after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly called it “a gift from Allah”.

Social media users have compared the coup attempt in which more than 160 people are thought to have died to the Reichstag fire – the 1933 arson attack on the German parliament building which Hitler used as an excuse to suspend civil liberties and order mass arrests of his opponents.

President Erdogan reportedly told supporters at Istanbul’s international airport that the coup attempt was the work of the movement led by the exiled preacher Fethullah Gulen, which he denounced as “an armed terrorist organisation”.

He was quoted as calling the attempted coup "a gift from God," reportedly saying it would help cleanse the military of "members of the gang” who would “pay a heavy price for their treason”.

This immediately led many to fear that President Erdogan, who has previously been accused of persecuting critics, will use the coup as an excuse to further crack down on his opponents. Such fears are likely to be stoked by Turkish TV reports that 2,745 judges have been removed from their offices following the coup attempt."

Many more judges and officials have been stood down since - schools closed, bookshops ransacked....

Hi Poirot,

Here's a really idiotic Conspiracy Theory of my own:

1. Erdogan wants to be both Cailiff and Sultan, Head of State AND Head of Islam, i.e. to enforce Caesaro-Papism.

2. He will manoeuvre to re-build the old Ottoman Empire: i.e. re Syria, he will arm the weakest side in order to keep the whole thing going until there isn't much left of the place, or equally of Assad's forces, ISIS, the Kurds or the other pro-democratic forces. He's an equal-opportunity imperialist, opposed to alternative views on religion, any dictatorships other than his own, nationalism and democracy. Similarly Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

3. He will take time now to consolidate his control of the military, and to eliminate all democratic freedoms within Turkey. Then he will wave the cudgels.

4. He will co-operate with any other country if and when it suits him; then act, when it suits him.

I'd suggest that he has five years.

Cheers,

Joe

Hey Poirot,
Yeah, but they didn't give a reason why he might've staged it.
If he did (and I don't know that he did) my thoughts are that he did so to change the constitution to accommodate the US's coming 'Plan B' to invade Syria in August without having to deal with the usual government opposition.

But like I said I could be wrong, and probably am.
It could just as well be a US op that went bad and now Erdogan is peeved at the US, has no interest in joining the EU anymore as its going to fall apart anyway and maybe he just wants to go back to the way things were, at least for the time being.

It's as though I expect the Sultan to do something sneaky and snidely though so, anyway there it is.