U.S. Ally Turkey Arrests Academics for the Crime of Signing a Peace Petition

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A senior Western official familiar with a large cache of intelligence obtained this summer told the Guardian that “direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now ‘undeniable.’”

ISIS, in other words, is state-sponsored — indeed, sponsored by purportedly Western-friendly regimes in the Muslim world, who are integral to the anti-ISIS coalition. Which then begs the question as to why Hollande and other Western leaders expressing their determination to “destroy” ISIS using all means necessary, would prefer to avoid the most significant factor of all: the material infrastructure of ISIS’ emergence in the context of ongoing Gulf and Turkish state support for Islamist militancy in the region.

There are many explanations, but one perhaps stands out: the West’s abject dependence on terror-toting Muslim regimes, largely to maintain access to Middle East, Mediterranean and Central Asian oil and gas resources.

– From the post: So Who’s Really Sponsoring ISIS? Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Other U.S. “Allies”

There’s been a lot going on lately, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you missed the latest drama from of U.S. ally, and sometimes ISIS/al-Qaeda supporter Turkey.

Recently, a peace petition circled the globe calling on the Turkish government to end fighting against Kurdish militants in the country’s southeast, which has reportedly led to thousands of civilian deaths. By January 15th, 2,000 Turkish academics had signed the petition, which was too much for authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to handle. He not only publicly denounced the entire affair, he went ahead and started arresting people.

Nature reports:

Hundreds of Turkish academics are waiting to find out whether they will be prosecuted or sacked for spreading “terrorist propaganda”, after they signed a petition calling for violence to end in Turkey’s southeast, where government forces have been fighting Kurdish separatists.

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Was the Turkish Government Caught Sending Weapons to ISIS in Syria?

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If you have any interest in geopolitics whatsoever, you need to be paying very close attention to the complete and total shit show that is Turkey.

Turkey is a close U.S. ally that has been nevertheless caught supporting ISIS is various ways this year. Why would a close U.S. ally be supporting ISIS? Great question. I’ll let you come to your own conclusions, but before we go into today’s piece, let’s revisit a post from a couple of weeks ago: Turkey Bombs Kurds Fighting ISIS, Then Hires Same Lobbying Firm Supporting U.S. Presidential Candidates. Here’s some of what we learned:

On the same day that Turkey announced it would help fight the Islamic State, Turkish forces began an airstrike campaign against one of the very groups that has been crucial to stopping the advance of the Islamic State.

Since the July 24 announcement, Turkey has launched several waves of airstrikes against elements of a Kurdish separatist group known as the P.K.K., which is widely listed as a terrorist group. But that group and its allies in Syria, who have been closely working with American forces, are pushing Islamic State militants out of areas they once controlled.

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Turkey Bombs Kurds Fighting ISIS, Then Hires Same Lobbying Firm Supporting U.S. Presidential Candidates

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The one group in the Middle East that is actually standing up to ISIS and successfully resisting it militarily are the Kurds. So what does U.S. ally Turkey do to the Kurds? It bombs the shit out of them, naturally.

From the New York Times:

Clearly cognizant of how bad this looks, the government of Turkey went ahead and hired lobbying firm, Squire Patton Boggs, the same firm tied to 2016 Presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.

We learn from the Intercept that:

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