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Comment by mustaflex | Hacker News Reader

I'am a big anti-erdogan turk but he never ever said that in the past it was a 'mistranslation' done on purpose and now that the coup has failed they use basic propaganda to corner him. Yes he is authoritarian fuck, yes he wants more power and lots of people hate him for that but it doesn't change what happened on July 15th, A coup orchestrated by an Imam and his group sheltered by U.S.A. They used planes that took of from Incirlik(nato base from where isis operation is lead) to refuel f-16s in Ankara.

The anti-american sentiment is at an all-time high in every part of the population and if they refuse to give Gulen to Turkey, it will be a breaking point and there will be no turning back. I think darker days are ahead of for Turkey and the middle-east.

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Pretty convenient coup for Erdogan. Interesting that he had a very long list of people to be purged all ready to go and now he has a platform to call for the extradition of his biggest rival. I wouldn't be too quick to blame on the CIA.

> Interesting that he had a very long list of people to be purged all ready to go

That's a red herring. Every state has those lists, "ready to go". Seriously, do you expect a power clique to wait until they get whacked to compile a list?

> too quick to blame on the CIA.

It is entirely debatable if anything we are fed via the media has a connection to reality, but the surface matter here points to Russian intelligence spilling the beans hoping to flip Turkey. I'm pretty sure Turks haven't forgotten the 'New Map of Middle East' [1] that the neocrazies were putting out a few years ago. Alternative plot is that US and Turkey are playing breakup to cover their support for these well armed crazies that have come out of the wooodwork since the West decided to "help" the people of "Middle East" [sic].

[1]: http://www.globalresearch.ca/plans-for-redrawing-the-middle-...

A good start if they want Gulen extradited would be some actual evidence that he is involved.

It is very hard to prove something like this, you should understand that these kind of subversive groups don't work with a straight command chain. It is much more like ISIS cells, you don't know who is who and how they operate.

In any civilized country that is ruled by the rule of law, if you cannot prove that he is involved, then he can't be judged for it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Until such proof is produced, this is just Erdogan doing a personal vendetta against a political enemy. No country outside Turkey has any interest of helping him with that.

> A coup orchestrated by an Imam and his group sheltered by U.S.A

And you got those "facts" from where?

These stories are spread by Erdogan, IMO I find the 'Erdogan staged everything' conspiracy much more believable. Bringing back democracy by sacking thousands of judges.

those gulenist judges threw 1000 officers in prison to weaken the secular force in the army and they put their people in it instead, we got these result today. The seculars like me are in a quandary: we know gulen is behind the coup, but we also know that our crazy president will use this failed attempt to muster more power.

Is Gulen the leader of the Hizmet movement? yes

did Gulen followers infiltrate the judicial system, police, and army and undermined secular forces under Erdogan's reign? yes

Did Gulen and his followers turned against Erdogan when they disagreed on how to share power? yes

Did Gulen's followers attempted a coup to ovethrow Erdogan? yes

All of these happened in the span of +12 years in front of our eyes, those gulenist did all this with impunity under Ergodan's protection(until fall 2013) while praising their precious Imam living in U.S.A.

In The past when you asked a gulenist why their "saint" leader lived in the U.S.A and not in a muslim country under sharia law they would say that he is so sick that he needs 50 doctors around him...They actually view him as the Messiah, you know the reincarnation of Jesus...

yes we can't prove it, but how can we do it? The Hizmet movement is in some ways similar to Scientology, you know they are shady as fuck but they're so slimy that you can't catch them with their hand in your pocket.

It is ironic that the only group that now is pro-american in Turkey is an Islamic sect which is at war against the secular order in Turkey.

The US has said that if the Turkish govt can provide any sound proof of Gulen's involvement they will consider extradition. But extradition requests are denied all the time even between really friendly nations. The problem with this extradition is that this will most certainly lead to the man being executed so the stakes are even higher to make sure that extradition is just.

>orchestrated by an Imam

citation?

There's a common conspiracy theory amoung Turk's that Gulen (quite an interesting character) was the one that orchestrated the coup. He's in self exile in the US. Definitely worth looking into.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fethullah_G%C3%BClen

And apparently they were friends and supported each other before they became rivals and Gulen, a Sufist, was evaluated as a threat by Erdogan, so Gulen high tailed out of Turkey --given Erdogan's tendency to want to concentrate power, it looks like it was the wise choice.

first of all he didn't leave Turkey under Erdogan's rule, he left much earlier because secular forces knew what he was and the circle was closing on him. He Left Turkey in 1999.

Wasn't that conspiracy theory started by President Erdogan literally as soon as he possibly could start it (on the televised Facetime chat)?

That's the thing, its not a conspiracy theory. Everybody already believe, even secular turks like me, that Gulen was behind many things in Turkey like: The imprisonment of more than 1000 "secular" officers in the army since 2007 with the Ergenekon Operation, and later with the Balyoz operation. The irony is when we accused Gulen of being behind those operations, AKP and Erdogan were accusing the seculars for being conspiracy theorist.

>> The anti-american sentiment is at an all-time high

This is interesting considering the US keeps touting how important allies Turkey is to us for the fight against ISIS. Why is there so much anti-American sentiment right now?

I honestly haven't been able to read that much on the coup so I'm probably missing something - I know you mentioned the US supported Imam, but what else is going on? I seriously would like to know more.

Without taking sides, it's at least easy to see how someone might hold the US responsible for the present day level of instability in the Middle East. Turkey has a land border with one of the largest, most unstable regions.

Any country with a large Muslim population will have negative views of America due to US support for Israel.

It really is that simple. Turkey has its cosmopolitan side, but numerically they don't match the Erdogan supporters, who in general skew towards the Islamist side.

Turkey is like Pakistan: a strategic US ally who doesn't exactly see eye-to-eye with the US on all problems.

In particular, Erdogan bet big on ISIS to rid himself of both Assad (strategic rival to Turkish influence in the region) and Kurds, so he's not in love with a US policy that arms Kurd troops against ISIS and Al-Nusra.

Also, Turkey is a big country. Daesh is obviously unpopular in "westernized" Istanbul, but out in the sticks where people listen to imams and maybe make the odd cross-border illegal transactions with ISIS fighters, they're likely loved a bit more, especially considering their anti-Kurd role. Coincidentally, rural provinces have also been Erdogan's primary constituencies ever since he failed to attain UE membership.

And well, of course there's Israel.

Edit: downvoted why? I don't think any of this is particularly contentious.

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