These make you wonder, shades of Romania


Turkey's President Erdogan's 'shopaholic' wife laid bare as 2m citizens earn £3 a day | Daily Mail Online

Erdogan's palace: The £500 million mansion Turkey's president calls home | Metro News

I do wonder how well these will be going down with the population, 2 million of which earn £3 a day. Not exactly a smart move to be rubbing their noses in it.

They don't care. They see Mr _ as "their guy" who made it from humble beginnings and who is helping them. The alternatives to him are the "snooty middle class" who Mr _'s suporters think will never open a path to the good life for them.

They will say "it all belongs to the state in the end" and crap like that although they know the end aim is "l'etat, c'est moi".

They will say "this is all foreign lies" and so on and so on.

Nuke armed stealth fighters, no no escallation there at all.....

What are you talking about?

The BIGGER picture Lw.

Whilst I agree that one thing Mr P respects is a BIG stick [and the proven determination to use it if required] Escalating the ongoing situation in the region [no not Syria] by deploying stealth aircraft alongside bespoke modified nukes is hardly going to act an antacid for Russia is it?

Poor buggers, sacrificed on the altar of restoring relations with Vladimir Putin...

Turkish pilots who downed Russian jet arrested over coup plot ? POLITICO

The current strike fighters in the inventory are all nuke capable. None of them are stealth, the F-117 is retired.
All that the new aircraft (F-35) program is doing is making sure it is able to do what current strike fighters can do. No loss of capability. You act as though it is current capability with that post.
As you damned well know from our years-long F-35 thread, F-35 is not fully IOC (beyond modest B for the Marines in the Far East) nor currently deployed to Incirlik.

Mountain out of molehill, GR. The core competency and raison d' etre of the F-35 is TACAIR. That it is to eventually become nuclear capable (tactical) is one of many capabilities, when they finally get systems integration sorted.

Same story with the Ticonderoga cruisers. Nuclear capable, but their core competency was Surface to Air and Surface to Surface warfare, with a later mod of TLAM (conventional) for additional strike/Ship to shore as a replacement for the old long gun ship to shore capability. Tech changes in a continuum.
We are drifting from topic, so that is all.

Why do you presume that the two events are related? I am sure you can appreciate that folks who participate in failed coups frequently lose their heads or get stuffed into jail/exile as a matter of routine.

L50, seems too easy a solution to Erdogan's problems - especially when the major of Ankara knew all about it the morning straight after the coup - and that he was a member of Gulen's "parallel state". Yeah, right. Also note that the coup F-16s flew out of Akinc northwest of Ankara - a strange airbase for the F-16s which were operating on the Syrian border only 6 months before.

Cynical, moi?

https://theaviationist.com/2016/07/1...military-coup/

https://www.rt.com/news/352050-turki...arrested-su24/

...."The day after the coup attempt, the mayor of Ankara, Melih Gokcek, announced that the pilot who had shot down the Russian plane had taken part in the coup, and was a member of a secret “parallel state” organization allegedly headed by cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in self-exile in the US.

“It is a ‘parallel state’ that has ruined our relationship with Russia. It was an incident that involved one of the pilots of this structure, 100 percent. He was one of the participants in the coup,” the mayor told CNN Turk. Melih Gokcek stressed that “our relations with Russia have been spoiled by these villains.”.......

I am left with a gut feeling that "a large part of iceberg is not seen below the waterline".


Consider strange things like:
a) List of thousands involved in the coup appeared over night, and most of them were immediately arrested.


b) Pres. Erdogan "narrow escaped" (some 20-30 min) an attack on him while he and his family were on a resort.


c) Erdogan's plane was allowed to fly safely though was allegedly escorted by fighter jets sent by rebel commanders.


d) Head of general staff was taken but then surprisingly easily released (why do so if he might be a trump card in their hands?)


e) Behaviour of puschists was strange in many aspects, e.g. they did not attempt to take or destroy the residences of president and prime minister (as they used to do during the previous coups) , and bombed the parliament instead (though nobody of c.a. 100 members staying these was hurt). Also the putschists did not block key airports (though allegedly AF were the "bad guys"), main roads and communication centres across the country.


f) The putschists had no speaker, even more, the coup had "no faces". AF commander who was named later as a key person... who knows what he was "offered"while staying in the hands of "butchers".


I am far from thinking it was a 100% show orchestrated by the current establishment, but the participation of the latter is quite likely. E.g., why not assume that the plotters and their plans were well-known and that somebody in their leadership (in reality loyal to the regime) told them "hey, guys, it's the right moment, let's start". Some of them started (maybe not all), but the other side was waiting for that, and now has free hands in doing whatever they like, especially as "people in the street" support them.


P.S. IMHO, "Russian issue" had the least priority in all that. Erdogan and Putin resumed talking before the coup was attempted. Just, "BTW No. 1000, why not to arrest those two pilots as well".

Turkey heading for a dictatorship?
 

With the numbers getting "purged" Erdogan will be difficult to shift. Turkey is heading for a dictatorship if not already there in some form.

Turkey coup attempt: Crackdown toll passes 50,000 - BBC News

His hard-line Islamic reforms could really damage Turkey's future and it's position within NATO and the West in general.

This is only going to go one way - and it ain't going to be pretty.

1. Round up all the "intellectuals" - aka anyone who may harbour secularist tendencies and make it very clear to them that their livelihoods (at least) depend on being good little muslims/AKP members. Stand by for gradual exodus of said people to Western / Southern Europe.

2. Watch as tourism receipts in Turkey plummet. Holidaying in dictatorships only appealing to certain type of tourist. Result - lots of unemployed, angry, shouty Turkish people (the less angry shouty ones having quietly left, see 1 above).

3. Watch as immigration weapon against EU deployed - unless you bung us some cash and/or be nicer to that nice Mr Putin (he's our friend really).

4. EU caught between rock and hard place. Syria not getting any better any time soon. Kurdish issue festering. EU anti-immigration issue boiling over.

Wouldn't hold out much hope of Incirlik being an operational NATO base in 5 yrs.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-ankara-turkey

"Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has declared a three-month state of emergency in the country in the aftermath of the coup attempt last Friday. The decision, announced in a televised press conference on Wednesday night, came after marathon meetings of the country’s national security council and the cabinet in Ankara.

Article 121 of the Turkish constitution, which regulates the state of emergency, requires parliament to give its consent to the decision and sets a maximum period of six months for it. It allows the cabinet under the chairmanship of the president to issue decrees that have the force of law on matters relating to the state of emergency."............

ORAC: this will end well, eh? :p

News.Az - Turkey to open Incirlik airbase for Russian aircraft

Incirlik Air Base is one of the NATO’s military bases in Turkey. Along with Turkey, the U.S, UK and Germany have deployed their military aircraft there

They are going to party like it is 1870 .What could possibly go wrong ?
The same players at the last big party in that area in 1870 all armed to the teeth in a small area .
What could go wrong ?

fitliker

Who decides on who how a NATO base is used? I remember, while serving in one, we were fairly restrained on some minor changes we wanted to make on the base. So I guess granting access to a third party is not so straight forward - unless the US don't mind having the Russians across the runway.

Erdogan has a free reign now to introduce anything he likes for the next 3 months!

Turkey coup attempt: State of emergency announced - BBC News

Well, in Turkey it's business as usual...at least for the past 700 years.
A few women in the office can't change the reality.
Let's just hope that Turkey justifies its NATO membership before it melts down back into the Ottoman Empire.

Fitliker posted,

News.Az - Turkey to open Incirlik airbase for Russian aircraft

Turkey proposes cooperation with Russia in fighting Islamic State | Reuters