Reminds me of similar protests in Europe in the 70's in other nations.
And in the 80's.
And in the early 00's regarding the Middle East.

It does make me wonder as to how many of these protesters were wearing jeans rather than the baggy pants with extended crotches and drinking cokes instead of raki.

So long as they look fashionable in their selfies, it's all good when it comes to radical chic, or even radical sheik! :}

The Turkish AF was sending a detachment to Australia for Ex Pitch Black, but their name seems to have disappeared off the guest list published last week. I was looking forward to getting some F4 pics !
Does anyone know if they have actually arrived ?

Turkish officer seeks asylum in US: report

A Turkish officer working at NATO’s U.S.-based Allied Command Transformation headquarters is seeking asylum in the country after being recalled in the wake of last month’s failed Turkish coup, Reuters reported. The asylum request, reportedly the first involving a Turkish officer in the U.S. since the country’s army attempted to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government July 15, could further derail the U.S.-Turkey relationship........

US to Turkey: Back off

The Propaganda war is interesting to watch.


If Turkey wants to "kick the US out of Incerlik" (per the article) it will be interesting to see how the nukes are removed from the country. Fun times for all.

TURAF have withdrawn from PITCH BLACK.

Not seen this confirmed elsewhere so unsure on its veracity.

"Turkey signals joint defense plan with Russia - Anadolu Agency"

http://aa.com.tr/en/politics/turkey-...-russia/625918

Vlad will try to lure them out of NATO for sure.

he is sure going to be a bit more tolerant than west for erdogans dictatorial shenanigans

They only have to give one year's notice, per the Washington Treaty. They have the right to leave if they like.

Easier than leaving the EU then -

What - leave NATO and stop being the thorn in everybody's side? Turkey craves, indeed, demands respect. It gets this through being a big player in NATO (in reality, they aren't) as everyone sucks up to them - principally because Geography doesn't change.

Can't wait.

E. is a Mugabe-like fellow. Shouting one minute, sucking up the next. Turks see themselves as cleverly playing the big powers off against each other to their own benefit. For this to work, they can't let any big power think that it has entirely won.

The Speccie - Is Putin and Erdogan’s bromance back on?

Is Putin and Erdogan's bromance back on? | Coffee House

Turkish airmen who fled coup can stay in Greece | World | The Times & The Sunday Times

Two majors and a sergeant who flew a military helicopter into Greece after the botched coup in Turkey and requested asylum will not be extradited, a Greek court has ruled. The decision, which threatens to damage relations with Ankara, almost certainly means that five other Turkish soldiers who were part of the group that landed in northern Greece in July this year will not be returned.

Justice officials said that the tribunal’s decision yesterday was unanimous after the men’s lawyers argued that they faced grave threats to their safety if they were returned to Turkey. The country has arrested 37,000 people and sacked or suspended 100,000 more who were allegedly connected with the coup attempt or the faction behind it. About 265 people died on both sides. The court agreed that Ankara had failed to provide sufficient evidence linking the three to the coup attempt. The surprise decision was greeted with cheers and elation among the Turkish men, including Ahmet Güzel, an air force major stationed at a Nato airbase in Istanbul. In the weeks after they landed in Greece it had appeared likely that they would be sent back.

The sheer scale of the Turkish purge has alarmed Turkey’s allies in Europe and beyond, raising fears that it could be sliding towards authoritarian rule. “This is a historic legal victory,” Stavroula Tomara, the men’s lawyer, said. “Greek justice has proven that it is truly unbiased and Europe can stand proud of defending its human rights record,” she told The Times.

None of the eight Turkish troops — two majors, four captains and two sergeants — has yet been granted political asylum by the Greek authorities. Turkey’s defence minister, Fikri Isik, said after the verdict that Ankara still expected Greece to hand over the fugitives. “Our expectation from the Greek government is to display every kind of effort possible for [the eight] to be returned,” he said. Legal experts said that Turkey could appeal, pushing any final decision into the hands of the Greek justice minister. Three more of the men were due to face a similar extradition hearing today.

Key Nato posts go to pro-Russia hardliners in new Turkish purge | News | The Times & The Sunday Times

Turkey is replacing pro-western military officers in diplomatic and Nato posts in London and across Europe with pro-Russian hardliners, sources have claimed. Their accounts are backed by a leaked email seen by The Times.
The purge comes in the aftermath of a failed coup against President Erdogan over the summer, and raises fears that the ability of the Nato alliance to function is being weakened, which would be a victory for President Putin.

Turkish officers recently dismissed from critical roles within Nato have written to General Curtis Scaparrotti, the alliance’s top commander, warning that “ultra-nationalists” are on the ascendant in Turkey’s military, according to the leaked email. “I and my Turkish colleagues observe a considerable rise of ultra-nationalist, anti-western sentiments within our military and throughout our state departments,” a senior Turkish officer and Nato commander wrote last week. “It is very worrying to witness that some of the newcomers from Turkey to Nato have a radical mindset, some question the values of Nato and even hate western organisations while holding pro-Russia-China-Iran sentiments.” The ousted officer noted the “deliberate attrition of western-minded, egalitarian, secular, politically non-biased, honest and successful officers”, amid growing fears that Turkey’s post-coup purges have wounded Nato at a time when it faces a newly aggressive Russia.

At least two senior officers in the Turkish defence attaché’s office at the embassy in London were ordered back to Turkey after the July coup attempt, according to a former Nato official. Both sought advice from British military counterparts about the possibility of claiming asylum in the UK because they feared arrest if they returned home, the former official said. “They were s*** scared,” he added. It is not known what happened to the officers..........

A shift by Mr Erdogan away from the West and towards Russia and China could damage the effectiveness of Nato, which relies on consensus among all 28 allies to make any decision, the former senior alliance official said. “From a European liberal, democratic perspective the whole country is going backwards and from a Nato perspective the whole country is becoming very unreliable. It’s a problem, a huge problem. It seriously complicates Nato doing anything and getting its act together.”.........

General Scaparrotti, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, admitted after a meeting of Nato foreign ministers this week that his allied command operations had lost half its strength when 150 Turkish military personnel were purged. His comments prompted a furious reaction in the Turkish press, with some accusing him of supporting Fethullah Gulen, the cleric accused of orchestrating the failed coup.

Nato members send hundreds of officers to fill jobs at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels and elsewhere in Europe. They serve two or three-year deployments and each officer is vetted by his or her country, meaning that Nato is unable to turn away anyone deemed suitable for service by a member state........

Secular officers feel abandoned by free-world alliance | News | The Times & The Sunday Times

Reduced to hiding at home or meeting in cafés, the Turkish officers purged from their jobs with Nato fear for their future and safety.

Based at the alliance’s headquarters in the Belgian capital or its strategic command in Mons, about 40 were given three days to leave their posts and return to Ankara. Those who did have been arrested; some have disappeared. President Erdogan has referred to them as “terrorist soldiers”. That appeared to make them fair game for Turkey’s MIT intelligence service. Those who remain feel abandoned by the military alliance that many have devoted their lives to as career officers who see themselves as secular and democratic.

It’s not just officers with Nato who have been purged. More than 100 Turkish military attachés in embassies across the world were placed under investigation this autumn and diplomats were ordered to carry out searches of the homes of purged attachés in Europe’s capitals. Thirteen military attachés were recalled to Ankara and told they would receive new postings as part of a post-coup shake-up of Turkey’s diplomatic corps. Three went back, from Rome, Cairo and Paris, and were invited to meetings in the ministry. When they arrived, police were waiting and arrests were made. Many of the ten remaining attachés are said to be claiming asylum.

In a farewell speech in Mons this week, one air force officer made a desperate plea. “Nato is supposed to be the alliance of the free world. Nato needs to take a stand, not only when appalling things happen on its borders, like in Ukraine or Syria, but also when they happen within the organisation,” he said.

Last week Nato sent letters to military staff asking them to return their diplomatic identification documents, leaving them the choice of trying to find work in Belgium, claiming asylum or returning to be imprisoned in Turkey.

All the officers have been repeatedly security vetted for sensitive military posts. “They know everything about us,” said a former major. “The idea we are Gulenist plotters is ridiculous.”

Earlier this week, General Curtis Scaparrotti, Nato’s supreme allied commander in Europe, was asked if he had suspicions that any of the officers were involved with the coup. “No,” he replied crisply. “These officers served well here in Nato.”

Purged Turkish officers seek asylum | World | The Times & The Sunday Times

More than three dozen high-ranking Turkish military officers have applied for asylum in Germany after being suspended from their duties since the failed military coup. The officers, who were all in Nato posts, were recalled to Turkey after the revolt on July 15.

Ankara has accused followers of the charismatic imam Fethullah Gulen, who lives in exile in the US, of orchestrating the coup by infiltrating the military over three decades. Mr Gulen has denied involvement. Those targeted appear to have extended far beyond the small group of Gulenists within the military to include secularists and any other officers not loyal to President Erdogan. The purge of the military has decimated Turkey’s personnel at Nato bases across Europe, with hundreds of officers working in the alliance’s command structures sacked or recalled, and arrested if they return home. Some of those caught up in the crackdown have warned that vacant Nato positions are being filled by Turkish officers who harbour anti-western, pro-Russian sentiments.

The Times has learnt that wives of military officers are also being arrested and imprisoned, apparently in an attempt to pressure their husbands into signing confessions that they were part of the coup attempt. Forty-one wives are in jail in Turkey, including one who is suffering from cancer. They are accused of paying a Gulenist-linked corruption ring for the answers to the entrance exam for government employment.

However, other wives, whose husbands were on Nato attachments at the time of the coup and have avoided arrest by not returning to Turkey, said that the payments were linked to a support fund set up for the widow of an officer killed in a battle with Kurdish PKK militants in 2015. The accusation that the payments were for the exam answers is, they say, a cover for their arrests. “I took this exam in 2010 and I started my job in the following year,” the wife of a naval officer said. “I wasn’t under any suspicion about this exam . . . But right after July 15 my husband was suspended from his duty, all because of the exam that I had taken.”

An EU intelligence report seen by The Times this month said that all the targets of the purge had been determined by Turkish intelligence services before July 15. Some 43,000 people are remanded in custody and 123,000 have been sacked over allegations of a connection with the attempted coup.