In my last update I covered the recent multi-agenda driven, censored and sanitized media coverage of the Gulen movement. He seems to be back in the news (mainly Turkish media) again with the Flotilla Incident, and again, with unconnected dots, and unmentioned points and facts. Interestingly, the Turkish mainstream media coverage appears to be less sanitized.

Let’s start with a recent piece published by the Wall Street Journal, written by someone we happen to know and like, Joe Lauria. Joe is one of the few, if not only, journalists who was granted access to Gulen for a direct interview (of course via translator(s) since Gulen doesn’t speak a single word of English, and let’s not forget his literacy level does not exceed the 5^th grade!). As you‘ll see below, the fluff article reads like one of Gulen’s bios available on thousands of websites. Knowing Lauria, and his style, it’s not difficult to guess why: WSJ didn’t have enough space? WSJ wanted to limit the piece to a few fluff points related to the current headlines on Flotilla? WSJ doesn’t consider Gulen’s ties to CIA’s Graham Fuller, or Israel’s Abramowitz note or news worthy?…Well, okay, you get my point, right?! I don’t have any ‘real’ inside information on what went on with the WSJ and it’s editors, but I think my guess is as good as any of my informed savvy readers Here is the article and a few excerpts:

SAYLORSBURG, Pa.—Imam Fethullah Gülen, a controversial and reclusive U.S. resident who is considered Turkey’s most influential religious leader, criticized a Turkish-led flotilla for trying to deliver aid without Israel’s consent.

…

Mr. Gülen said organizers’ failure to seek accord with Israel before attempting to deliver aid “is a sign of defying authority, and will not lead to fruitful matters.”

Mr. Gülen’s views and influence within Turkey are under growing scrutiny now, as factions within the country battle to remold a democracy that is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East. The struggle, as many observers characterize it, pits the country’s old-guard secularist and military establishment against Islamist-leaning government workers and ruling politicians who say they seek a more democratic and religiously tolerant Turkey. Mr. Gülen inspires a swath of the latter camp, though the extent of his reach remains hotly disputed.

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Mr. Gülen has long cut a baffling figure, as critics and adherents have sparred over the nature of his influence in Turkey and the extent of his reach. Leading a visitor on Wednesday past his front corridor—adorned with a map of Turkey, a verse from the Quran and a photograph of a Turkish F-16 jet over the Bosphorus—he portrayed himself an apolitical teacher. “I do not consider myself someone who has followers,” he said.

…

Okay, the rest is history; literally his bio. As you can see, not a word on the real stuff.

On the other hand, the Turkish press was not as audacious, and they couldn’t resist mentioning a few noteworthy points such as:

How Gulen has had the backing of the US-Israel Lobby

Lauria’s interview included the ‘Ergenekon’ topic & Sibel Edmonds’ infamous case

Then, there is this incredibly confused article at Asia Times on Gulen and AKP based on the Flotilla. I read the piece three times, trying to understand what it was trying to convey: simply a focus-less, aimless, pointless, jumble of facts, semi-facts and confused lines. You know I’m a big fan of Asia Times, do imagine my surprise…

Here is a rather bad opening, intended to be attention-grabbing and dramatic, but ending up as a cheesy attempt with worse to follow:

We’ve been had, boys and girls: the international community, the world press, Israeli intelligence, the United Nations, the lot of us. The existential drama off the Gaza coast turns out to be a Turkish farce, the kind of low comedy that in 1782 Wolfgang Mozart set to music in the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan playing the buffo-villain Osmin and Turkish self-exiled preacher and author Fethullah Gulen as the wise Pasha Selim.

…

Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania

in the United States, was silent as a jinn in a bottle about politics until last Friday, when he told the Wall Street Journal that the Free Gaza flotilla’s attempt to run the Israeli blockage of Gaza “is a sign of defying authority, and will not lead to fruitful matters”.

…

For the secretive Gulen to criticize the Turkish government in the midst of its public rage against Israel is an imam-bites-dog story. Gulen appears to have positioned himself as a mediator with Israel. Turkey does not want to end its longstanding relationship with Israel; it wants Israel to become a Turkish vassal-state in emulation of the old Ottoman model.

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The star of the comedy, at least for the Turkish media, is Gulen. The 78-year-old imam has lived in self-imposed exile for two decades, due to charges by Turkish prosecutors that he led a conspiracy to subvert the secular state. He presides over Turkey’s largest religious movement, commanding the loyalty of two-thirds of the Turkish police, according to some reports. His movement – a transnational civic society movement inspired by Gulen’s teachings – also controls a network of elite schools that educate a tenth of the high school students in the Turkic world from Baku to Kyrgyzstan. And it reportedly controls businesses with tens of billions of dollars in assets.

His movement has been expelled from the Russian Federation and his followers arrested in Uzbekistan by local authorities who believe his goal is a pan-Turkic union from the Bosporus to China’s western Xinjiang province (”East Turkestan” to Gulen’s movement).

…

I am not going to waste more space for this piece, but please take a look at it and tell me what this hodgepodge is trying to convey; a convoluted, self-interpreted, and highly confused snap shot of Turkish Ottoman History, AKP, Gulen Movement, Flotilla, US Foreign Policy, all in one garbled article…and since I included the awfully cheesy intro, I must finish with this equally corny finale:

Gulen, in short, is a shaman, a relic of pre-history preserved in the cultural amber of eastern Anatolia. Kemalism was sterile, brutal, secular and rational; the “moderate Islam” of Gulen is magical, a mystic’s vision of Ottoman restoration and a pan-Turkic caliphate.

The Erdogan government crafted the Mavi Marmara affair as a piece of theater, preparing the deus ex machina (god from the machine) entrance of Gulen himself, more Pagliaccio than Apollo, to be sure. The trouble is that the Turkish Islamists live in a world of magical realism in which theater and reality, human and jinn, desire and achievement blend into a mystical blur. Gulen explains in his The Essentials of the Islamic Faith that Allah created the jinn out of fire. And that is what the apologists for Turkish Islamism are playing with.

…

No one is mentioning why Gulen has been strongly backed by Israel, or, why he is such a loyal defender and supporter of Israel, especially the US-Israel lobby. No one is daring to mention one of his top backers in the US, another butler of Israel, Mort Abramowitz, or and how Abramowitz vouched for Gulen during his deportation hearing. No one is talking about Gulen’s other CIA bodyguard, Graham Fuller. No ‘real’ questions on Gulen’s ‘real’ sources of multibillion dollar funding…No emphasis on Gulen’s real role for the real US decision-makers’ use, and their strategy for Central Asia since 1997…

Some of these reporters have their hands tied by their MSM editors. Some of the semi- independent journalists have fallen for the creators of the smoke and mirrors. And others are simply guided by ignorance and utter dumbness emboldened by their arrogance. Well, they are just the latest being sold and fed garbage when it comes to Gulen.

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This is going to come as a relief to some and as a major disappointment to others: I am alive and almost back! As my long-term readers know I almost never share personal details here, and I am not about to change that, but here is a semi-reasonable albeit a bit vague explanation: despite having very costly health insurance coverage it was far more cost efficient (thus feasible) to take care of certain medical treatments outside the US than back home where the exact same medications (exact same brands) and treatments would have cost almost three times the amount. I am almost done with the two-month medical process, I’m doing well, and I should be back in three weeks or so. Many thanks to those of you who contacted me with your well-wishes and concerns, those of you who made me chuckle (I needed that badly) with some incredibly imaginative conspiracy guesses, and even those with death-wishes since I had the pleasure of disappointing you

While a part of me enjoyed (still does) being away (a break from the sin city where I live) and living in a laidback place, the other part soon began to long for home and now fully qualifies as a true case of ‘homesickness.’ Really. I’ve been trying to keep current, which is very hard to do with the entire medical process, an ultra high-energy 22-mo toddler with me 24 X 7, and a not very reliable (or speedy) internet connection. Yet, the most stimulating conversation I’ve been a part of had to do with ‘Hershey’s vs. Cadbury’ when it comes to chocolate, and, A-Frame Caravan vs. …I have no idea what the other type was or what it entailed… and, they had no idea who Bhutto was and why there was a new report on her assassination…or, what it meant to say ‘the moral dilemma using drones represents’…Yet, I’m still alive; I’m a survivor, ey!

Okay, enough about me. I’ve been saving many interesting stories, reports, and analyses. I won’t cover them all, but here are a few noteworthy notes and stories:

Fethullah Gulen & His Multi-Billion Worth Islamic Entourage

For those of you first-timers, who have never seen or heard this name before, please don’t start with Wikipedia ! I recommend checking out articles and analyses by Mizgin Yilmaz, and Luke Ryland; like this one here. Mizgin has been covering Gulen and significant Gulen related developments for years, and now, recently, all of a sudden, there appears to be these tainted-tilted-falsified-glorified articles in English popping up in the mainstream media and the not-so-mainstream but nonetheless the same outlets. Don’t get me wrong- this guy and the entire operation is very SIGNIFICANT. In fact, significant enough to be censored and blocked by the US mainstream media until recently. So, what’s the deal? What’s the real aim? Who wants what? And why?

As I’ve said, first read Mizgin’s coverage, and some background coverage by Luke Ryland here. Then, let’s take a look at one of the recent mainstream media articles – like this one:

October, 1992. the Soviet Union has disbanded and chaos reigns in its former territories. Three times a week, a rattly Russian charter plane filled with young Muslim devotees flies east from Istanbul across barren, low-lying steppes to the capitals of Central Asia. The men are clean-cut, sharply dressed in dark suits and ties, trim of mustache and purposeful. It is the first foray out of their hometown for most, let alone on a plane, but such is their faith in Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish Muslim imam they revere. “Fly like swallows,” Gulen exhorted, “to these countries that are newly free, as an expression of our brotherhood.”

Fly they did. Hundreds of volunteer teachers fanned out across five Central Asian republics. It was the start of a global movement that is now one of the largest and most powerful competing for the future of Islam around the world. There are an estimated 1,000 Gulen-affiliated schools in 100 countries — from Malawi to the U.S. — offering a blend of religious faith and largely Western curriculum. All are inspired by Gulen, an enigmatic retired preacher who oversees the schools — and a multibillion-dollar business empire — from the unlikeliest of locales: rural Pennsylvania.

…

It’s a fairly lengthy piece, so it continues:

Gulen, the 68-year-old retired imam behind this colossal enterprise has never visited Central Asia. He leads an ascetic life on an estate in Pennsylvania, where he has lived since 1999 for medical reasons, and to avoid facing (recently dropped) charges of seeking to overthrow the secular regime in Turkey. Gulen declined TIME’s request for an interview, citing poor health.

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Secularist hostility makes the movement secretive. There is no reliable data on the size of Gulen’s following because one doesn’t sign up to join and it has no official legal status. But it is growing in power. Gulen supporters are estimated to number at least 6 million, according to academics researching the phenomenon. (More surprising is a former Interior Minister’s estimate that 70% of Turkey’s national police forces are Gulen devotees.) “If they were a political party, they could post 20 to 25 MPs,” says Nedim Sener, an investigative journalist. “Any movement that wields that much power needs to be transparent, like an NGO. Who belongs to it? How is it funded? What goes on in the schools they run? What are its political goals? These are all issues shrouded in secrecy.”

…

And after more along the same lines here is the ending:

Add a quest for power to that fervor, though, and it gets complicated. In Turkey the movement is insular, growing and seems to harbor a mysterious political agenda. “On one level you have activities like the schools, which are hard not to be impressed by,” says King’s College lecturer Park. “Then there’s the political element, which appears suspicious because it’s rich, secretive and nobody really knows what it’s up to.” Gulen says he is opposed to theocracy, yet his supporters suggest that they would like more space for Islam in public life. But how will that come to pass? The future shape of secularism in Turkey — and around the Islamic world — might rest on that answer.

Of course, while it brings a bit of attention to this operation’s significance and reach targeting Central Asia since the mid 1990s, you’ll find no mention of the joint cooperation between Gulen and the State Department, or not the well-hidden secret of his CIA protectors, including his well-known ex-CIA body guards and backers such as Graham Fuller. Absolutely nothing.

And here is another piece written by a Turkish agent (news? Turkish government? US-Turkish agenda-setters?) published by the Turkish mainstream paper Hurriyet interestingly titled ‘The Gulen Movement Plays Big in Washington’:

It was one of the lavish lounges of the Willard Hotel in Washington where hundreds of Turkic people from all across America with plain name tags gathered to mark the creation of a new umbrella Turkic Assembly last Wednesday. Six Turkish-American federations, which have close proximity to Mr. Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric and the exiled leader of the Turkey-based religious Gülen Movement joined to form the Assembly of Turkic American Federations, or ATAF, a non-profit organization.

Half a dozen U.S. Senators and a few dozens of U.S. Representatives made a strong showing at the reception and the Gülen Movement hinted that its new assembly has some muscles to flex in Washington already.

…

The Gülen Movement accelerated its activities in U.S., especially since the leader of the Movement, Fethullah Gülen settled in Pennsylvania about a decade ago. During the mid ’90s, after almost three decades in the making, it was still operating very much under the radar in Turkey.

The unexpected and sudden decision to combine all of their 180 organizations under one umbrella assembly was a surprising move, at any rate, for those who follow the Gülen movement closely and are aware about its cautious strategies and steps.

Mr. Gülen first decided to go public with a wide ranging interview in early 1995, and in the following years the movement attracted ever-increasing attention. The postmodern-military coup of Feb. 28, 1997 pushed Gülen out of Turkey to find refuge in the U.S. Only more than a decade later, the Gülen Movement gathered enough manpower, recognition and credit to bring dozens of members of Congress to its half-official Washington debut night. The Turkish ambassador to the U.S., Mr. Namık Tan, came to the reception and stayed there almost the entire night, having conversations with the members of the U.S. Congress – alhough not everyone was as joyful about the new kid in town. The Assembly of Turkish-American Associations, or ATAA’s, president, Günay Evinç, was pretty upset about the name of this new assembly because of its similar word selection with their own assembly. Evinç argued that this name similarity has created a big administrative disaster for their organization to explain the difference.

…

Again, no mentioning of why Gulen happened to pick the US to defect to, or why this multi-billion dollar organization’s operation center (headquarters) happens to be in the States, or how the State Department has been backing, protecting, and promoting Gulen in the US and abroad (mainly his activities in Central Asia)…Nothing. Nada. Zip zip zilch. The same Turkish reporter/writer/agent who happens to be based in the US (Washington DC;-) has written other pieces (along the same lines) on his site here.

Let’s go ahead and simplify this a bit, shall we? The Russians hate Gulen. The US agenda-setters, the real policy-setters (Neocons and realists alike) love Gulen and have been supporting/backing/funding/protecting him since the mid 90s; especially (mainly, that is) those operations conducted in Central Asia. This man who doesn’t even have a high-school diploma has been promoted as a major ‘scholar’ by the CIA and the State Department, against multiple operations and investigations conducted by the FBI, and later by the Department of Homeland Security. So now: what’s really up with Gulen? Is he “a man for all seasons” or “a man for all agendas” set by our real agenda-setters? And, why this sudden coverage (long-due but completely distorted, sanitized, and re-formulated) by the mainstream media and the ‘agents’? Please be my guest and chip in with your own analyses and input!

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Another Case of State Department’s Terrorization-Deterrorization Flip

Thanks to our friend Metem for the following example showcasing another classic flip by the State Department on declaring and listing a group as a terrorist group then declaring them as not, and probably soon declaring them again as terrorists…when their current use expires, that is

The State Department’s update of its annual list of official terrorist groups is imminent, but the group that just attacked Moscow won’t be on the list.

The Caucasus Emirate, which has been waging a jihad against the Russian government, is led by Doku Umarov, who calls himself the “emir of the North Caucasus.” He was previously President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, but dissolved that Republic and established the Emirate in its place in 2007 in order to impose sharia law in his territory.

Umarov declared all the way back in 2007 that his group was expanding its struggle to wage war against the United States, Great Britain, and Israel. Last month, he released a video claiming credit for the suicide attacks in Moscow in March that resulted in the deaths of 39 people.

But apparently, the State Department chose not to include Caucasus Emirate in the newest update to its list of foreign terrorist organizations, according to Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-FL, who is calling on the State Department to add the group for the sake of national security and U.S. -Russia relations.

…

And here it gets really funny:

Some experts note that there is internal debate within the Chechen rebel community about whether the group’s declarations of jihad against the West is really such a good idea.

“It seems that the Caucasian rebels themselves are frightened by their own ‘war declaration’ against the West,” Andrei Smirnov wrote in an article for the Jamestown Foundation, “The absurdity of the rebels’ declarations lies in the fact that they declare war against the West, and at the same time beg for aid in their anti-Russian struggle.”

“Whatever the Caucasian rebels say, it is clear that they do not have much in common with the interests of the international Jihadi movement,” Smirnov went on, “This movement has no smaller plans than the Jihadi movement worldwide, but it nonetheless limits itself to activities inside Russia’s borders and has no ambitions to grow into an international problem.”

…

Of course we all remember our flips and then flops and then flips again on KLA, but does anyone here remember our almost recent flip on MEK? So, what’s the latest on that? Did they go back to the list? Are they a part of the Pentagon’s recent souped-up operations inside Iran? Just asking…

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Okay, this is it for now. I will be back with more, so please don’t give up on me or this site (including our new season of podcast interviews and articles by our contributors!).

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

It seems like I’ve been starting every single round up as ‘a quick one.’ Blame it on a life truly in the fast lane. Now I’ll be in an even faster lane for a couple of weeks, since I’ll be leaving tomorrow for ten days. And yes, I’ll be flying; meaning, I’ll be going through what I’ve been talking about, writing about, and truly dreading. If you don’t read about me on the front page of…let’s say Guardian-UK, since I’ve been a blacked-out person for a long time over here, by Tuesday, consider that as ‘she must have made it.’

I’m almost done with Part VI of my ‘The Makings of a Police State’. I’ll save it as a draft, go over it again, and post it while I’m gone; on or before Wednesday, February 3. There is one caveat, as almost always, I picked a place where high speed internet is a rarity. I’ll do my best to publish the piece, our next Podcast interview (Coleen Rowley), and one or two articles by our team members. We’ll see.

I am counting on you to take care of this site and nurture it with your comments while I’m goneJ

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Fethullah Gulen Movement in Tucson Arizona Charter School?!

Thanks to a reader’s tip I became aware of this peculiar and interesting story published by Tucson Weekly. Those of you who’ve followed my case closely and those of you who’ve been following Mizgin’s articles will find this easy-to-miss story interesting. I haven’t had a chance to dig further, but I will. Meanwhile I’ll invite Mizgin to stop by and provide you with her sound analysis and feedback on our infamous Mr. Gulen, his dear protectors and trainers at Langley, Virginia, and his valuable contributions to Brzezinski’s Central Asia Dream. Without these relevant contexts and familiarity with Gulen’s movement the story may not register as of any significance:
 

Hidden Agenda?

Parents raise concerns that a Tucson charter school has ties to a Turkish nationalist movement

No one can knock the numbers. In recent years, students at Tucson’s Sonoran Science Academy have secured stellar scores in math, science and other categories. The academy has earned glowing mentions in national magazines such as U.S. News and World Report, and in 2009, was deemed Charter School of the Year by the Arizona Charter School Association.

But some parents of children who attend the academy on West Sunset Road believe it harbors goals reaching far beyond academia. They suspect the Sonoran Academy of being part of a confederation of learning institutions secretly linked to, and advancing, the cause of Turkish scholar and Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen

While most of those parents have resisted coming forward, fearing reprisal from an organization they say is known to target critics, one parent did agree to speak to the Weekly if we pledged to keep her identity hidden. The parent says she represents others at the academy who’ve become suspicious about the striking similarities of its educational programs to those of other schools around the United States which are operated by Turkish-born staff members.

…

According to this parent, all of these ties may lead covertly back to the Gülen movement, named for the scholar, who founded a network of schools around the world and now lives in exile in Pennsylvania. She says several Sonoran Academy parents believe the school has a hidden agenda to promote Gülen’s brand of Turkish nationalism, advance sympathy for that country’s political goals such as winning acceptance into the European Union, and discourage official acknowledgement of Turkey’s genocide against the Armenians during World War I.

…

Okay, I used up my quote quota limitation again. You can read the rest here.

Phil Giraldi on Stealing Success Tel Aviv Style

Last Wednesday Phil Giraldi had a nicely-done piece on Israel titled Stealing Success Tel Aviv Style. A must read editorial, since it is one of our topics of interest written by a man I respect, and interestingly related to my latest commentary on the New York Times last Wednesday. Here are a few excerpts:

A curious op-ed “The Tel Aviv Cluster” by the reliably neoconnish David Brooks appeared in the New York Times on January 12th. Brooks enthused over the prowess of Israel’s high tech businesses, attributing their success in large part to Jewish exceptionalism and genius, which must have provided the ultimate feel good moment for Brooks, who is himself Jewish. That Israel has a booming technology sector is undeniably true, but Brooks failed to mention other contributing factors such as the $101 billion dollars in US economic and military aid over the course of more than four decades, which does not include the additional $30 billion recently approved by President Barack Obama. American assistance has financed and fueled Israel’s business growth while the open access and even “preferential treatment” afforded to Israeli exporters through the Israel Free Trade Implementation Act of 1985 has provided Israelis with the enormous US market to sell their products and services. By act of Congress, Israeli businesses can even bid on most American Federal and State government contracts just as if they were US companies.

…

…And there is another aspect of Israel’s growing high tech sector that he understandably chose to ignore because it is extremely sleazy. That is the significant advantage that Israel has gained by systematically stealing American technology with both military and civilian applications. The US developed technology is then reverse engineered and used by the Israelis to support their own exports with considerably reduced research and development costs, giving them a huge advantage against American companies. Sometimes, when the technology is military in nature and winds up in the hands of a US adversary, the consequences can be serious. Israel has sold advanced weapons systems to China that are believed to incorporate technology developed by American companies, including the Python-3 air-to-air missile and the Delilah cruise missile. There is evidence that Israel has also stolen Patriot missile avionics to incorporate into its own Arrow system and that it used US technology obtained in its Lavi fighter development program, which was funded by the US taxpayer to the tune of $1.5 billion, to help the Chinese develop their own J-10 fighter.

…

You can read the entire piece here at AntiWar.

Night Time Terrorization of Afghans

On Friday Asia Times published a well-written and highly disturbing piece by Anand Gopal titled Terror Comes at Night in Afghanistan:

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Sometime in the past few years, Pashtun villagers in Afghanistan’s rugged heartland began to lose faith in the American project. Many of them can point to the precise moment of this transformation, and it usually took place in the dead of the night, when most of the country was fast asleep. In the secretive US detentions process, suspects are usually nabbed in the darkness and then sent to one of a number of detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families.

This process has become even more feared and hated in Afghanistan than coalition air strikes. The night raids and detentions, little known or understood outside of these Pashtun villages, are slowly turning Afghans against the very forces they greeted as liberators just a few years ago.

…

Gopal continues with related real life stories too real yet too gruesome to be real. I highly encourage you to read the entire article and share it with others.

UN Envoy on Doomed Afghan Strategy

The Australian reports on a damning assessment and warning issued by outgoing UN Special Representative, Kai Eide. As you know, Eide too has been the subject of major controversy. Peter Galbrait accused Eide of colluding with Karzai in vote-rigging elections. So let’s keep that in mind:

He warned that the military focus was at the expense of a “meaningful, Afghan-led political strategy” and that Western troops and governments had left Afghans feeling they faced “cultural invasion”. Speaking before last night’s conference on Afghanistan, being held in London, he said the international community must stop operating according to “strategies and decisions that are taken far away from Afghanistan”.

“Very unfortunately, the political strategy has become an appendix to the military strategy,” he said. “The strategy has to be demilitarised – a political strategy with a military component.”

…

He expressed deep concern at the tactical approach of British and other Western troops, which aimed to remove the Taliban from an area, hold it and then develop local infrastructure and security forces.”The so-called clear, hold, build, military strategy has serious flaws,” Mr Eide said. “First of all, we are not able to `clear’ when our opponents are insurgents one day and a normal inhabitant of a village the next day. “We are not able to `hold’ because it takes time to train and put in place police and sub-national governance. “And we are not able to `build’ because we cannot expect civilian development agencies to come into what they feel is a military campaign.”

…

Former Marine accused of killing 2 Iraqis running for Congress

This was reported by AP on January 28:

Ilario Pantano announced his candidacy Thursday in Wilmington. He is seeking the Republican nomination. The 35-year-old wants to challenge Democratic Rep. Mike McIntyre for North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District.

Pantano shot two men in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, in 2004 and hung a warning sign on their corpses. He claimed self defense and a Marine general decided not to bring him to trial.

Here is a photo of Mr. Pantano with G. Gordon Liddy:

Needed Dosage of Secrecy for Blair Inquiry?

The following excerpts are from the Independent on the latest involving the Iraq Inquiry of Blair and his government:

Tony Blair’s long-awaited appearance at the Iraq inquiry looked set to be hampered last night after the Government refused to declassify crucial documents relating to his decision to take Britain to war.

The failure to release the papers led to calls yesterday for the inquiry to be suspended. While Sir John Chilcot’s team have been handed all the documents, they are unable to quote from classified material and may have to restrict questioning.

…

The missing documents feature prominently in the questions that Mr Blair is expected to face. The inquiry team are planning to ask about a series of secret letters he sent to President Bush in 2002, apparently pledging that British troops would “be there” if military action became necessary.

…

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Mizgin Yilmaz provides us with an overview and background on the Kurdish Issue in Turkey, the origin of the conflict involving the Kurdish minority and Turkey’s central government, and the status and latest developments on the ‘Kurdish Initiative.’ She describes the depth and reach of the influential Turkish lobby in the United States, which is now ranked as the number one foreign group in spending on lobby activities here. She talks about the Turkish Deep State, Gladio, Grey Wolves and the assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II, Turkey’s status as the top heroin trafficking nation worldwide, Fethullah Gulen’s Islamic movement and its headquarters here in the United States, and more!

Mizgin Yilmaz is an analyst and activist who’s been covering the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, including events of concern to the the Human Rights Association (İnsan Hakları Derneği–İHD) in Turkey, the pro-Kurdish DTP (Democratic Society Party/Demokratik Toplum Partisi), and the PKK (Partiya Karkên Kurdistan/Kurdistan Worker’s Party). She is fluent in Turkish, has a BA in history, and since 2005 has maintained a blog focusing on Kurdish issues, the Turkish Deep State, Turkey’s lobby in the US, and related developments and activities in Central Asia.

Here is our guest Mizgin Yilmaz unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

It would appear that the True Believers of the Democratic Party are a entering the State of Denial over the “relationship” of Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky with a female Turkish spy.

In spite of the congresswoman’s claims that she has not been involved with the Turks, we know that in 2001, which is included in the time frame of wiretaps that Sibel Edmonds translated, Mehmet Celebi, of Hillary Clinton fame, donated $350 to Jan Schakowsky. Celebi was a fundraiser for another Chicago politician, Rahm Emanuel. Later, Celebi became a bundler for Hillary Clinton, raising $100,000 for her presidential campaign. She finally had to dump Celebi because of his role as producer of the Turkish film “Kurtlar Vadisi Irak“.

Celebi held high-level positions within the Chicago-based Turkish American Cultural Association (TACA) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA). Both organizations had been “targets of an FBI counter-intelligence operation investigating the corruption and bribery of high-level US officials from 1997 onward.” Furthermore, the Celebi family in Turkey has been involved in arms- and narcotics-dealing and Mehmet Celebi admits to having:

” . . . worked in management capacity at some of the world’s largest financial institutions and has provided financial guidance to many high-net worth individuals and celebrities as well as corporations. He has been consulting some of the largest corporations in Turkey on mergers and acquisitions in addition to international funds wishing to invest in Turkey and the region.”

While Celebi was moving and shaking for the Democratic Party in Chicago, Schakowsky’s husband, Robert Creamer, a political consultant, was under investigation for bank fraud. The investigation was ongoing in 1998, which was well within the timeframe of the FBI wiretaps from Chicago that Sibel Edmonds translated. It may very well be that Turkish agents targeted Schakowsky in order to obtain favors from her husband. As Sibel stated in The American Conservative interview:

They needed Schakowsky and her husband Robert Creamer to perform certain illegal operational facilitations for them in Illinois.

Chicago has its connection to Susurluk, too. Abdullah Catli, a state assassin and narcotics trafficker, had long been a member of the Gray Wolves and was wanted by Interpol in the 1990s. Catli helped fellow Gray Wolf Mehmet Ali Agca escape from a Turkish military prison in 1979, just after Agca assassinated a newspaper editor but a few short years before he carried out the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.

In 1989, Abdullah Catli, under the name Mehmet Ozbay, showed up at the Turkish consulate in Chicago to request a new passport. He showed up at the Chicago consulate for a second time in 1994 to pick up a new passport and request a new Turkish identity card. In 1995 he showed up a third time to request an extension of his required military service. It would also appear that Catli, as Ozbay, married an American, obtained a green card, and went on Interpol’s wanted list during the time that he was in the US.

More interesting is that he was also reported to have been issued an American passport under the name Michael Nicholsan.

Therefore, it’s pretty well established that one of Turkey’s most notorious state assassins and narcotics traffickers lived close enough to Chicago to be compelled to use Chicago’s Turkish consulate to obtain official documents.

In Vanity Fair’s 2005 piece on the Sibel Edmonds case, the magazine clearly established the fact that the FBI named Chicago as the epicenter of Turkish corruption operations targeting US officials.

It’s very difficult to believe that any politician from the Chicago area would have nothing to do with the Turkish community there. For Jan Schakowsky to deny any relationship would be utter foolishness, of course, because she’s been very much involved lately with the Fethullah Gulen movement through the Chicago-based Niagara Foundation, whose honorary president is none other than Hocaefendi himself. This year Schakowsky wrote a Letter of Recognition for the Niagara Foundations 2009 “Peace and Dialogue Awards”. And Schakowsky did the same in 2008 and in 2007.

Naturally, these facts raise questions. How intimately does Representative Schakowsky know the Niagara Foundation in order for her to show such consistent and strong support? What benefits does the Niagara Foundation provide Schakowsky and the City of Chicago? Since the Chicago City Council backs and promotes the Niagara Foundation, what is the foundation’s real connection to Mayor Daly and former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, both of whom are involved in major, ongoing corruption cases?

Inquiring minds want to know.

But could there really be any problem here with Fethullah Gulen? He represents the Islamist trend in Turkey which has generally been at odds with the Nationalists, especially with the ultra-nationalists known as Gray Wolves, right? That’s the simplistic explanation; the reality is far more complicated and would take us from Susurluk and Chicago to Ergenekon.

Mizgin’s Desk Reports:

What’s happened to all the defenders of democracy?

Surely you remember them? They were the ones crying foul in the immediate aftermath of the 12 June presidential elections in Iran. The defenders of democracy twitterized the ensuing protests, including some twitters from questionable sources. This leads one to wonder how much outside support for a Moussavi-faced regime change had to do with actual democracy, particularly since the same defenders of democracy, just a week before the elections, were calling for the vaporization by nuclear weapons of the very same protesters.

As the twitters tweeted out over the results in Iran, another presidential election rounded the corner in another part of the globe–on 23 July in Kyrgyzstan. In the absence of massive twitterers in the case of the Kyrgyz presidential elections, we had to rely on more mundane sources of information, like the NY Times:

The leading opposition candidate in Kyrgyzstan essentially withdrew from the presidential race on Thursday even before voting had concluded, asserting that widespread fraud had assured the incumbent’s victory.

The candidate, Almazbek Atambaev, a former prime minister, called on the public and international organizations to reject the election as unlawful. Mr. Atambaev instructed supporters who were working as observers at polling and vote-counting stations to leave, and he demanded that a new election be organized.

[ . . . ]

Mr. Bakiyev has accused the opposition of airing phony charges of vote-rigging in an effort to explain away its lack of popularity. Voting on Thursday, he declared that the voting would be fair, saying that the Kyrgyz people cared about democracy.

As noted in the piece, the OSCE monitored the election process in Kyrgyzstan and published their observations:

The observers noted instances of obstruction of opposition campaign events as well as pressure and intimidation of opposition supporters. The shortcomings observed contributed to an atmosphere of distrust and undermined public confidence in holding genuinely democratic elections.

Election day was marred by many problems and irregularities, including ballot box stuffing, inaccuracies in the voter lists, and multiple voting. The process further deteriorated during the vote count and the tabulation of results, with observers evaluating this part of the process negatively in more than half of observations.

The VOA has more:

He [OSCE spokesman Jens-Hagen Eschenbächer] said observers noted incidents of ballot box stuffing, multiple voting, and even vote buying. In addition, he said, OSCE representatives were not allowed to monitor the vote count.

“The observers were not allowed to be present and monitor the count. There were two cases for examples where the ballots were not counted at all and just packed,” he said. “The form was filled in with the result but the votes were not counted. We had three observer teams who saw people in front or near polling stations handing out money in exchange for promises to vote for a candidate,” he added.

Why did the great defenders of democracy fail to twitterize this obviously questionable election? Could it be they remain on tenterhooks with regard to the extension of the lease to the US of Manas Airbase?

“You know what this is for,” Emilbek Kaptagaev recalled being told by the police officers who snatched him off the street. No other words, just blows to the head, then all went black. Mr. Kaptagaev, an opponent of Kyrgyzstan’s president, who is a vital American ally in the war in nearby Afghanistan, was found later in a field with a concussion, broken ribs and a face swollen into a mosaic of bruises.

[ . . . ]

The United States has remained largely silent in response to this wave of violence, apparently wary of jeopardizing the status of its sprawling air base, on the outskirts of this capital, which supports the mission in Afghanistan. Indeed, the Obama administration has sought to woo the Kyrgyz president since he said in February that he would close the Manas base.

In June, President Obama sent a letter to Mr. Bakiyev praising his role in Afghanistan and the campaign against terrorism. Mr. Bakiyev allowed the base to stay, after the United States agreed to pay higher rent and other minor changes.

The lack of criticism of Mr. Bakiyev underscores how the Obama administration has emphasized pragmatic concerns over human rights in dealings with autocratic leaders in Central Asia.

Kurmanyek Bakiyev came to power after the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)-sponsored “Tulip Revolution”, from Pepe Escobar at Asia Times in 2005:

One thing is already certain: the Tulip Revolution will inevitably be instrumentalized by the second Bush administration as the first “spread of freedom and democracy” success story in Central Asia. The whole arsenal of US foundations – National Endowment for Democracy, International Republic Institute, Ifes, Eurasia Foundation, Internews, among others – which fueled opposition movements in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine, has also been deployed in Bishkek. It generated, among other developments, a small army of Kyrgyz youngsters who went to Kiev, financed by the Americans, to get a glimpse of the Orange Revolution, and then became “infected” with the democratic virus.

Practically everything that passes for civil society in Kyrgyzstan is financed by these US foundations, or by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). At least 170 non-governmental organizations charged with development or promotion of democracy have been created or sponsored by the Americans.

The US State Department has operated its own independent printing house in Bishkek since 2002 – which means printing at least 60 different titles, including a bunch of fiery opposition newspapers. USAID invested at least $2 million prior to the Kyrgyz elections – quite something in a country where the average salary is $30 a month.

For more on the neoconservative NED, check RightWeb. Among the neoconservative luminaries directing the great defenders of democracy at the NED are former senator-turned Turkish lobbyist Richard Gephardt; Obama’s “special representative” for the current Af-Pak disaster, Richard Holbrooke; former PNAC member Vin Weber; and Mr. “End-of-History” himself, Francis Fukuyama.

That should be enough to scare anyone’s socks off right there but wait–there’s more. There are other great defenders of democracy working to secure US hegemony in Kyrgyzstan and the rest of Central Asia. Among those is the Fethullah Gulen movement.

A year ago, Gulen, who’s resided in the US since 1998, petitioned the Federal District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania to obtain a permanent residency card which had been denied by both the USCIS and Administrative Appeals Office. Apparently, the USCIS believed that the CIA was funding, at least partially, some of the global Fethullahci activity, from Turkish daily Milliyet:

Among the reasons given by the US State Department’s attorneys as to why Gülen’s permanent residence application was refused, is the suspicion of CIA financing of his movement.

[ . . . ]

“Because of the large amount of money that Gülen’s movement uses to finance his projects, there are claims that he has secret agreements with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkic governments. There are suspicions that the CIA is a co-payer in financing these projects,” claimed the attorneys.

[ . . . ]

Among the documents that the state attorneys presented, there are claims about the Gülen movement’s financial structure and it was emphasized that the movement’s economic power reached $25 billion. “Schools, newspapers, universities, unions, television channels . . . The relationship among these are being debated. There is no transparency in their work,” claimed the attorneys.

At the time, Luke Ryland covered the case extensively. However, the fact that the court ruled in favor of Gulen should come as no surprise since others who worked hand=in-glove with The Agency also received green cards–people like Mehmet Eymür, who ran the Turkish intelligence service’s (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı – MİT) Special Intelligence Department (Özel İstihbarat Dairesi-ÖİD) under Tansu Ciller at the time the Susurluk scandal broke open.

Or to Abdullah Catli, a state assassin who was wanted by Interpol and was found dead in the crashed Mercedes at Susurluk. Catli was an international heroin trafficker as well as a member of the Gray Wolves, an extreme Turkish nationalist organization that had its roots in the CIA’s Turkish Gladio program. As a Gray Wolf, Catli was an old acquaintance of Mehmet Ali Agca, the would-be assassin of John Paul II. In fact, it was Catli who gave Agca the gun that Agca used in the papal assassination attempt. Catli went by the name Mehmet Ozbay on his green card and lived in Chicago for about 10 years, from the mid-1980s until 1995.

Fethullah Gulen is definitely in august company.

But what does Fethullah Gulen, our second great defender of democracy, do in Central Asia? Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Fethullahci (followers of Gulen, sometimes more loosely referred to as “Nurcular”) expanded Gulen’s educational system into Central Asia. His high schools and universities can be found throughout the region, including Kyrgyzstan. But what is their purpose? Gülen schools aim to educate the children of the elites:

Although revenues raised by school fees are often used to enable access by less-privileged students, it remains an inescapable fact that the movement’s educational model is elitist. In Turkey this is contributing to the creation of a parallel and Gulen-inspired elite. In post-communist Central Asia, the main location of Gulen’s overseas educational activities, successful applicants are usually the children either of the wealthy or of government officials.

[ . . . ]

Although Gulen schools represent only around ten percent of Central Asia’s education system, it could be that–in a tacit partnership with the Turkish state–the movement’s activities will over the longer term intensify the emotive and material bonds between Turkic peoples–or their elites–and states. The Gulen network’s Central Asian elites could in time take on the forms of their Turkish counterparts, thereby encouraging the emergence of a pan-Turkic world linked by overlapping and fused identities. This could in turn ease the development of economic interactions, and even encourage closer state-to-state relationships. Such an evolution would not quite accord with the kind of “Turkish model” that Ankara’s secularists have sometimes hoped might be adopted in Central Asia, but it might dovetail with the pan-Turkic aspirations of nationalist elements in Turkey.

That would be the expansion of “pan-Turkic aspirations of nationalist elements” of NATO’s Turkey in a region whose countries enjoy overwhelming membership in the SCO. In addition, education of the children of the elites helps to ensure a pro-Turkish–and pro-NATO–indoctrination in the next generation which will eventually come of age and step into positions of power. By 2006, the Gulen’s ideology had diffused throughout the Kyrgyz educational system:

Foreign Islamic groups are becoming increasingly active in Kyrgyzstan, such as Tablighi Jamaat from Pakistan, and followers of the Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen, (Assistant professor of politics and government at George Mason University Eric)McGlinchey said. Gulen’s thinking was “pervasive” throughout the Kyrgyz educational system, especially Manas University and the Osh Theological Institute. “Kyrgyz are turning elsewhere to define who they are as Muslims and it’s a wide-open playing field and we’re not quite sure where they’re going to turn in the future,” he said.

The Russians, suspicious of the activities of the Fethullahci in Russia, closed Gulen schools in 2007 and, in 2008, banned Gulen’s movement from the country altogether, citing connections to the Gray Wolves. Apparently, the Russians didn’t want a CIA-backed Turkish-style stay-behind program established among them. Perhaps they remembered how Zbigniew Brzezinski baited them into Afghanistan in 1979 and are now more wary of falling into an American-backed Islamist trap.

Since Russia’s ban, Turkish schools in Central Asia, including Gulen’s, have become more and scrutinized as regional governments suspect a hidden agenda. For more on the Fethullahci and how the movement is becoming the third power in Turkey, see this analysis (PDF) from Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst.

The US and Turkey are not the only powers aiming to create a Strategy of Tension in Central Asia. We shouldn’t forget that the great defenders of democracy from the NED are neoconservative PNAC’ers who were also behind the 1996 “Clean Break Strategy” that went on to forge a tight military relationship between Turkey and Israel–united with the bond of US military hardware “sales”. “Sales” of course is a very loose term particularly when one realizes that 80% of US military sales to Turkey under the Clinton administration were paid for by the US taxpayer. In this case, the term “military gifting” might be a more appropriate choice of words.

The third of our great defenders of democracy at work in Central Asia is Israel, coming to the region since the fall of the Soviet Union:

Israeli officials and business leaders find Central Asia attractive as an investment opportunity for a variety of reasons, including the region’s abundant natural resources, and its large pool of relatively cheap but skilled labor. The region also represents a potentially important market for specialized goods, such as machinery, chemicals and plastics. And in helping to build local economic opportunities, Israel additionally hopes to reduce the desire for Jews in Central Asia to emigrate. At the same time, Israel can offer Central Asian officials a unique trade conduit to world markets. Israel has free trade relationships with the United States and the European Union, as well as with Canada, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Jordan and Turkey.

[ . . . ]

[Avigdor] Lieberman’s visit to Kyrgyzstan sought to establish parameters for trade. The two sides discussed the establishment of direct air links between the two states, as well as the possible opening of a Kyrgyz Embassy in Israel. Israeli delegation members explored potential deals in transport communication and tourism.

Israel’s relations with Central Asian states continue to focus on conditions for Jews living in the region, including the Jewish community in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archives]. Since the 1991 Soviet collapse and subsequent economic upheaval, many Central Asian Jews have emigrated. Israel was among the first states to recognize the independence of the Central Asian states. Kyrgyzstani President Askar Akayev was the first Central Asian leader to visit Israel in 1993. Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev has visited Israel twice, most recently in April [2001].

According to that piece, the Israeli government also engages in education through an organization that falls under the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MASHAV. Somewhat like the Clinton arrangement with “military gifting”, it would appear the US taxpayer is funding MASHAV through USAID:

Through the MASHAV Cooperation Agreement, recently developed and funded by USAID/CAR, Agriculture Consulting Centers devoted to agribusiness development have been established in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

And this isn’t just in Kyrgyzstan but throughout most of Central Asia. Even the Peace Corps has gotten a piece of the USAID-MASHAV action:

In 1999 the U.S.-Israeli-Kyrgyz MASHAV Agri-Business Consulting Program was established to address the agricultural side of the region’s income problem. The program led to the construction of a greenhouse at the Oasis Agricultural Site where agricultural producers in the region receive both formal and one-on-one training from agricultural experts.

[ . . . ]

After much study, the owner of Oasis Site and a group of farmers in the region concluded that constructing a fish farm was the answer. The farm would host regular sessions where experts and local residents could meet and learn how fish farms are constructed, maintained and managed to reach sustainable profitability. Unfortunately, the group did not have the funds to build such a farm.

To resolve the problem, the Oasis owner and a local professor took their concern to a Peace Corps volunteer serving in the area. Through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, which collaborates with individuals across America and facilitates their donations to specific community development projects, funds were raised to build the fish farm and buy fish to fill it.

However, agricultural support for small- and medium-sized businesses and Peace Corps-sponsored fish farms aren’t the only capitalistic enterprise at work in Kyrgyzstan. There’s a lot more going on–like the arming of Kyrgyz commandos by Israel:

Several private Israeli companies have agreed to render technical assistance to the special units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kyrgyzstan. This assistance will include equipment, police jeeps, and also special gear used for dispersal of demonstrations and in operations against terrorists, in particular in mountainous area. Moreover, the Israelis will take part in creation of the educational antiterrorist center in the territory of republic. It will train and prepare officers of the commando of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and National Security Service (SNB). An option to involve Israeli instructors ex-servicemen of the elite divisions of police, army and Israeli General Security Service (SHABAQ) in the process of training is also considered. AIA was informed of that by the personal secretary of one of members of the Israeli delegation, which visited Bishkek this month.

Both sides tried to avoid publicity of such negotiations in every possible way. As a result, neither in Israeli, nor in Kyrgyz mass-media there were no information published on the issue. The reason of such privacy is dictated both by the level and the agenda of negotiations, and the person, who was behind the organizing of the meeting.

This secretive arrangement took place in 2006. How many more secretive military-type agreements have been reached by now is anyone’s guess,

US involvement in Central Asia, along with the involvement of its two most powerful allies in the region, should come as no surprise to anyone. Just as Adolf Hitler publicly announced his intentions for Germany’s future when he published Mein Kampf, so the Americans have done the same with a small book published in 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard (the entire book available for download here). The goal of US Eurasian policy, according to Brzezinski, is as follows:

“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia – and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.

[ . . . ]

“. . . [H]ow America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (pp. 30 – 31)

Earlier I mentioned that Russia’s ban on the Gulen movement was, perhaps, a sign of Russia’s refusal to take more American-sponsored Islamist bait like it did when Brzezinski and the Carter administration offered it in 1979. Perhaps Russia and the rest of the SCO countries remember Operation Gladio and are taking action to ensure that a similar stay-behind program does not become established in their territory or sphere of influence. Perhaps Russia, along with Kyrgyzstan, is offering bait of its own by allowing the US to continue to occupy the Manas Airbase. This time around, though, it’s the Russians making the offer and it may very well turn out to be that Afghanistan becomes America’s second Vietnam.