Last week the Taliban opened an office in Doha, Qatar with the US government’s blessing. They raised the Taliban flag at the opening ceremony and referred to Afghanistan as the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”—the name they used when they were in charge before the US attack in 2001.

The US had meant for the Taliban office in Doha to be only a venue for a new round of talks on an end to the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban opening looked very much like a government in exile. The Karzai government was annoyed that the US and the Taliban had scheduled talks without even notifying Kabul. Karzai’s government felt as irrelevant to negotiations on post-war Afghanistan as they soon will be on the ground. It seemed strangely like Paris in 1968, where the US met with North Vietnamese representatives to negotiate a way out of that war, which claimed nearly 60,000 Americans and many times that number of Vietnamese lives.

For years many of us had argued the need to get out of Afghanistan. To end the fighting, the dying, the destruction, the nation-building. To end the foolish fantasy that we were building a Western-style democracy there. We cannot leave, we were told for all those years. If we leave Afghanistan now, the Taliban will come back! Well guess what, after 12 years, trillions of dollars, more than 2,200 Americans killed, and perhaps more than 50,000 dead Afghan civilians and fighters, the Taliban is coming back anyway!

The long US war in Afghanistan never made any sense in the first place. The Taliban did not attack the US on 9/11. The Authorization for the use of force that we passed after the attacks of 9/11 said nothing about a decade-long occupation of Afghanistan. But unfortunately two US presidents have taken it to mean that they could make war anywhere at any time they please. Congress, as usual, did nothing to rein in the president, although several Members tried to repeal the authorization.

Afghanistan brought the Soviet Union to its knees. We learned nothing from it.

We left Iraq after a decade of fighting and the country is in far worse shape than when we attacked in 2003. After trillions of dollars wasted and tens of thousands of lives lost, Iraq is a devastated, desperate, and violent place with a presence of al Qaeda. No one in his right mind speaks of a US victory in Iraq these days. We learned nothing from it.

We are leaving Afghanistan after 12 years with nothing to show for it but trillions of dollars wasted and thousands of lives lost. Afghanistan is a devastated country with a weak, puppet government—and now we negotiate with those very people we fought for those 12 years, who are preparing to return to power! Still we learn nothing.

Instead of learning from these disasters brought about by the interventionists and their failed foreign policy, the president is now telling us that we have to go into Syria!

US Army Col. Harry Summers told a story about a meeting he had with a North Vietnamese colonel named Tu while he visiting Hanoi in 1975. At the meeting, Col. Summers told Tu, “You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield.” Tu paused for a moment, then replied, “That may be so. But it is also irrelevant.”

Sadly, that is the story of our foreign policy. We have attacked at least five countries since 9/11. We have launched drones against many more. We have deposed several dictators and destroyed several foreign armies. But, looking around at what has been achieved, it is clear: it is all irrelevant.

Today we learned from the Guardian newspaper that Federal judges and Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on an NSA request to make use of information it “inadvertently” collected on Americans without a warrant. According to the paper, the NSA was given permission to retain our intercepted information for a broad and vaguely defined variety of reasons, including “if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity.” That could cover almost anything.

This revelation suggests that the president was not telling the truth recently when he assured us that “nobody is listening to your phone calls.” Not only is someone listening, but they have been given secret permission to keep the information they collected for future use against us!

When the White House and Congressional leaders were pressuring Members into voting for the PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments, they assured Congress that Americans would not be targeted. The skeptics who voiced concerns about the unconstitutionality of the measures were said to be over-reacting. But as many of us suspected at the time, they were not being honest. Does it make any difference whether the information collected on us without a warrant and kept for future use was the result of “targeted” or “inadvertent” collection?

The Administration and Congress is angry over recent revelations of the full extent of the US government spying on its citizens not because it threatens national security, but because they expose the morally indefensible actions of police state tactics in what is supposed to be a society under the rule of law.

Copyright 2013, The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Article may be freely reproduced in whole or in part provided full credit is given and a live link provided.

Remember the Sequester? Remember the Administration threatening the end of the world if the phony “cuts” (which were actually just decreases in future spending increases) came into effect? Remember the cuts to Air Traffic Controllers while we were told “good luck” on our flights? Remember the cuts to TSA agents while we were told to enjoy our two hour wait in line to be groped or irradiated?

So now we find out that not only has the president found the money to start a new war in Syria, but also to embark upon his own $100 million African safari at our expense!

As USA Today reports, Obama’s African adventure will include:

“Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bullet­proof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.

So the big ticket items are exempt from cuts, while maximum pain is being inflicted upon Americans under the guise of the Sequester. That is how Washington works.

The United States’ perennially mistaken Iran “experts” are already spinning Hassan Rouhani’s victory in Iran’s presidential election as a clear proof of the Islamic Republic’s ongoing implosion. In fact, Rouhani’s success sends a very different message: it is well past time for the US to come to terms with the reality of a stable and politically dynamic Islamic Republic of Iran.

Three days before the election, we warned that US and expatriate Iranian pundits were confidently but wrongly positing how Iran’s election process would “be manipulated to produce a winner chosen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei – a “selection rather than an election” – consolidating Khamenei’s dictatorial hold over Iranian politics”. Many, like the Brookings Institution’s Suzanne Maloney, identified nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili as Khamenei’s “anointed” candidate; the Washington Post declared that Rouhani “will not be allowed to win”.

By contrast, we held that Iran was “in the final days of a real contest”, during which candidates had “broad and regular access to national media”, had “advertised and held campaign events”, and had “participated in three nationally televised (and widely watched) debates”. The election “will surprise America’s so-called Iran ‘experts’,” we wrote, for the winner will emerge “because he earned the requisite degree of electoral support, not because he was ‘annointed’”.

The real contest

Rouhani’s victory demonstrates that the election was a real contest, and that the perceived quality of candidates’ campaigns mattered greatly in many Iranians’ decisions for whom to vote. In the end, most Iranians seemed to believe – and acted as if they believed – that they had a meaningful choice to make. Besides the presidential ballot, Iranians voted for more than 200,000 local and municipal council seats – with more than 800,000 candidates standing for those seats – a “detail” never mentioned by those constantly deriding the Islamic Republic’s “dictatorship”.

Certainly, Western “experts” were wrong that former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s disqualification had driven Iranians into a state of political alienation and apathy. Rafsanjani is, at this point, not a popular figure for many Iranians; he almost certainly would have lost had he been on this year’s ballot. Rafsanjani’s sidelining was a necessary condition for the rise of Rouhani, a Rafsanjani protege.

More broadly, Rafsanjani’s dream has been to build a pragmatic centre in Iranian politics, eschewing “extremes” of both conservatives – or “principlists”, as they are called in Iran – and reformists. Instead, he has antagonised both camps without creating an enduring constituency committed to a centrist vision.

The election of Rouhani – the only cleric on the ballot, who campaigned against “extremism” in all forms and was endorsed by Rafsanjani – may contribute more to realising Rafsanjani’s dream than another unsuccessful Rafsanjani presidential bid.

Going into the campaign, Rouhani’s biggest weakness was foreign policy; in 2003-05, during Rouhani’s tenure as chief nuclear negotiator, Tehran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment for nearly two years, but got nothing from Western powers in return. In fact, criticism of Rouhani’s negotiating approach was an important factor in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s first election to the presidency in 2005.

During this year’s campaign, Rouhani effectively addressed this potential vulnerability, arguing that his approach allowed Iran to avoid sanctions while laying the ground for the subsequent development in its nuclear infrastructure. Moreover, Rouhani’s campaign video included praise from armed forces chief of staff General Seyed Hassan Firouzabadi, which bolstered Rouhani’s perceived credibility on security issues.

In the week between the third candidates’ debate – on foreign policy – and election day, polls showed with accumulating clarity that Rouhani was building the strongest momentum of any candidate, along with Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf – who came in second, and whom we flagged two days before the vote as a likely contender with Rouhani in a second-round runoff.

By election day, polls showed Rouhani pulling ahead of Qalibaf and his other opponents – a sharp contrast to Iran’s 2009 presidential election, when no methodologically sound poll ever showed former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi ahead of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Key to Rouhani’s success was his ability to forge coalitions, especially with reformists. Rouhani is not himself a reformist. He belongs to the Society of Combatant Clergy, the conservative antipode to the Assembly of Combatant Clerics founded by Mohammad Khatami – who became Iran’s first reformist president in 1997 – and other reform-minded clerics. Overall, Rouhani’s share of the vote was higher in small towns and villages, where people are more conservative, than in larger cities – largely because he is a cleric.

The real reformist on this year’s ballot was Mohammad Reza Aref, who served as Khatami’s first vice-president. Aref, however, proved a lacklustre candidate and attracted little popular support. Other reformists pressed him to quit after the final candidates’ debate, which freed Khatami to endorse Rouhani. While reformists were not the core of Rouhani’s electoral base, their votes were crucial to getting him over the 50 percent threshold.

Iran’s 2013 presidential election also confirms a point we have been making for four years – that, contrary to Western conventional wisdom, no hard evidence has been put forward showing that Iran’s 2009 presidential election, when Ahmadinejad won re-election over Mousavi and two other opponents, was “stolen”.

read on

Declan McCullagh at cnet.com reports on Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s revelation that the United States executive branch has admitted in a secret briefing to Members of the US House of Representatives that a US government analyst can listen to phone calls at his own discretion without any warrant or other authorization. McCullagh’s dense article, well worth a close read, proceeds to explain that this means “thousands of low-ranking analysts” probably can unilaterally decide to snoop on the contents of email, text, and instant messages as well. McCullagh also addresses the enormity of the mass spying operation and its capabilities.

Nadler’s revelation directly contradicts President Barack Obama’s emphatic denials earlier this month:

When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls.  That’s not what this program is about.  As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls.  They are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content.  But by sifting through this so-called metadata, they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism.  If these folks — if the intelligence community then actually wants to listen to a phone call, they’ve got to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation.

So I want to be very clear — some of the hype that we’ve been hearing over the last day or so — nobody is listening to the content of people’s phone calls.  This program, by the way, is fully overseen not just by Congress, but by the FISA Court — a court specially put together to evaluate classified programs to make sure that the executive branch, or government generally, is not abusing them, and that it’s being carried out consistent with the Constitution and rule of law.

And so, not only does that court authorize the initial gathering of data, but — I want to repeat — if anybody in government wanted to go further than just that top-line data and want to, for example, listen to Jackie Calmes’ phone call, they would have to go back to a federal judge and indicate why, in fact, they were doing further probing.

Now, with respect to the Internet and emails — this does not apply to U.S. citizens and it does not apply to people living in the United States.  And again, in this instance, not only is Congress fully apprised of it, but what is also true is that the FISA Court has to authorize it.

Obama’s claims that only metadata was collected, that the program was fully overseen by Congress, and that content of phone calls and Internet communications could only be obtained via FISA court authorization was repeated approvingly by ardent defenders of the mass spying program.

Even if Obama’s claims had been true, they provided little assurance that the spying program is not dramatically infringing on our privacy.

First, metadata of our phone calls and Internet communications, rather than being trivial, does provide very detailed information about our personal lives. Jay Stanley and Ben Wizner’s concise article at Reuters laying out the revealing nature of metadata begins with the following observation:

In the wake of The Guardian’s remarkable revelation Wednesday that the National Security Agency is collecting phone records from millions of Americans, defenders of this dragnet surveillance program are insisting that the intelligence agency isn’t eavesdropping on the calls – it’s just scooping up “metadata.” The implication is that civil liberties complaints about Orwellian surveillance tactics are overblown.

But any suggestion that Americans have nothing to worry about from this dragnet collection of communications metadata is wrong. Even without intercepting the content of communications, the government can use metadata to learn our most intimate secrets – anything from whether we have a drinking problem to whether we’re gay or straight. The suggestion that metadata is “no big deal” – a view that, regrettably, is still reflected in the law – is entirely out of step with the reality of modern communications.

Second, keeping Congress apprised of the mass spying program provides little extra protection. As Nadler’s revelation indicates, not all Members of Congress had been fully informed about the mass spying program. Indeed, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper even claimed, in response to a question from Sen. Ron Wyden, that the National Security Agency was not intentionally collecting any kind of data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans. Yet, even if all members of Congress had been fully informed of the program, that would provide little consolation. Congress is capable of supporting bad programs and doing so for decades. In fact, the highest ranking Democrat and Republican Senators on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reacted to the revelation of the FISA court order for Verizon to give over to the US government information concerning its millions of customers’ phone conversations by quickly preparing a joint press conference to unequivocally defend the mass spying program.

Third, while Nadler’s revelation indicates FISA court approval is not required to snoop on the contents of Americans’ private communications, requiring such approval would likely provide little to no protection. The secretive FISA court last year failed to deny any of 1,789 applications for monitoring electronic communications.

The US government’s mass spying program would be a horrendous abuse of power even if it were draped in a shoddy coat of legitimacy as President Obama described it. Nadler’s new revelation confirms the suspicions of critical observers and the warnings of whistle-blowers that the program is even worse.

President Obama announced late last week that the US intelligence community had just determined that the Syrian government had used poison gas on a small scale, killing some 100 people in a civil conflict that has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. Because of this use of gas, the president claimed, Syria had crossed his “red line” and the US must begin to arm the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian government.

Setting aside the question of why 100 killed by gas is somehow more important than 99,900 killed by other means, the fact is his above explanation is full of holes. The Washington Post reported last week that the decision to overtly arm the Syrian rebels was made “weeks ago” – in other words, it was made at a time when the intelligence community did not believe “with high confidence” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons.

Further, this plan to transfer weapons to the Syrian rebels had become policy much earlier than that, as the Washington Post reported that the CIA had expanded over the past year its secret bases in Jordan to prepare for the transfer of weapons to the rebels in Syria.

The process was identical to the massive deception campaign that led us into the Iraq war. Remember the famous quote from the leaked “Downing Street Memo,” where representatives of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration discussed Washington’s push for war on Iraq?

Here the head of British intelligence was reporting back to his government after a trip to Washington in the summer of 2002:

“Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

That is exactly what the Obama Administration is doing with Syria: fixing the intelligence and facts around the already determined policy. And Congress just goes along, just as they did the last time.

We found out shortly after the Iraq war started that the facts and intelligence being fixed around the policy were nothing but lies put forth by the neo-con warmongers and the paid informants, like the infamous and admitted liar known as “Curveball.” But we seem to have learned nothing from being fooled before.

So Obama now plans to send even more weapons to the Syrian rebels even though his administration is aware that the main rebel factions have pledged their loyalty to al-Qaeda. Does anyone else see the irony? After 12 years of the “war on terror” and the struggle against al-Qaeda, the US decided to provide weapons to the allies of al-Qaeda. Does anyone really think this is a good idea?

The Obama administration promises us that this is to be a very limited operation, providing small arms only, with no plans for a no-fly zone or American boots on the ground. That sounds an awful lot like how Vietnam started. Just a few advisors. When these few small arms do not achieve the pre-determined US policy of regime change in Syria what is the administration going to do? Admit failure and pull the troops out, or escalate? History suggests the answer and it now appears to be repeating itself once again.

The president has opened a can of worms that will destroy his presidency and possibly destroy this country. Another multi-billion dollar war has begun.

The Obama Administration’s sudden announcement last night that it has discovered the Syrian government used chemical weapons and thus crossed the “red line” is pretty unconvincing.

The Administration provided no evidence, no new information, and no explanation of why the intelligence community’s assessment of just three months ago that chemical weapons had not been used by the Syrian government has changed so dramatically.

What changed? They won’t tell us. The Administration spokesman who made the announcement would only say that they have a “high confidence in that assessment given multiple, independent streams of information.” What are those streams of information? They won’t tell us.

It reminds me of a decade ago, when another presidential spokesman came forward to tell us:
 
“But make no mistake — as I said earlier — we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.”
 
That was President Bush’s spokesman Ari Fleischer speaking about Iraq in early 2003.
 
Those who have been shown this evidence are not too impressed. An aide to Russian President Putin said today that the US side “tried to present us with information on the use of chemical weapons by the regime, but frankly we thought that it was not convincing.”
 
The Administration has announced that based on this new information, it would begin providing weapons to the Syrian opposition. This is of course another stretch of the truth, as it is well known that the Administration has been facilitating the transfer of weapons to the Syrian rebels for quite some time. The CIA is training the rebels in Jordan. The New York Times and other major media have reported on this numerous times.

But it is true that President Obama is taking us further toward war in Syria. And it is true that again Congress is taking no role in the matter, beyond the usual cheerleading by warhawks like McCain and Lindsey Graham.
 
Perhaps the Obama administration, seeing the multitude of scandals that have broken over the past several weeks, has decided to take a page from Bill Clinton, who famously bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on August 20, 1998, just three days after he was forced to appear at a grand jury hearing investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
 
I will have more on this developing news on Sunday in my weekly column. You can subscribe to my column here .

The Turkish uprising is rooted in the inconsistencies of the Erdogan government. The latter—after having billed itself as “Muslim Democrat” (based on the “Christian Democratic” model)— suddenly revealed its true nature with the advent of the Arab Spring “color revolutions.”

In terms of domestic and foreign policy, there is a before and after a volte-face. The previous stage involved the infiltration of institutions. The aftermath has been characterized by sectarianism. Before, Ahmed Davutoğlu’s theory of “zero problems” with Turkey’s neighbors took center stage. The former Ottoman Empire seemed to be coming out of its slumber and returning to reality. After that, the opposite happened: Turkey fell out with each of her neighbors and went to war against Syria.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Piloting this shift is the Muslim Brotherhood, a secret organization that Erdogan and his team have always been affiliated with, despite their denials. Even if this shift is subsequent to the one involving Qatar—the financier of the Muslim Brotherhood—it bears the same implication: authoritarian regimes that claimed to be foes of Israel suddenly act like close allies.

It is important to remember that the label “Arab Spring” given by the West is a deception to make people believe that the Tunisian and Egyptian governments were overthrown by a mass movement. While there was a popular revolution in Tunisia, its goal was not to change the regime, but to achieve economic and social changes. It was the United States, not the street, that ordered Zinedine el Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak to step down. Then it was NATO that toppled and lynched Muammar al-Gaddafi. And it is again NATO and the GCC that have fueled the attack against Syria.

Across North Africa—with the exception of Algeria—the Muslim Brotherhood has been placed in power by Hillary Clinton. Everywhere, Turkish communications advisors are on board, courtesy of the Erdogan government. Everywhere, “democracy” was a facade which allowed the Brothers to Islamize firms in exchange for embracing the pseudo-liberal capitalism of the United States.

The term “Islamize” reflects the rhetoric employed by the Brothers, not reality. The Brotherhood intends to control the privacy of individuals based on principles which are outside the scope of the Quran. It calls into question the role of women in society and imposes an austere lifestyle without alcohol or cigarettes, and without sex…at least for others.

Over the past ten years, the Brotherhood has stayed under the radar, leaving the transformation of public education in the hands of the sect run by Fethullah Gülen, of which President Abdullah Gül is a member.

Although the Brotherhood flaunts its hatred for the American way of life, it thrives under the protective wing of the Anglo-Americans (UK, USA, Israel) who have always been able to use its violence against those who resisted them. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had appointed to her cabinet her former “body woman,” Huma Abedin (wife of former Zionist Congressman Anthony Weiner), whose mother Saleha Abedin presides the women’s division of the Brotherhood. It was through this channel that Clinton stirred up the Brotherhood.

The Brothers purveyed the ideology of Al-Qaeda, through one of their members: Ayman al-Zawahiri, the organizer President Sadat’s assassination and currently the leader of the terrorist organization. Al-Zawahiri, like Bin Laden, has always been an agent of U.S. services. Although officially listed as a public enemy, from 1997 to 2001 he met regularly with the CIA at the U.S. Embassy in Baku in the context “Operation Gladio B,” as testified by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds [1].

A progressive dictatorship

During his imprisonment, Erdogan claimed to have broken with the Brothers and to have quit the party. Then, he got himself elected and gradually imposed a dictatorship. He ordered the arrest and incarceration of two thirds of the generals accused of involvement in Gladio, the secret network under U.S. influence. In addition, he put behind bars the highest number of journalists for an individual country. This fact has been obscured by the Western media, unwilling to criticize a NATO member.

The army is the traditional custodian of Kemalist secularism. However, after the September 11 attacks, senior officers were concerned about the totalitarian drift of the United States, and made contact with their counterparts in Russia and China. To nip these unwelcome initiatives in the bud, certain judges pointedly reminded them about their historical ties with the U.S.

If, like in any other profession, journalists can be rascals, the world’s highest incarceration rate is indicative of a policy: intimidation and repression. With the exception of Ululsal, television turned into an official eulogy, while the press followed the same path.

“Zero problems” with its neighbors

The foreign policy of Ahmed Davutoğlu was equally laughable. After seeking to tackle the unresolved problems left over from the Ottoman Empire one century earlier, he tried to play Obama against Netanyahu by organizing the Freedom Flotilla to Palestine [2]. However, less than two months after Israel’s act of piracy, he accepted the international commission of inquiry created to cover it up and resumed in secret his collaboration with Tel Aviv.

As a token of the cooperation between the Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda, the Brotherhood had placed on the Marvi Marmara al-Mahdi Hatari, the second in command of Al Qaeda in Libya and a likely British agent [3].

Economic disaster

How did Turkey squander not only a decade of diplomatic efforts to restore its international relations, but also its economic growth? In March 2011, she participated in the NATO operation against Libya, one of its major economic partners. With Libya devastated by the war, Turkey lost its market. At the same time, Ankara embarked on a war against neighboring Syria, with whom a year earlier she had signed a trade liberalization agreement. The impact was swift: the growth in 2010 was 9.2%, in 2012 it fell to 2.2% and continues to fall [4].

Public Relations

The rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in North Africa went to the Erdogan government’s head. By brandishing his Ottoman imperial ambition, he disconcerted the Arab public to begin with, and then turned the majority of his people against him.

On one hand, the government is funding Fetih 1453—a film that gobbled up an astronomic budget for the country—which is supposed to celebrate the conquest of Constantinople, albeit historically flawed. On the other hand, it attempts to ban the most popular television series in the Middle East, The Sultan’s Harem, because the truth does not project a peaceful image of the Ottomans.

The real reason for the uprising

In the present context, the Western press has focused on specific details: a housing project in Istanbul, ban on late-night sales of alcholol, or statements encouraging population growth. All this is true, but it doesn’t add up to a revolution.

By showing its true nature, the Erdogan government has cut itself off from the population. Only a minority of Sunnis can identify with the backward and hypocritical programme of the Brothers. As it happens, about 50% of Turks are Sunni, 20% Alevi (that is to say Alawites), 20% are Kurds (mostly Sunni), and 10% belong to other minorities. It is statistically clear that the Erdogan government can not hold out against the uprising that its own policies helped to ignite.

By overthrowing him, the Turks would be solving not only their own problems, but would also be putting an end to the war against Syria. I have often pointed out that the war would stop the day one of its foreign sponsors exits the scene. This will soon be the case. Thus, the Turkish people will also halt the Brotherhood’s expansion. Erdogan’s fall foreshadows that of his friends; Ghannouchi in Tunisia and Morsi in Egypt. It is in fact most unlikely that these artificial governments, imposed via rigged elections, can survive their powerful sponsor.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 
Gaia Edwards

[1] “Al Qaeda Chief was US Asset,” by Nafeez Ahmed, 21 May 2013.

[2] “Why did Israel attack civilians in the Mediterranean?” and “Freedom Flotilla: The detail that escaped Netanyahu,” by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 1 and 8 June 2010.

[3] “Free Syrian Army commanded by Military Governor of Tripoli,” by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 19 December 2011.

[4] “Turkey’s Economic Growth Slows Sharply,” by Emre Perer and Yeliz Candemir, The Wall Sreeet Journal, 1 April 2013.

Voltaire Network, Reprinted with permission.

This year’s Iranian presidential election is likely to produce a strong political figure who will have a significant impact on the Islamic Republic’s foreign and domestic policies, helping to ensure Iran’s continued internal development and bolstering its regional importance. Yet every four years, a combustible mix of pro-Israel advocates, Iranian expatriates, Western Iran “experts,” and their fellow travelers in the media try to use Iranian presidential elections as a frame for persuading Westerners that the Islamic Republic is an illegitimate system so despised by its people as to be at imminent risk of overthrow.

Iran’s election processes, pundits tell us, will be manipulated to produce a winner chosen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei — a “selection rather than an election” — consolidating Khamenei’s dictatorial hold over Iranian politics. Either Iranians will be sufficiently outraged to rise up against the system, commentators intone, or the world will have to deal with increasingly authoritarian — and dangerous — clerical-military rule in Tehran.

But this year’s presidential campaign, like its predecessors, challenges Westerners’ deep attachment to myths of the Islamic Republic’s illegitimacy and fragility. The eight candidates initially approved by the Guardian Council represented a broad spectrum of conservative and reformist views. While one conservative and the most clear-cut reformist — neither of whom attracted much support — have withdrawn, they did so not from intimidation but to prevent conservative and reformist votes from being dissipated across too many candidates from each camp.

Contrary to an engineered selection, Iran is in the final days of a real contest. Candidates have had broad and regular access to national media, (including the broadcasting of extended videos about each candidate prepared by their campaigns), have advertised and held campaign events, and have participated in three nationally televised (and widely watched) debates.

High-quality surveys by both Western and Iranian pollsters show that the campaign is having a powerful effect on the eventual outcome. Western pundits and journalists have regularly identified nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili as Khamenei’s “anointed” candidate and the clear “front-runner.” But high-quality polls have never identified Jalili as the clear front-runner. As election day looms, moreover, polls conducted after the final debate show Jalili losing ground to three rivals: Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezae, and former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani (the only cleric on the ballot).

Read the rest of the article.

Foreign Policy magazine’s website featured an interesting article yesterday on the ongoing protests in Turkey. The protests have been covered quite a bit in the media over the past couple of weeks, as they spread throughout the country, were met with violence by the authorities, and threatened the ten years of relative stability and economic progress under the government of Prime Minister Erdogan.

Though most press reports tie the beginning of the protests to a dispute over the Turkish government’s decision to turn an Istanbul city park into a shopping mall, Sophia Jones reports in the above Foreign Policy article that widespread protests actually began weeks earlier in Turkey and had nothing to do with the shopping mall.

Instead, mass protests first began after a bombing in the town of Reyhanli killed more than 50 Turks. The bombing was widely suspected in Turkey to have been the work of a faction of the Syrian rebels that Erdogan has strongly supported, in a ploy to get Turkey even more embroiled in the conflict next door.

According to a recent opinion poll conducted by a research firm in Ankara, more than 72 percent of Turks oppose Erdogan’s policy of intervening in the Syrian unrest. Like most Americans, Turkish citizens want no part of the war next door and they are furious at their prime minister for his support for the Syrian rebels.

It appears that Erdogan’s interventionist foreign policy even more than his decision to clear out a city park is what enraged the population and turned a good part of it against him. Perhaps both the Turkish government and the US government would be smart to listen to their citizens when they demand an end to intervention and meddling in the affairs of other countries.

On many occasions the “Turkish-style” political system has been viewed as an example for Egypt to follow after the “Jasmine Revolution”. Visiting Cairo in 2011, Prime Minister Recap Tayyip Erdoğan, who is also the chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), tried to appear as someone who has won victories without actually going to war and a leader who has succeeded in getting back the lands lost by the Ottoman empire, the process revived under the new historic conditions. He strongly praised the performance of his country, which has really reached telling economic and foreign policy achievements in the 2000s.

But things do change and the Middle East is a volatile region. Now the events in Turkey are acquiring increased similarity with what took place in Egypt, where peaceful protestors filled the Tahrir square in Cairo. The Prime Minister appears to have somewhat overestimated the country’s resources and capabilities.

The local protest spurred by ambitious construction plans in the area of Taksim square has grown into a nation-wide mass unrest with dozens, or even hundreds, of protestors hitting the streets. The calls for ecology protection have turned into political slogans. The key demand is the resignation of Erdogan and his government. The protest keeps on spreading to encompass new areas and walks of life. Fierce clashes between protesters and police (it’s not without reason some units are viewed as Erdogan’s “private guards”) take place in Istanbul, Ankara and other large provincial centers (like Izmir and Konya), the offices of ruling party being smashed up.

Even soccer fans of rival teams have gotten together against police violence. The Turkey’s Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions (KESK) has joined the protests. Some say in case strikes expand across the country, the Padishah’s position will become really shaky. Of course, Turkey has not been immune from crises before, but the armed forces intervened any time it happened. Today they are destitute of such functions; the ruling party has effectively crashed on the military to eradicate any attempts of conspiracy adding to confusion and uncertainty in its ranks. (2)

As previously in Egypt, the unrest movement has thrown up no leader (or a group of leaders) and social networks have an important role to play uniting over 8 million people. More than two million messages highlighting the Turkey events were sent by Twitter users in just 24 hours. Around 90% of posts came from inside the country, half of them from Istanbul. Approximately 88% of massages were in Turkish language leading to the conclusion that it was the internal audience the messages were addressed to.

The are other signs telling the activists of unexpected unrest are perfectly prepared for information warfare, while the powers that be appear to be on the defensive and at a loss in mass media and Internet (unlike the police facing the protesters on streets and squares). According to the Guardian, Mr. Erdogan blamed foreigners and attacked Twitter saying, “Now we have a menace that is called Twitter. The best example of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society”.

The role of media in the modern world is well known, so making similar statements is the shortest way to acquire the image of “oppressor of freedom” and a “dictator”. No wonder, there is no de-facto support for the Prime Minister from the West: the media and politicians lash out against the Turkish police being too tough quelling the unrest. For instance, US Secretary of States John Kerry expressed concern over the anti-government demonstrations in Turkey calling for restraint. This statement is in line with the one made by Brussels on the same occasion. 

Obviously not each and every political group or informal organization, whose activists hit the streets of Istanbul, Ankara and other cities, is liberal and West-oriented. The radical participants of Occupy Taksim movement include Erdogan’s opponents from all political specters, including ultra-nationalists, who despise him for starting a dialogue with Kurds, and left-wing groups opposing his excessively “pro-capitalist” social and economic policies, as well as the support of Syrian anti-government militants. (3) In case the unrest goes on, the most steadfast forces, which follow coherent plans of action and are ready to go to any length to achieve strictly defined goals, will be the ones to gain. 

Evidently, the insight into the events of such gravity and scope requires having a look at the whole range of internal and external causes. The situation could be caused by surfaced tensions between “soft” (gradually becoming hard) Islamism of Erdogan and the sentiments spread in the ranks of secular oriented part of society. These are the very same tensions that one way or another have been a specific feature of the Ottoman caliphate and the Cembalist Republic after 1923. No matter the Justice and Development Party has won a string of elections; the Westernization has gone too deeply into the fabric of Turkish society.

Even in such traditionally conservative cities as Konya, the Western influence has taken deep enough roots. Erdogan would hardly be able to substitute secular legal system with Islamic laws, but he insists on the priority of religion-oriented values and symbols. For instance, the recently adopted law restricting alcohol consumption. Defending the expediency of the measure, Erdogan said he liked his people and wanted to protect them from bad habits. But many people don’t want to live under the watchful sight of caring father. (4) 

Thus, there is a civil division, or even, a cultural and civilization split reflecting the vibrant and contradictory social, economic and political processes going on in the country. Turkey’s NATO membership and it’s standing in the Middle and Near East is no less important bringing the country into focus of the recent West-led geopolitical experiments. The country’s destructive role in the Syrian crisis is evident. Those who follow the events closely have paid attention on unprecedented pressure the United States has exerted on Turkey. Let me recall that Hosni Mubarak, the former leader of Egypt, was also seen as a reliable US partner. Not long before the overthrow he had started to display some certain degree of independence…

Talking about the near future forecasts, it is quite possible Abdullah Gül, the President of Turkey, will take conciliatory steps. Formally an Erdogan’s political fellow traveler, he keeps some distance away from Prime Minister’s unwavering course and has a reputation of a moderate politician. One of possible outcomes could be gaining strength by some political elite groups.

The glaring example is Fethullah Gülen, who went into self-imposed exile in 1998 and resides in Pennsylvania. He enjoys strong support back home. A spiritual leader of the Hizmet global movement, which comprises media outlets, schools and charitable organizations (to large extent it is funded by entrepreneurs based in Anatolia), the Muslim scholar has significant political clout in Turkey, as the Economist reports. (5) Many (if not the majority) of those, who vote for the ruling Justice and Development Party, are the supporters of Fethullah Gülen and his Hizmet network, no wonder his opinion on a wide range of issues (the emerging dialogue with Kurds, for instance) has fundamental importance. (6) 

On May 31 he met Ahmet Turk, the leader of pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), who was visiting the United States. (7). Before that a meeting between him and Erdogan’s Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc had taken place. (8) Perhaps it’s all not about the Kurdish issue only. Reading a sermon in the middle of May, Gülen came out with veiled criticism of Erdogan’s vanity (9). No doubt, it reflects the Erdogan’s style. Some reporters of Zaman, the newspaper closely linked to his movement, have also made critical remarks about the Prime Minister’s arrogant attitude. (10) The Gülen’s followers, who have acted as the ruling party’s allies recently (but more friendly to the West), may take a more definite stance if the unrest continues. On the other hand, other parties and groups, including those who are rather on the radical side, may intensify their activities too. 

All of it is hardly surprising. Let’s recall the “hard work to go from a tyranny to a democracy”, a shift from long time support for dictatorships to bolstering democracies as a fundamental principle of foreign policy outlined just a few years ago by President Bush Jr., when his tenure was nearing the end. (11) Other actors, who maintain a kind of “competition/cooperation” relation with Washington, may pursue their own interests. The voices have already been raised calling the situation in Turkey a “milestone turn of events” to promote more mature “Turkish democracy”. It’s quite evident. The matter is that in concrete terms the emergence of this type of democracy will entail further fragmentation of Turkish society (taking into consideration its historically complex ethnic composition and rather complicated character of relationship with the neighbors) influencing the ties with all adjacent states in the future. 

Endnotes: 

(1) Main trade union backs Turkey’s anti-govt protests // http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=59209

(2) Moreover, the rumors are going around in Istanbul that the secular oriented military have refused to meet the police requests to lend a helping hand in quelling the unrest, the protesters have even been reported to be given gas protection masks in military hospitals – Dorsey J. Tahrir’s Lesson For Taksim: Police Brutality Unites Battle-Hardened Fans‏ – Analysis // http://www.eurasiareview.com/04062013-tahrirs-lesson-for-taksim-police-brutality-unites-battle-hardened-fans%E2%80%8F-analysis/

(3) After the May 11 blasts a few thousand protesters hit the streets of Reyhanli discontent with the government policies, not Syria, which the Erdogan’s cabinet tried hard to lay the blame on. Earlier in 2012, Faruk Logoglu, deputy chairman of the opposition Republican People’s Party, said the events were a direct result of the government’s policy on Syria. One can hardly put into question the competence of former deputy Foreign Minister, an experienced diplomat, involved in preparation of many important events (including those related to Syria and the Middle East in general). 

(4) Mustafa Akyol. How Not to Win Friends and Influence the Turkish People.

(5) The Gulenists fight back. A Muslim cleric in America wields surprising political power in Turkey // http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21578113-muslim-cleric-america-wields-surprising-political-power-turkey-gulenists-fight-back

(6) Is Gulen Movement Against Peace With PKK? // http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/gulen-movement-peace-process-pkk.html

(7) Ahmet Türk Fethullah Gülen’le görüştü iddiası // http://www.timeturk.com/tr/2013/05/31/ahmet-turk-fethullah-gulen-le-gorustu-iddiasi.html

(8) Bülent Arınç: Fethullah Gülen’le 3 saat görüştük // http://www.sabah.com.tr/Gundem/2013/05/23/bulent-arinc-fethullah-gulenle-3-saat-gorustuk

(9) Tahrir’s lesson for Taksim: Police brutality unites battle-hardened fans // Tahrir’s lesson for Taksim: Police brutality unites battle-hardened fans

(10) As Turks Challenge Their Leader’s Power, He Tries to Expand It // http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/world/europe/turkish-protests-raise-questions-on-leaders-rule.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

(11) Vladimir Avtakov, expert on Turkey, offers a glance at the history of Arab states setting the instances of the waves of unrest bringing to surface the people with the images of “popular” or “Islamists” leaders, while in reality they were lock, stock and barrel dependent on the United States of America. Turkey: Managed Chaos and Police Instead of Military. http://www.iarex.ru/articles/37353.html

 Reprinted by permission from the Strategic Culture Foundation.