By now only the most naive believe the official narrative behind Turkey’s Friday coup. We say that for two reasons: first, as even the EU commissioner dealing with Turkey’s membership bid, Johannes Hahn, said when discussing the unprecedented arrest purge in Turkey, “it looks at least as if something has been prepared. The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage. I’m very concerned. It is exactly what we feared.” He did not exlaborate what exactly he had feared, but one can infer. Second, as we caught Turkey’s press changing the narrative during the day, Erdogan was not even able to figure out who to blame for the “coup attempt” until this afternoon, first accusing the US, then the former Turkish air force chief, before finally deciding on accusing the 77-year-old Pennsylvania resident, Fethullah Gulen, of being the frail mastermind behind it all.
To be sure, the western media was happy to glance over these “changeovers” and to spoonfeed a false story to the masses just to maintain the illusion of the official Turkish narrative.
An example of this is when Erdogan told CNN earlier today that “he escaped death by only a few minutes before coup plotters stormed the resort in southwest Turkey where he was vacationing last weekend. Erdogan’s interview was broadcast late Monday. He told CNN that soldiers supporting the coup killed two of his bodyguards when they stormed the resort early Saturday. “Had I stayed 10, 15 additional minutes, I would have been killed or I would have been taken,” he told CNN through a translator provided by the presidency.”
And yet, less than a day earlier we wrote that even though “Coup Pilots Had Erdogan’s Plane In Their Sights” they did nothing, prompting a former military officer “with knowledge of the events” to ask “why they didn’t fire is a mystery.” So just hours before two F-16 had radar lock on Erdogan and decided not to kill the dictator, troops from the same alleged “coup” were scrambling to get to Erdogan – many hours after the so-called coup had already started – in his resort hotel, and where they would have killed him… had he stayed “10, 15 additional minutes.”
We can see why not even the Europeans believe this any more.
Then another example of the media forced – and false – narrative came from the Guardian which earlier today published a piece titled “Military coup was well planned and very nearly succeeded, say Turkish officials” which contains pearls, such as the following:
It was midnight in the Turkish capital, just two and a half hours into the attempted coup, and the group of nine senior ministers who were gathered in a conference room at the prime ministry were convinced that they were all about to meet their end. “They probably will be successful and we will die tonight,” said one of the ministers, according to an official who was present at the meeting. “Let us be ready to die. We will all be martyred in this fight.”
Such drama… makes you feel like you were almost there.
Not surprisingly, the bulk of the piece by Kareem Shaheen is poor on facts but heavy on florid descriptions, interpretations, hearsay and all those other literary techniques that make for a good piece of fiction. Some more examples:
But as Turkey picks up the pieces after the failed coup, new details are emerging of how it unfolded, and just how close the military intervention came to succeeding. Many observers have labelled the attempt amateurish, but accounts by officials contradict this characterisation, describing it as well organised and very nearly successful.
In Ankara on Friday, the day of the coup, the interior minister had been invited, along with other top officials, to a high-level security meeting in military headquarters that was supposed to take place after 5pm, a ploy that turned out to be intended as a pretext to detain him. He did not go because he was too busy, and later when the coup unfolded he was stuck in Ankara’s Esenbo?a airport, setting up a crisis cell there to manage the fallout, protected by crowds that had gathered to oppose the coup.
Again, zero actual facts. Not surprisingly, the author himself catches this tangent of his “story:
Stories emerged of those crucial hours, between the president’s address and the successful quelling of the coup by 4am, that are sure to pass into the official mythology of the events. At 1am, officials say the police chief the city of Bursa arrested the local army commander, who possessed a 6-page list that included the names of designated judges and military officials who were to be appointed to various positions in the bureaucracy in the aftermath of the coup. Other pro-coup soldiers possessed lists of secure telephone lines to receive orders.
Why he would give himself up knowing he would most likely face death if i) the coup was real and ii) Erdogan remained in power… well, let’s not worry about that.
But then, painfully, we finally stumbled on something which could be factually disproven, i.e. a precious fact. And it may shine a far different light on what happened during the chaos of the staged coup. It was the following:
The top counter-terrorism official responsible for Turkey’s campaign against Islamic State did go to a “meeting” at the presidential palace in Ankara. He was later found with his hands tied behind his back, shot in the neck, according to a senior official.
And suddenly so many pieces of the Turkish “puzzle” fall into place, because while the rest of the narrative about the coup is so glaringly fabricated and literally made up on the spot, the death of Turkey’s chief anti-ISIS counter-terrorism official being quietly killed, makes so much sense sense for a country where as we first presented back in November, “The Man Who Funds ISIS is Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey’s President” followed by “ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: “Raqqa’s Rockefellers”, Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection“, and of course, “Erdogan Says Will Resign If Oil Purchases From ISIS Proven After Putin Says Has “More Proof.”
Having arrested 20,000 people already, Erdogan’s witch hunts are just starting. However, it appears he had some very loose ends he had to take care of already on Friday night. One such loose end was the man who fought ISIS on behalf of Turkey, the same Turkey which – incidentally – funded and armed ISIS.
We eagerly look forward to finding out what else will emerge as the fascinating story of Erdogan’s getting rid of all loose ends, is finally revealed.
via http://ift.tt/29KDdRX Tyler Durden