Trump administration’s corrupt connection with Turkish regime

This 17 May 2017 video from the USA says about itself:

Turkish Dictator’s Security Detail Brutally Beat Peaceful Protesters Near White House [where President Donald Trump was receiving controversial Turkish President Erdogan]

There is much conflict among politicians and talk in corporate media in the USA about claims of links between the administration of President Donald Trump (especially Trump’s now sacked National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn) and the Russian government.

However, today, there is a report claiming corrupt connections between the administration of President Donald Trump (especially General Michael Flynn) and the Erdogan regime in Turkey. The regime which in 2015 shot down a Russian military airplane flying over Syria, risking a Russian-Turkish war; which, Turkey being a NATO ally, might have escalated into World War III with horrible nuclear death for most or all of humanity. The regime recently congratulated by Trump for winning (did they really win?) a referendum moving Turkey yet further into the direction of dictatorship.

By Vera Bergengruen in the USA:

WASHINGTON, May 17, 2017 7:27 PM

Flynn stopped military plan Turkey opposed – after being paid as its agent

One of the Trump administration’s first decisions about the fight against the Islamic State [ISIS] was made by Michael Flynn weeks before he was fired – and it conformed to the wishes of Turkey, whose interests, unbeknownst to anyone in Washington, he’d been paid more than $500,000 to represent.

The decision came 10 days before Donald Trump had been sworn in as president, in a conversation with President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, who had explained the Pentagon’s plan to retake the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa with Syrian Kurdish forces whom the Pentagon considered the U.S.’s most effective military partners. Obama’s national security team had decided to ask for Trump’s sign-off, since the plan would all but certainly be executed after Trump had become president.

Flynn didn’t hesitate. According to timelines distributed by members of Congress in the weeks since, Flynn told Rice to hold off, a move that would delay the military operation for months.

If Flynn explained his answer, that’s not recorded, and it’s not known whether he consulted anyone else on the transition team before rendering his verdict. But his position was consistent with the wishes of Turkey, which had long opposed the United States partnering with the Kurdish forces – and which was his undeclared client.

…

Now members of Congress, musing about the tangle of legal difficulties Flynn faces, cite that exchange with Rice as perhaps the most serious: acting on behalf of a foreign nation – from which he had received considerable cash – when making a military decision. Some members of Congress, in private conversations, have even used the word “treason” to describe Flynn’s intervention, though experts doubt that his actions qualify.

On Feb. 1, 2017, Flynn, then still National Security adviser, told media that the Trump administration was putting Iran “on notice”.

FLYNN BOMBSHELL “Michael Flynn told President Donald Trump’s transition team weeks before the inauguration that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign, according to two people familiar with the case.” And here’s what you need to know about the Flynn revelations and how they may have directly affected U.S. military strategy in Syria. [NYT]

MUELLER EXAMINES MICHAEL FLYNN’S ROLE IN ALLEGED PLAN TO DELIVER CLERIC “Under [the] alleged plan, ex-Trump adviser and his son were to be paid millions to forcibly remove Fethullah Gulen from U.S. and deliver him to Turkish custody.” [WSJ | Paywall]

Turkey’s president is furious about the arrest warrants issued for 12 of his security guards over their alleged involvement in a bloody confrontation with U.S. protestors in May.

Vijay Prashad: The mood in Turkey is low, and not just among those who oppose President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). Even some of his supporters are disoriented by developments in the country. In the aftermath of the failed coup of July 15, 2016, Erdoğan orchestrated the dismissal of tens of thousands of government employees. The figures from the ongoing Turkish purges are startling. The day after the failed coup, Erdoğan’s government fired 2,745 judges, a third of the Turkish judges. Not long after that, over 100,000 civil servants, teachers and journalists lost their jobs. The tally is now astoundingly high: 138,147 civil servants, teachers and academics fired; 50,987 arrested. It is as if the Turkish government—to quote Donald Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon—is “deconstructing the administrative state”: here.

Trump told Recep Tayyip Erdogan US will no longer provide arms to Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, says Turkish foreign minister: here.

Under Fire At Home, Trump Wins A Warm Welcome In Saudi Arabia. A $110 billion deal in which Saudi Arabia will buy U.S. arms, with options running as high as $350 billion over 10 years, was the central achievement of Trump’s first day in Riyadh: here.

Extremist Saudi Arabia In Partnership With Donald Trump: here.

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