07-22-2016 (Photo: Putin & Erdogan 2015. https://www.kamugundemi.com/gundem/antalyaya-gelen-putin-erdogan-ile-suriyeyi-konusacak-h70836.html) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow

Erdogan Accuses the CIA. Turkey Turns toward the Kremlin. Gregory Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairs.

“…What are some “take-aways” from what has happened?  _1. Turkey has now formally declared the US (and therefore NATO) as its enemy. Pres. Erdoğan has blamed the US Government for the coup attempt — which many inside Turkey and the Middle East will believe, given the US recent history of advocating “regime change” — and he did so in a way which offers little chance of revision, also publicly crediting Russian Spetsnaz troops with saving his life during the putsch. [How did they get to Marmaris to do this?] As a bonus to Russia, he also said that the shooting down of the Russian Air Force Su-24 strike aircraft over Syria in November 2015 was done by “CIA pilots”. The Rus-sians know how it happened (Turkish F-16s engaged the Su-24), but listen patiently to the Erdoğan “big lies”.  _2. If logic prevails, the US and other NATO states will have to remove their military and intelligence assets from Turkey or risk them being even more compromised than they have become over the past few years. NATO will have to suspend Turkey from membership, something it has no mechanism, effectively, to do. Instead, as with the EU, it keeps waiting for Turkey to “‘fess up”, say “you got me, copper”, and resign from NATO. Why should Erdoğan do that? He will stay in NATO and the EU negotiations as long as he can extract economic and political benefit, even as he — for his own ideological reasons — undermines those institutions. And no-one has the nerve, in NATO states (particularly during a US Presidential election year and a meltdown in the EU) to initiate “Turkex” (Turkish exit) procedures. And no-one in NATO or the senior member states has actually done the calculation as to how to structure global and regional strategies without Turkey, or how to remove Turkish officers from NATO facilities; how to manage the region without Turkey. These were things which should have been considered, and the warnings of this journal for many years should have been heeded.

 3. If Washington and London are not too busy with their own tactical distractions, they should be looking at how to remove their strategic levers from Turkey and place them in the UK’s Sovereign Base Areas, in Cyprus. This time there should be some real negotiation with Cyprus on the matter, also indicating that, finally, the issue of the Turkish military occupation of northern Cyprus can no longer be ignored.

 4. Turkey’s public war with Russia is on hold. Will Erdoğan secretly continue his jihadist proxy wars? Yes.”