James Corbett | December 5, 2015

What on earth is going on in Turkey? Is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan being undermined by NATO-linked, CIA-backed elements in his own country bent on toppling his presidency? Is the recent Russian warplane downing and ensuing spat with Moscow a set-up designed to garner global support for his ouster?

Are we looking at yet another regime change operation to get rid of an uncooperative "ally" and replace him with a more serviceable puppet?



Is it crazy to even ask these questions? Maybe, but in the murky world of deep state politics, nothing is ever certain. All I know is that when ForeignPolicy.com (the establishment mouthpiece propaganda rag run by Kissinger mini-me David "Superclass" Rothkopf) is delighting in a depiction of you as Gollum from The Lord of the Rings that is suddenly going viral on social engineering platform reddit, chances are you're being set up for a coup. Such is the position that Recep Tayyip Erdogan finds himself in these days.



Now let's be clear about what I'm musing about here. This is not to say that Turkey has not been and does not continue to be a key player in the creation and maintenance of the terrorist insurgency in Syria. Turkish support for the terrorists, including arms, equipment, training, and provision of a key smuggling route for terrorists and supplies has been in place since the start of the foreign regime change operation in Syria, a fact that I outlined in my reporting on Who Is Really Behind ISIS?



And this is not to suggest that Erdogan is actually a good guy and deserving of support and accolades. As a voluntaryist who believes that government is immoral by its very nature, I naturally hold that there is by definition no such thing as a "good" politician. And moreover, there is enough compelling evidence that Erdogan's family has been consorting with known NATO-linked terror operatives and coordinating shipments from ISIS-held oil fields that it is inconceivable that Erdogan and his family have his nose clean in all of this.



Still, like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad and countless other world leaders have discovered, being a former "Golden Boy" for the CIA and other big players on the international scene does not guarantee safety forever, and when you play games in the big leagues you can make some big league opponents.



I realize this may be a bit left field considering the Erdogan-is-the-root-of-all-evil meme represents one of those rare moments where the alt media (Zero Hedge, CounterPunch, Infowars, etc.) and the MSM (Politico, Jerusalem Post, San Jose Mercury News) seem to be in 100% lock-step agreement, but the idea shouldn't be completely incomprehensible to those who follow The Corbett Report.



There is a Deep State behind the overt government in Turkey just as there is a Deep State in the US (and everywhere else), and the Turkish Deep State is particularly well-known (and even touted in the MSM) and particularly vicious. Anyone who has watched my interviews with Sibel Edmonds and videos on Gladio B will know that Turkey is a central player in NATO's ongoing false flag terrorist Operation Gladio and its current incarnation staging terror events around the globe. Is it inconceivable that some deep state group is orchestrating events like the Russian plane shootdown in order to destabilize Erdogan and turn world opinion against him?



If this is the case, who are the main suspects?



Firstly, there is the traditional Turkish Deep State, the generals who have staged coups in the past and otherwise work to undermine the overt government whenever it is not to their liking. Keep in mind that the last major coup attempt, the so-called "Sledgehammer plot," reportedly considered a number of staged events to destabilize the AKP government (Erdogan's old party), including staging a shootdown of a Turkish jet to make it look like it was taken down by the Greeks. Swap a shootdown of a Turkish jet for a shootdown of a Russian jet designed to implicate Erdogan himself and it amounts to the same thing.



Of course, it's unlikely that the Turkish Generals could have coordinated the shootdown by themselves. Convenient for them, then, that Vice Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul J. Selva just happened to be in Ankara meeting with Deputy Chief of Military General Staff Gen. Yaşar Güler on the day of the attack. Couple that with Putin's revelation that Russia had shared the downed jets' flight path with the US prior to takeoff (implying that the US shared those details with Turkey, leading to the shootdown) and you have a strong case that there was US/NATO coordination in the shootdown incident, quite possibly without Erdogan's awareness or input.



And let's not forget the mysterious CIA-backed billionaire Imam Fethullah Gulen, long exiled from Turkey for previous charges of attempting to incite an overthrow of the government. He ended up in Pennsylvania of all places where he runs his international Islamic school network (in coordination with the State Department and CIA) and runs a media network that includes outlets like Today's Zaman, the single most cited source in English for information coming out of Turkey. Unsurprisingly, it has been the conduit for many of the stories swirling around at the moment, including the case of the weapons-filled "humanitarian aid" trucks passing into Syria.



And if it's motive you're looking for, there is conceivably no country on the planet that would rather see Erdogan ousted than Israel. Tensions between Tel Aviv and Ankara have been running high for years. In 2009, Erdogan dramatically stormed off stage at Davos after accusing Shimon Peres of crimes against humanity over the Operation Cast Lead butchering of 1300 Palestinians in Gaza. In 2011 he called Israel's 2010 storming of a Turkish aid ship in international waters a "cause for war" that Turkey had decided not to act on. Earlier this year he called the Charlie Hebdo incident a false flag perpetrated by the French even as the mayor of Ankara insisted that Mossad was behind it all. And interestingly, the part that doesn't seem to get any attention whatsoever in all of this mess is that while Turkey may be the key smuggling route for ISIS oil, the end buyer is almost certainly Israel itself.



Now there are far too many moving parts at play here and too many balls in the air for this to come down to a nice pat thesis. If Erdogan is being taken down, why is he so silent on the rogue elements behind the shootdown? But then again, if he and his family is eyeball deep in the ISIS oil trade why is he offering to resign if Russia can provide proof of it? Or then again, maybe Erdogan is creating the instability in order to propose his own solution: a French-style republican system where he could rule as an executive rather than the current parliamentary system where he is a non-partisan figurehead. (But then again, look at the source of that story.)



There's a lot going on right now, and whatever the outcome we're likely to see some huge changes in Turkey and in the war in Syria as a result of recent events. All I know is that I get uneasy when I see everyone across the entire media spectrum all parroting the same line without any consideration that there may be deeper forces at play here.