From Newsweek:

DID THIS CIA AGENT TRY TO OVERTHROW A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT? WHO IS GRAHAM FULLER?

BY CRISTINA MAZA ON 12/1/17 AT 12:05 PM Turkey issued an arrest warrant on Friday for former CIA officer Graham Fuller after accusing him of trying to overthrow its government in a coup. … Experts, however, say Turkey is attempting to get back at the U.S. for bringing a Turkish citizen to court. The U.S. is currently trying a Turkish banker for allegedly helping Iran launder money and violate U.S. sanctions. … The claims against Fuller hark back to the attempted coup in July 2016, in which Turkey’s military tried and failed to overthrow Erdogan. Since the coup, Erdogan has launched an ever-expanding witch hunt targeting anyone he believes to be against him, especially those he believes are connected to his nemesis Fetullah Gulen, a Turkish preacher who has lived in the United States for decades. Now, Turkey is accusing Fuller, who has written numerous books on Turkey and the Middle East, of collaborating with Gulen to overthrow its government. While experts argue it’s likely the accusation is unfounded, Fuller has been a vocal supporter of Gulen in the United States. In 2006, he wrote a letter supporting Gulen’s application for a U.S. green card. And in a 2016 op-ed in The Huffington Post, Fuller argued that Gulen’s religious movement is one of the “most encouraging faces of Islam today.” …

Fuller used to be the father-in-law of the Boston Bombing Bros’ Uncle Ruslan.

Fuller is a classic member of the Deep State, a retired CIA man whose career has been devoted to finding “moderate Muslims” for the US to support in Western Asia. It’s reasonable for the U.S. to have alternative regimes in waiting for countries like Turkey (Gulen) and Russian Chechnya (Uncle Ruslan), but it comes with unpredictable blowback (Uncle Ruslan’s nephews blow up the Boston Marathon).

I doubt if Fuller was actively trying to overthrow Erdogan in the failed 2016 coup, which seemed more old Kemalist military than new Gulenist police in its base. (I think, but I could well be wrong.)

The arrest warrant for Fuller was also issued just days after Russian strategist Alexander Dugin, a controversial figure with close ties to the Kremlin and the Turkish government, said on Turkish television that Russian intelligence agencies had “concrete evidence that CIA agents commanded the failed coup attempt.”

Can you really trust anything Dugin says about his “close ties” with anybody? I don’t know.

Gulen is a 75-year-old Turkish preacher who rose to prominence in the 1970s. Erdogan and Gulen were close allies for decades, but the relationship soured in 2013 after Gulen criticized the way Erdogan dealt with street protests.

Erdogan and Gulen were allies in putting together the Show Trials of generals because Gulen controlled the test prep industry in Turkey, which he used to get his followers to pass the police hiring exams. So Erdogan used Gulen’s policemen to have tons of evidence against the Kemalist generals forged. But, after that victory over their mutual enemy, there was nobody left to fight except each other.

Turkey was allegedly so desperate to jail Gulen that it offered to pay former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn to carry out an extrajudicial extradition of Gulen to Turkey. On Friday, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with foreign entities.

Is Turkey mentioned at all in whatever Flynn was charged with today?

When people talk about “foreign meddling” in the U.S., they always talk about Russia, while a few brave souls talk about Israel, but almost nobody talks about Turkey, even though there is a fair amount of evidence that various Turks have long been running complicated ploys in the US. For example, the Gulenites are funded by skimming hundreds of millions off running the biggest set of charter schools in America. Sibel Edmonds stumbled upon murky evidence of some other Turkish ploys in America. Now imprisoned Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was on a Turkish payroll before his recent downfall. (Back in 2000, Hastert brought a resolution to the floor of the House to recognized the Armenian Genocide, but at the last second President Clinton persuaded him to shelve it rather than offend the touchy Turks.)

But what it all means, I don’t know.