[_pgpz]

After Twitter, this was expected. Just couple of hours ago, leaked audio recordings were uploaded to Youtube which show "Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Undersecretary Hakan Fidan, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu and Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Güler are heard discussing possible intervention into Syria and possible reactions from the world"

They were planning to organize artificial attacks from Syrian border and put the blame on Syria and strength Erdogan's position before local elections.

[cryoshon]

It's pretty ghastly that people are willing to fabricate rationale for getting into war. I really hope that the Turks dispose of their leaders expediently and forcefully.

[toyg]

Yeah, like US and UK populations voted out their chief warmongers pronto, once it came out that the rationale for getting into the Iraq war was fabricated... oh wait

[jann]

I'm very sorry but I really don't like that argument. That doesn't make it any less ghastly for others to be like that as well.

The argument you bring seems similar to what people say about the Crimea-Crisis (that 'the west' isn't allowed to complain because of Bosnia). Just because 'the west' interfered illegally in Bosnia, doesn't give Russia a free pass to do so as well.

[toyg]

I was just responding to the patronising tone of the comment above, showing how it's rarely the case that such manipulation is directly punished by the masses.

[digitalengineer]

Doesn't the us have the Monroe doctrine? It allows for the invasion of foreign country's when the us feels threatened right?

[dragonwriter]

> Doesn't the us have the Monroe doctrine?

Not really. The particular concern about limiting future expansion of European colonialism at its center (inasfar as the part of it that might justify US action is concerned) hasn't really been a concern really since the early 20th Century, though the name was dusted off by some (misleadingly) in the Cold War for applications of the Kennedy Doctrine within the Western Hemisphere, and the doctrine was explicitly described as being dead by Secretary of State John Kerry last year.

> It allows for the invasion of foreign country's when the us feels threatened right?

Not as actually articulated by Monroe (in fact, if the country was in Europe, its specifically negated some justifications for involvement).

[Angostura]

I think there's a bit of a difference between a fairly length debate about the extent to which statements about weapons of mass destruction were 'sexed up', where the government position is eventually discredited and a Youtube recording of government ministers conspiring to start a war.

[waps]

There are people here who come from countries that were the target of America's equally fabricated reason to get into WWII. I would love to thank the US government for fabricating that (at the very least blowing one incident way out of proportion). My family has killed people for simply being on the wrong side of that battle, merely to make some profit selling pigs, or repairing plumming. You know what ? They were right too.

The problem with Syria is that the government is in the right. Or at least, it's less wrong. The rebels want to do religious cleansing of the country and the government wants to survive, and it's own ethnic group to survive. Of course Iran, equally being the target of the sunni muslim religious cleansing, supports their not-quite-brothers. Erdogan wants to "help" the rebels because he's on the side that wants to do ethnic and religious cleansing in Syria, and presumably because it would distract from his local problems. The problem in Iraq is the same basic thing. The good thing is that sunni muslim attacks in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan are mostly their actions out of western nations.

But please don't be so stupid as to think they're ok with the US and generally the rest of the world just because they don't want to turn a 5-front war into a 100-front one. And also don't make the mistake of assuming they don't have support in America or don't have massive support in Europe. Both from local muslims living there, and from the governments that are afraid of these mad attacks.

As for Turkey, what do you really expect the leader of a sunni muslim religious party to do, except declare himself caliph and behave like he owns the world ? What exactly do you think he means when he says that "some" parts of sharia should be introduced ? You think he means to stop at "some" ? Really ? Religious freedom ? Sadly there are hundreds of millions of people who believe doing this is the answer to all the world's problems.

Please keep in mind that before Kemal Ataturk, Turkey, then the Ottoman empire, effectively the state of sunni islam that so many muslims are trying to recreate, had waged a 1500-year long war against the Europe, Asia and Africa. Then in WWI allah's caliph was overthrown, all but declared illegal (you wouldn't believe the number of imams killed and threatened in the 1918 - today period), and the war stopped, to be replaced with the cold war. The nightmare scenario is that this original war resumes.

[1] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/19/turkeys-abru...

[Locke1689]

There are people here who come from countries that were the target of America's equally fabricated reason to get into WWII.

Pearl Harbor? What are you smoking?

[chrisdevereux]

There's a popular conspiracy theory that Roosevelt knew Pearl Harbor was going to happen and allowed it as a pretext for entering the war. No conclusive evidence either way though.

[waps]

No I meant on the other side.

[logfromblammo]

Don't blame me: I voted for Kodos.

[oblio]

Also Kosovo :)

[MWil]

just morbidly curious but what's the date that came out?

[toyg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier

By late 2003 it was already clear.

[whiskeychaser]

when we never found any WMD...so ongoing I guess.

[declan]

Ah, yes. In the U.S. we had Operation Northwoods, where not one of those psychopathic "leaders" who concocted it was disposed of, either expediently or forcefully:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods DoD proposal that "called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or other operatives, to commit acts of terrorism in US cities and elsewhere... public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts..."

Also see "Gulf of Tonkin incident." Any others?

[ewood]

Well the odds are probably against it. The re-election of Bush in 2004 is one of the most recent instances I can think of where an electorate was more concerned about stability of their country than fabrication of a war. If the majority of the Turkish people are like most western populations they will put their heads down and vote conservatively because they feel threatened by events surrounding them, even if that threat is being manipulated by their own government.

[happyscrappy]

I am not so sure. Kerry was a terrible candidate, the virtual definition of a limousine liberal. Also as the BBC said, he is a serial message bungler, although Bush was not that much better. Someone like Obama could have won in 2004.

[sliverstorm]

Mmm... perhaps. PR needs a simple message. But reality is never simple. You can need to get into a war for very good reasons, without having a clear, simple story to tell the press.

[yread]

Maybe they already started following the plan:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/23/turkey-shoots-d...

[cinquemb]

Makes you wonder, if everything had gone to the original plan in syria already, nat gas pipelines would be headed to europe by now and the IMF wouldn't bother with the gazprom bill to russia…

Also interesting how there has been very little action about the blackouts from the State Dept talking heads (beyond the toothless shaming), if this had been a country not doing the bidding of tptb we would probably hear of sanctions against turkish corps in the us.

[bayesianhorse]

Are you suggesting that a "western conspiracy" was responsible for the turmoil in Syria? That their people did not have serious grievances with a regime that tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people for political reasons even before the current conflict started?

[pessimizer]

>Are you suggesting that a "western conspiracy" was responsible for the turmoil in Syria?

Who are you quoting? And is "conspiracy" just a pejorative word for 'intervention' or 'decision?'

>That their people did not have serious grievances with a regime that tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people for political reasons even before the current conflict started?

Are you suggesting that your first statement and your second statement are equivalent? That people did have serious grievances before the current conflict would lead me to ask 'why now?'

[cinquemb]

Not necessarily (because the conflict is not black and white), just that "the west" (if you include Qatar, Saudi Arabia[0], Israel, etc…) and "the east" all have interests in the region and have manipulated the conflict on multiple levels regardless of environment before Syria went "hot". Just like everywhere else in the world where someone is trying to make a buck…

Some of those interests have been well stated by the CFR[1] and RAND years…

Besides, "the west" didn't step into Iraq until the beginning of the 90's (and even then didn't dispose him until the 00's) while Saddam who was being bankrolled by the west was doing their bidding as well as torturing and murdering tens of thousands of people in the 80's… and even now, thousands more continue to die in northern Iraq and I don't hear people parroting that around, so lets not try to evoke the knee jerk emotions and remember all "sides" have blood on their hands in pursuit of their self interests…

[0] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-syria-crisis-sa... [1] http://www.cfr.org/qatar/tiny-qatars-big-plans-may-change-mi...

[bayesianhorse]

There is no such thing as "no intervention". Any action or inaction will shape events. In democracies it is inevitable to have an opinion of these things and to voice them. Otherwise leaders like Putin or Assad step all over you, and then demand "deescalation".

Also, Assad left any shred of legitimacy when he started decimating his population with artillery, and I don't how care how many "legitimate targets" where among the hundreds of thousands of civilians that were targeted.

For me, the only tolerance a democracy can have towards the governments in Syria, North Korea and some other countries, is that nobody can or wants to depose them. Nothing more, nothing less. That does not mean regime change works all the time, it just means there cannot be any apologetics for mass these murderers any more.

[shna]

No where in that recording mention about strengthening Erdogan's position before local elections. On the contrary they mention that Erdogan actually not acting on it all, one of the voice proposes that Head of Turkish Army and couple of other officials should get together while PM present and clarify on how to help rebel groups.

[narag]

Is there any information about when the recordings were made?

I ask because, well, after weeks knowing that their conversations were being intercepted, it would be utterly stupid to still discuss sensitive matters on the phone.

If on the contrary, they're old recordings, this seems like a strategy by the spies to slowly release damning evidence. Nice.

[toyg]

99% of political activity runs over phone lines. Not using phones would basically shut down the whole government and parliament, throwing a country back to the XIX century, it just can't be done.

What you can do is to change phones and to loudly complain with your counter-espionage and police arms that this stuff shouldn't happen. Except Erdogan has lost most of those constituencies already, which is why these leaks are happening in the first place.

[gkhnarik]

I disagree with your last sentence. Because of the problem in Syria our borders are not secure and Turkey is trying to solve this problem diplomatically for a year.

Recently ISID threatened Turkey to attack Sulaiman Sah and after that government started to think about a military attack to that area.

You can't just say "they want to attack Syria to strength Erdogan's position."

[_pgpz]

Actually I didn't say they wanted to attack, the Turkish government wants "Syria to attack" in order to justify a potential war.

[gkhnarik]

@hocaoglv Sorry I misunderstood this part. This tape really annoyed me.

[higherpurpose]

This implies that they do:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Turkey/comments/21i3u1/turkish_forei...