HASHISH AND THE MARDIN MASSACRE

"What are they trying to hide?"
~ Ahmet Türk.

Some of you may remember Akin Birdal before he became one of DTP's Diyarbakır parliamentarians. If so, you will recall that he was the IHD president whom the state attempted to assassinate in 1998. Birdal has also been imprisoned for publicly urging a peaceful solution to the Kurdish situation in Turkey. In other words, there are very few others in Turkey who are as qualified to investigate human rights violations or state assassinations than Akin Birdal.

According to Akşam, the TBMM's Human Rights Commission has formed a sub-commission of five parliamentarians (out of the nine parliamentarians on the Human Rights Investigation Commission) to investigate the Mardin massacre and Akin Birdal, who is one of the nine members of the TBMM's Human Rights Commission, has been refused a place on the sub-commission.

My first thought about stuff like this is: "What are they trying to hide?" I'm not the only one who thinks that way. So does Ahmet Türk (Source: http://www.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=nuce&nuceID=7451):

"To this date, we have always been excluded. However the behavior of the Human Rights Commission is quite thought-provoking. The idea of creating a parliamentary investigation commission for the violence in Mardin came from our friend Akin Birdal. But although he is a member of the commission, he is not included in the sub-commission for Mardin. Whereas the sub-commission consists of five members. Despite this fact, our party, which has a group in the parliament, is excluded from the sub-commission's investigation. This contradicts justice and equality principle. Why are we being excluded? We are not going to be silent about this."

[ . . . ]

"What are they trying to hide? We are not going to be silent about the behavior that excludes our party. Although there wasn't any member from MHP at the commission's meeting, the chairman calls him and tells him to come. However, he [the commission's AKP chairman] excludes our friend, who is already present at the meeting. In the past, I was also the Human Rights chairman. From all the political parties which have groups in the parliament, the subcommission gets members. There is a logic of exclusion in this case. We came here [to parliament] to represent our people, not to be excluded. The chairman of the parliament must intervene immediately [in this case of injustice].

Maybe they're trying to hide that business about the hashish in Bilge village (Source: http://www.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=nuce&nuceID=7430):

Hashish fight over 40 thousand donums [Note: a donum is a unit of area equal to 1,000 square meters]

After the Assyrians and Armenians emigrated from their Bilge village land, the land became state property. However, the right to own that land divided the Çelebi family in two. The planting of hashish in almost 40 thousand donums in Bilge village caused the fight between village guards over shares.

Last month when there was a study for land registry, the debate over sharing of the land, which is marked as state property, was revealed Two weeks ago, the same debate heated up between nephew and uncle families [the Çelebis]. After the debate over the land--whose real owners were Assyrians and Armenians--was revealed, the Çelebi nephew family decided in favor of the massacre and the date for the massacre was chosen consciously. According to them, the wedding celebration was the most suitable time when everyone from the other family would be together. Thus they could massacre all of them without any witness.

Scapegoat PKK by not leaving any witness

The Çelebi nephew family wanted to massacre the members of the family of the [Çelebi] uncle without leaving any living witness, thus they would be able to blame PKK for this massacre.

In the massacre, where 44 people died, if there weren't any witnesses, the incident would have been blamed on PKK because, at the very beginning hours of the incident, several news agencies and TV news channels stated that village guards had fired back against "terrorists" who succeeded in escaping due to a dust storm.

However, the three wounded witnesses who survived the massacre and gave the village guard perpetrators' names, turned their plan upsidedown.

The Sultan village garrison is two kilometers away from Bilge village, however the troops arrived at the village where the incident took place two hours later.

All of this is despite the fact that, as I mentioned previously, right after the massacre began, one of the victims managed to escape and go to the military garrison to warn a village guard relative of what was happening. The village guard at the garrison warned the military commanders, saying "they have left no one in our village; we should go." The response of the military commanders was "If you want, you can go, but we are not going now."

How typical is all of this? A fight over illegal drugs, a massacre, attempt to blame the Kurdish freedom movement, and the state's authorities in the region showing up well after any danger is passed . . . kind of like state authorities acted at Güngören.

Also, as I mentioned previously, the survivors screwed the whole thing up.

For more on the Mardin massacre, check Children of the Sun for a discussion from İsmail Beşikçi on the purpose of village guards.

Zerkesorg has a discussion of the massacre, too, with a translated opinion piece on what the massacre is called and what it would be called under other conditions. Very interesting, particularly since the Ankara regime's propaganda about the massacre has saturated English-language media to such an extent that even bat-shit crazy, ultra-rightwing, neo-nazi, pro-terrorist, anti-Muslim fascist extremists, like this one, are advertising, for free, the spin of the Islamist regime in Turkey . . . And they're calling it "honor killing," but only because that's also a racist site.

It reminds me of the old adage that says that the biggest mistake intelligent people make is to refuse to believe that people are a stupid as they really are.

Hevallo's recent post mentions a subject that I'll be working on soon, and that will be the translation of Hasan Cemal's interview series at Milliyet with Murat Karayılan. Lots of speculation is flying around about this, especially since Abdullah Gül said that he wanted to see Hasan Cemal, along with certain other politicos such as the new foreign minister, Davutoğlu, and Cemil "Chicken Little" Çiçek.

Regarding the interview with Karayılan, we need to remember that nothing he's said in the interview is new to us. Karayılan has been saying the very same things that PKK has been saying for years now, especially since PKK issued its statement on a democratic solution to the Kurdish question back in 2006--three years ago! Because the information is censored by Google, you'll have to copy-and-paste http://www.kurdish-info.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3467 to read the three-year-old declaration.

At this point, I see Hasan Cemal's interview as introducing PKK's long-standing offer of a democratic solution, which has been ignored or denied by the Ankara regime and its worldwide publicists, to the Turkish public for the first time. Hevallo is absolutely correct in warning about provocations because we all know what happened the last time a Turkish president seriously considered a peaceful solution. Things are not much different now; there are still a lot of Deep State types who are making a lot of money from the status quo.

It may turn out to be a very interesting summer after all.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE DEEP STATE

"Many Americans, due to the effective propaganda and spin machine of Turkey’s agents in the U.S., and relentless efforts by high-level officials and lobbying groups on Turkish networks’ payroll, do not know much about Turkey; its position and importance in the areas of terrorism, money laundering, illegal arms sales, industrial and military espionage, and the nuclear black-market."
~ Sibel Edmonds.

Luke Ryland has posted a partial transcript of Sibel Edmonds' interview on Electric Politics on 10 April. His partial transcript covers heroin, the Turkish-Israeli lobby in the US, the US Deep State, state secrets privilege and Susurluk, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the worthless US media.

Luke has also posted his own commentary on the interview at his own blog, Against All Enemies. Luke's own comments are always insightful because they're based on his extensive knowledge of the Sibel Edmonds case.

Because I know that he's particularly knowledgeable about this case, I'm not surprised that he found a mistake in my earlier post about the interview. At that time, I had mentioned that Murat Demirel was the brother of Süleyman Demirel, which was incorrect. Murat was the nephew of Süleyman Demirel as Luke correctly points out.

However, I don't feel too badly about the mistake given that there were so many members of the vastly corrupt Demirel tribe that were involved with some very shady banking dealings that ultimately led to Turkey's banking collapse at the end of the 1990s.

Süleyman Demirel's brother, Şevket Demirel--the father of Murat--was involved with Murat in the collapse of Egebank as was Murat's sister Neslihan, his wife Aysenur, and 36 other employees. There's no mention if those other employees were also Demirel family members. The Demirel's pillaged at least $1.2 billion from Egebank and apparently farmed the cash out to a variety of "front [i.e. phony] companies and offshore banks in northern Cyprus and the Virgin Islands".

The night before Egebank was seized by the Ankara regime, Murat Demirel was caught on security camera video carrying out suitcases of cash from Egebank's vaults. His uncle, Süleyman, was still president at the time and no doubt had something to do with tipping of the rest of the tribe as to the state's pending seizure of the bank. More on that at WRMEA.

Later, Murat received credits from Halkbank through other "firms":

It has been found out that Murat Demirel, the former owner of Egebank and who was imprisoned, used credits worth of 96 million dollars, 12,5 million marks and 38.5 billion liras from Halbank's branch in Levent district of Istanbul. The illegal credits given by the bank to 20 separate firms will be closely examined.

The fall of the Turkish banks was precipitated by the Susurluk Scandal and the closing of Turkish casinos, as mentioned in Sibel's interview. It would appear that the Ankara regime wanted to move the money-laundering operation of it's heroin industry out of the country to Azerbaijan and Central Asia to give itself the ability to claim plausible denial regarding those operations.

As late as two years ago, the old drug-runners were gathering in Azerbaijan. But that was before most of them were picked up in the Ergenekon fiasco. Just as those old Deep Staters consolidated the heroin industry under Tansu Çiller, Süleyman Demirel, and the Islamist Necmettin Erbakan, so now the Fethullahçı, through the AKP, are consolidating the heroin industry under their control. Ergenekon is the Fethullahçı struggle for control of the Deep State.

We should consider that Fethullah Gülen is the most likely candidate to be heading the money-laundering of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of heroin money through Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and, from there, is funneling the laundered money out through his empire of holding companies, banks, and schools around the world, including Central Asia. Remember:

Gülen now helps set the political agenda in Turkey using his followers in the AKP as well as the movement's vast media empire, financial institutions and banks, business organizations, an international network of thousands of schools, universities, student residences (ışıkevis), and many associations and foundations. He is a financial heavyweight, controlling an unregulated and opaque budget estimated at $25 billion.[3] It is not clear whether the Fethullahist cemaat (community) supports the AKP or is the ruling force behind AKP. Either way, however, the effect is the same.

Oh, the AKP is the Fethullahçı; of that there is no doubt.

The ability to launder the vast sums of money that Turkey's heroin industry rakes in has become crucial to propping up the capitalist system, as the UN reported earlier this year:

The United Nations' crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of control last year.

"In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital," Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. "In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor."

Luke Ryland wrote more on Turkey's role in the heroin industry and how this role is kept hushed by The System two years ago.

Just as the Gray Wolves were CIA assets in that organization's Gladio operation in Turkey, so now Gülen is most likely the CIA's most recent asset. He resides in the US, as does Mehmet Eymür, former chief of MİT's "counter-terror" department. He is a green card-holder, as was Abdullah Çatlı--at the time that he was on Interpol's "wanted list", no less. Gülen continues to be supportive of the MHP and BBP. the two Gray Wolf parties, and went so far as to give money, through Ergenekon's Tuncay Güney, to the recently dead Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu so that he could establish BBP. Thus the connections between Gülen and these Turkish-Islamist terrorists continue.

For more on the Deep State, including the role of that nasty old Harman bitch, whose corruption I first mentioned the other day, you need to check out the latest interview by Scott Horton, with Philip Giraldi [Run time slightly over 40 minutes]. Here's something to reflect on, since this is the 24th of April:

SH: . . . Jane Harman had done this major flip-flop and there's a link to a Youtube video of the Armenian lobby group, of a lot of young people protesting quite loudly calling hera a genocide denier. Apparently she was a co-sponsor of the Armenian Genocide recognition resolution, or whatever it was, while at the same time it was discovered that she had written a letter to Tom Lantos to scotch the thing . . . So that reminded me, of course, of Dennis Hastert because, I believe the story goes, according to Vanity Fair, and Daniel Ellsberg, and people familiar with the Sibel Edmonds case--which I know you've written about--that this was something that Hastert got a direct cash pay-off for--thousands of dollars, the former Speaker of the House--in order to thwart the Armenian Genocide resolution, in order to protect America and, apparently, Israel's relationship with Turkey. Can you expand on that?

PG: Yeah. I think you hit it right on the end there. Ithink that what she [Harman] was doing obviously--she's a congressman from Los Angeles . . . District 34 . . . She has apparently a strong constituency of Armenians who are wealthy and politically-motivated and, so, she was, indeed, one of the co-sponsors. But the Israel lobby and Israel decided they really didn't want this to go ahead for a couple of reasons--the relationship with Turkey being the most important one--and a lot of congressmen, as a result of a shift on the part of Israeli interests, also shifted their votes. So she was one of them. Tom Lantos, of course, was involved with this, too. Nancy Pelosi did a shift on it, as you know. So a lot of it goes back to Israel.

Later:

PG: Let's go back to our Turkish example. Why are the Turks so cosy with the Israelis? Do they have any real community of interests? You know, they have some common enemies in the area, and so on and so forth, but the big reason is that being chummy with the Israelis is a big plus for the Turks vis-a-vis the United States.

There's a lot more there about corruption, heroin, the military-industrial complex, the American Turkish Council, and all the rest of that good, old, Deep State criminality stuff.

If any of these Deep Staters had even the slightest nano-particle of honor, they'd blow their own brains out.

I'm just saying.

THE DEEP STATE AND CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN

"It is puzzling to observe that in reporting this major artery (Turkey) of terrorists’ funding, the U.S. mainstream media and political machine do not dare to go beyond the poppy fields of Afghanistan and the fairly insignificant low level Afghan warlords overseeing the crops."
~ Sibel Edmonds.

Sibel Edmonds has a new interview at Electric Politics (Run time 1 hour, 16 mins.) in which she talks about Turkey's involvement in the drug industry. The interview ranges into other issues, too, including the Deep State in the US. A few notes that I picked up while listening:


1. At the end of the 1990s, 40% of Turkey's GDP was based on heroin.

2. First Merchant Bank has been involved in laundering heroin money for Turkey, among others. Süleyman Demirel's brother, Murat, was involved among the higher-ups at First Merchant. Everyone should remember that Süleyman Demirel was Turkey's president during the Susurluk days.

3. AIPAC set up the ATC and convicted spy for Israel Larry Franklin was very much involved in the ATC's early meetings.

4. The Turkish Deep State lobby in the US uses smaller organizations, like ATAA and TACA to spread its interests.

5. The president of one of those "cultural" associations donated $100,000 to Secretary of State Clinton's failed presidential campaign.

6. The FBI has tried to take action against the American criminals/spies/foreign agents involved in the Deep State but have been prevented from doing so by both the Pentagon and the State Department. Remember the neocons and other Israeli agents, like Grossman, Feith, Perle, Larry Franklin, etc., who used to be directing policy at both of those agencies.

7. Prior to the November 2006 midterm elections, Congressman Waxman and his office wanted a public investigation into Sibel's case and those of other whistleblowers but claimed the big, bad Republicans were tying their hands on the matter. After the Democrats took a congressional majority in November 2006, Waxman and his office blew off Sibel.

8. It's quite possible that Nancy Pelosi and the Israeli lobby (AIPAC) "persuaded" Waxman to not insist on a public hearing for Sibel.

9. The Democrats dumped Sibel after she spoke to them in a SCIF because, through her information, at least three Democratic politicians could be further investigated, leading to prosecutions, for Deep State criminal activity.

10. Certain members of the current US administration could be further investigated, leading to prosecutions, for Deep State criminal activity.

11. Sibel was asked if there would ever be a time when her story could be told fully. She answers that maybe when everyone involved in her story is dead, it might be possible to tell it. Mizgîn adds that she hopes this happens very soon.


In connection with Sibel's case, let me point out that the current administration, the Obama administration, is not only supporting the Bush administration's hyper-application of the bullshit state secrets privilege, but it's surpassing the Bush administration's hyper-application of the privilege that is used to protect those involved in Deep State criminal activity, espionage, and treason. Not only that, the Obama administration is going above and beyond the call of duty by introducing a new blanket of protection called "sovereign immunity". More from Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

But late Friday afternoon, the Obama DOJ filed the government's first response to EFF's lawsuit (.pdf), the first of its kind to seek damages against government officials under FISA, the Wiretap Act and other statutes, arising out of Bush's NSA program. But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the "state secrets" privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim of breathtaking scope -- never before advanced even by the Bush administration -- that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is "willful disclosure" of the illegally intercepted communications.

In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad "state secrets" privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and -- even if what they're doing is blatantly illegal and they know it's illegal -- you are barred from suing them unless they "willfully disclose" to the public what they have learned.

For more on the continuation of Deep State fascism, see the more recent posts by Greenwald, here and here.

Change you can believe in!

Not mentioned in the interview, but relevant, is the fact that in order to win Turkish support for Danish PM Rasmussen's appointment as Secretary General of NATO, NATO will appoint a special envoy for Afghanistan from the ranks of Turkish diplomats. This was one of the conditions Katil Erdoğan insisted on. How very, very convenient for the Turkish heroin industry. I'm sure this will help boost Turkey's economy, and continue to bail out the banker vermin, during the global economic crisis.

Let me also point out that neither Sibel nor her interviewer at Electric Politics, who had purposely searched for information on Turkey's heroin industry, mention the PKK once. And that's because there is nothing to mention, contrary to a long-standing and massive propaganda effort on the part of the Ankara regime.

CAPITALISTS, MERCENARIES, AND THE SAME STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE

"Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class."
~ Al Capone.

What? The financial "elites" siphoning money out of the US? Illegally sucking capital out of the US? Using "privatization" to steal assets? Why, those dirty parasites wouldn't kill their own host like that, would they?

I described a meeting that had occurred in April 1997 . . . I had given a presentation to a distinguished group of U.S. pension fund leaders on the extraordinary opportunity to reengineer the U.S. federal budget. I presented our estimate that the prior year’s federal investment in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area had a negative return on investment.

We presented that it was possible to finance places with private equity and reengineer the government investment to a positive return and, as a result, generate significant capital gains. Hence, it was possible to use U.S. pension funds to significantly increase retirees’ retirement security by successfully investing in American communities, small business and farms — all in a manner that would reduce debt, improve skills, and create jobs.

The response from the pension fund investors to this analysis was quite positive until the President of the CalPERS pension fund — the largest in the country — said, “You don’t understand. It’s too late. They have given up on the country. They are moving all the money out in the fall [of 1997]. They are moving it to Asia.”

Sure enough, that fall, significant amounts of moneys started leaving the US, including illegally. Over $4 trillion went missing from the US government. No one seemed to notice. Misled into thinking we were in a boom economy by a fraudulent debt bubble engineered with force and intention from the highest levels of the financial system, Americans were engaging in an orgy of consumption that was liquidating the real financial equity we needed urgently to reposition ourselves for the times ahead.

Read the whole thing.

Engels was right. Capitalism is eating itself. I guess that's why his associate was on the cover of the European edition of TIME magazine this month. I guess that's also why copies of Das Kapital began to fly off German bookstore shelves last October.

Blackwater, the infamous mercenary company who murdered a bunch of civilians in Nisoor Square, Baghdad, two years ago has changed its name to Xe and beefed up its aviation "support" in order to assist with global narcotics trafficking. Now that the global financial parasites have sucked legitimate capital dry, they need to kick the infusion of illegal capital into high gear in order to save their own asses.

Oh, by the way, in case you were wondering if Sibel Edmonds might have a chance at justice with the new administration . . .

Members of the US Congress re-introduced bipartisan "state secrets" legislation on Wednesday, aimed at protecting executive privilege while ensuring judicial review.

The introduction of the bill comes as Obama administration lawyers on Monday urged a federal appeals court in San Francisco to continue the policy of the previous White House and invoke state secrets privilege in a case about CIA clandestine detentions and rendition.

"The State Secrets Protection Act will help guide the courts to balance the government's interests in secrecy with accountability and the rights of citizens to seek judicial redress," Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.

And let me remind you that, once upon a time, that worthless Leahy was one of those senators who "publicly support[ed] Edmonds and [ . . . ] pushed the Justice Department to declassify at least some of its investigation into her dismissal."

Now that's all change you can believe in!

Let me also add that Gordon Taylor has an updated post on Noah's ark and Cudi Dağı that makes for very interesting reading, so go have a look.

A PAGE FROM SUSURLUK: DRUG MONEY IS BAILING OUT THE BANKS

"For years and years, information and evidence being collected by the counterintelligence operations of certain U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies has been prevented from being transferred to criminal and narcotics divisions, and from being shared with the Drug Enforcement Agency and others with prosecutorial power. Those with direct knowledge have been prevented from making this information available and public by various gag orders and invocation of the State Secrets Privilege. Why?"
~ Sibel Edmonds.

Well, well, well . . . it looks like drug money is being used to bail out banks in the global financial crisis, from Reuters:

The United Nations' crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of control last year.

"In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital," Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. "In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor."

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had found evidence that "interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities," Costa was quoted as saying. There were "signs that some banks were rescued in that way."

Profil said Costa declined to identify countries or banks which may have received drug money and gave no indication how much cash might be involved. He only said Austria was not on top of his list, Profil said.

Why does this make me think "Susurluk"?

In a report published on 28 January 1997, the Turkish government’s chief inspector described how, in the juridical no-man’s land of Kurdish south-eastern Turkey, the army’s "special war" units were not just killing with impunity, but had also become involved in protection rackets, blackmail, rape and drug trafficking (1). The report also describes how the Turkish government handed over the security of a huge area - around the towns of Siverek and Hilvan - to the private army of tribal chief Sedat Bucak, a member of parliament close to the former prime minister, Tansu Çiller, who thus acquired the power of life and death over the area’s inhabitants.

This warlord politician was, incidentally, the sole survivor of a road accident in November 1996 near Susurluk on the road from Izmir to Istanbul (2). He had been travelling together with a chief of police and a well-known far-right Turkish mafia boss, Abdullah Çatli, who had been implicated in the attempted assassination of the Pope, was sought by Interpol for drug trafficking, and was wanted by the Turkish state for the murder of seven left-wing militants.

[ . . . ]

After the Gulf War in 1991, Turkey found itself deprived of the all-important Iraqi market and, since it lacked significant oil reserves of its own, it decided to make up for the loss by turning more massively to drugs. The trafficking increased in intensity with the arrival of the "hawks" in power, after the death in suspicious circumstances of President Turgut Özal in April 1993. According to the minister of interior, the war in Kurdistan had cost the Turkish exchequer upwards of $12.5 billion (7). Whereas, according to the daily Hürriyet, Turkey’s heroin trafficking brought in $25 billion in 1995 and $37.5 billion in 1996 (8).

Only criminal networks working in close cooperation with the police and the army could possibly organise trafficking on such a scale. Drug barons such as Huseyin Baybasin have stated publicly, on Turkish television and in the West, that they have been working under the protection of the Turkish government and to its financial benefit (9). The traffickers themselves travel on diplomatic passports. According to witnesses at the Parliamentary Commission inquiring into the Susurluk accident, the drugs are even transported by military helicopter from the Iranian border. The president of the commission himself, deputy Mehmet Erkatmis, has protested against the fact that these damning allegations have been censured out of the commission’s official report...

And only criminal networks working in close cooperation with governments could possibly be controlling drug-trafficking profits in order to bail out their own, worthless banks, headed and run by a pack of greedy parasites known collectively as CEOs.

Tansu Çiller was well-known for publicly broadcasting her claim that Turkey lost billions during the Gulf War:

Well, what we--we were never asked whether the United States should be bombing North Iraq, but our concern was the following. We have a neighborhood. That neighborhood is Syria and Iran and Iraq, and North of us is Russia, and West of us Greece, and each time a crisis occurs, everybody goes back home and forgets about it, but we are left with the neighborhood. And it has cost us $27 billion during the last five years, and our allies don't turn around and recognize the need for that compensation.

Hence the need for the Çiller government to become an even bigger player in the international drug trade. It has been this "black money" that has helped to keep Turkey afloat ever since.

According to the minister of interior, the war in Kurdistan had cost the Turkish exchequer upwards of $12.5 billion (7). Whereas, according to the daily Hürriyet, Turkey’s heroin trafficking brought in $25 billion in 1995 and $37.5 billion in 1996 (8).

The Italians investigated and exposed part of the narco-trafficking beast that Abdullah Çatlı was involved in:

Catli's thugs crisscrossed the infamous smugglers' route passing through Bulgaria. Those routes were the ones favored by smugglers who reportedly carried NATO military equipment to the Middle East and returned with loads of heroin.

Judge Carlo Palermo, an Italian magistrate based in Trento, discovered these smuggling operations while investigating arms-and-drug trafficking from Eastern Europe to Sicily.

Judge Palermo disclosed that large quantities of sophisticated NATO weaponry -- including machine guns, Leopard tanks and U.S.-built Cobra assault helicopters -- were smuggled from Western Europe to countries in the Middle East during the 1970s and early 1980s.

According to Palermo's investigation, the weapon delivers were often made in exchange for consignments of heroin that filtered back, courtesy of the Grey Wolves and other smugglers, through Bulgaria to northern Italy.

And the Vatican was involved (and probably still is):

Italian magistrates described the network they had uncovered as the "world's biggest illegal arms trafficking organization." They linked it to Middle Eastern drug empires and to prestigious banking circles in Italy and Europe.

At the center of this operation, it appeared, was an obscure import-export firm in Milan called Stibam International Transport. The head of Stibam, a Syrian businessman named Henri Arsan, also functioned as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to several Italian news outlets.

With satellite offices in New York, London, Zurich, and Sofia, Bulgaria, Stibam officials recycled their profits through Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's largest private bank which had close ties to the Vatican until its sensational collapse in 1982.

The collapse of Banco Ambrosiano came on the heels of the still unsolved death of its furtive president, Roberto Calvi, whose body was found hanging underneath Blackfriar's Bridge in London in June 1982. While running Ambrosiano, Calvi, nicknamed "God's banker," served as adviser to the Vatican's extensive fiscal portfolio.

At the same time in the mid- and late 1970s, Calvi's bank handled most of Stibam's foreign currency transactions and owned the building that housed Stibam's Milanese headquarters.

In effect, the Vatican Bank -- by virtue of its interlocking relationship with Banco Ambrosiano -- was fronting for a gigantic contraband operation that specialized in guns and heroin.

Also involved with Çatlı and the Gray Wolves was the CIA. But all of this is old news and very familiar to those who know about Susurluk. It's also well-known that narcotics were transported through Turkey with official escorts, meaning the Ankara regime was helping to protect the transports. Perhaps not so well-known are the links from Susurluk and Turkey's financing of itself with drug profits to today's news that the narcotics industry is acting as a life preserver for the world's banks. Sibel Edmonds shows us those links:

Taking Turkey as the focal point and with a start date of 1998, it is easy to speculate why Sibel Edmonds indicated that there was a convergence of US and foreign counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism and US national security and economic interests all of which were too preoccupied to surface critical information warning Americans of the attacks of September 11, 2001. After all, who would have believed drug runners operating in Central Asia? And besides, President Clinton was promoting Turkey, one of the world’s top drug transit points, as a model for Muslim-Western cooperation and a country necessary to reshape the Middle East.

The FBI’s Office of International Operations, in conjunction with the CIA and the US State Department counter-narcotics section, the United Kingdom’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s ISI, the US DEA, Turkey’s MIT, and the governments and intelligence agencies of dozens of nations, were in one way or another involved in the illicit drug trade either trying to stop it or benefit from it. What can be surmised from the public record is that from 1998 to September 10, 2001, the War on Drugs kept bumping into the nascent War on Terror and new directions in US foreign policy.

More, from Sibel herself:

Curiously enough, despite these highly publicized reports and acknowledgements of Turkey’s role in these activities, Turkey continues to receive billions of dollars of aid and assistance annually from the United States. With its highly placed co-conspirators and connections within the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Congress, Turkey never has to fear potential sanctions or meaningful scrutiny; just like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The criminal Turkish networks continue their global criminal activities right under the nose of their protector, the United States, and neither the catastrophe falling upon the U.S. on September Eleven, nor their direct and indirect role and ties to this terrorist attack, diminish their role and participation in the shady worlds of narcotics, money laundering and illegal arms transfer.

The ‘respectable’ Turkish companies established and operate bases in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and other similar former soviet states. Many of these front companies, disguised under construction and tourism entities, have received millions of dollars in grants from the U.S. government, allocated to them by the U.S. congress, to establish and operate criminal networks throughout the region; among their networking partners are Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Albanian Mafia. While the U.S. government painted Islamic charity organizations as the main financial source for Al Qaeda terrorists, it was hard at work trying to cover up the terrorists’ main financial source: narcotics and illegal arms sales. Why?


For years and years, information and evidence being collected by the counterintelligence operations of certain U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies has been prevented from being transferred to criminal and narcotics divisions, and from being shared with the Drug Enforcement Agency and others with prosecutorial power. Those with direct knowledge have been prevented from making this information available and public by various gag orders and invocation of the State Secrets Privilege. Why?

Is this due to the fact that the existence and survival of many U.S. allies; Turkey, almost all Central Asian nations, and after the September Eleven attack, Afghanistan; greatly depend on cultivating, processing, transporting, and distributing these illegal substances? Is it caused by the fact that a major source of income for those who procure U.S. weapons and technology, our military industrial complex’s bread and butter, is being generated from this illegal production and illegal dealings? Or, is it the fear of exposing our own financial institutions, lobbying firms, and certain elected and appointed officials, as beneficiaries?

The need for the profits of the narcotics industry is another reason for the war in the Balkans. While the American investment banks were beginning their meltdown, Turkish heroin was moving through Albania.

Now it's all spun wildly out of control and narco-profits are no longer enough to keep The System running. That's why, in the US at least, trillions of tax dollars are going to the Wall Street parasites. It seems to me that the The System is going to need a hell of a lot more addicts in order to save itself.

JITEM'S ACID WELLS IN CIZRE

"If the Ergenekon investigation doesn't pass east of the Euphrates, the Kurdish problem will never be solved."
~ Ahmet Türk.

A month ago Nuh Gönultaş at Bugün wrote about some interesting information from supreme Ergenekon weirdo, Tuncay Güney, in a piece titled, "Where are JITEM's acid death wells?":

The black box, Tuncay Güney's life story and his relations, is not known whether or not it is real. He, who first disclosed Ergenekon and has become a legend.

Güney's most important trait is his close nine-year relationship with Veli Küçük, who was the deep paşa of the 1990s.

The book written by journalist Faruk Arslan, who lives in Toronto, titled Black Box: Ergenekon's Unknown Name Tuncay Güney, in which the mysterious witness makes shocking statements.

Güney claims that thousands of Kurdish citizens, who were killed by JITEM as extrajudicial murders for harboring PKK, were thrown into acid-filled wells, in which their corpses dissolved. Thus their bodies were never found.

This is quite an original and new information.

Güney advises looking at the BOTAŞ complex which JITEM had used in the Southeast in the 1990s, to find acid-filled death wells.

For years no one knew where the graves were of more than 18,000 citizens, most of whom were Kurdish and were killed by "unknown perpetrators"; no one questions or dares to question.

Güney claims that although there are very few people who know where these acid-filled wells are located in the Southeast, and Veli Küçük is one of them, but Küçük does not tell.

However, Güney gives a specific address in the book: "The places where JITEM and Kucuk's group used were these places. For a clear address, when you go towards the Habur border, close by Mardin's old town Cizre, on the left there is a complex that is guarded by soldiers. If you dig there, there will be a lot of bodies. BOTAŞ has enterprises in Diyarbakır, Batman, Adıyaman and these places should also be checked."

As a response to the question where did they find the acid, Güney replied in a classic way: "There are several factories in İzmit. Even Küçük's greeting is an order for them. Besides, for drug-trafficking they needed acid. They had become experts in bringing acid."

For more on that, see 32. Gün from November 2008, in which Güney reiterates the claim about the acid-filled wells. Note that I've provided the link for the first in a series of fourteen videos of that particular edition of 32. Gün.

Now it looks like the Şırnak state prosecutor is going to investigate the claims of the acid-filled wells.

The complaint was initially made by the head of the Şırnak Bar Association, based on the book by Faruk Arslan, mentioned in the Nuh Gönultaş piece . Before the state prosecutor's decision to go ahead with the investigation of the acid-filled wells, the Şırnak Bar Association vowed to move to open the wells at the first opportunity as soon as their exact locations were identified. The bar association will now be able to do just that. From Zaman:

Şırnak Bar Association chief Nuşirevan Elçi says: "This situation gave us hope. Turkey must face its past in order to have a bright future. If there are illegal implementations, these must come before the judiciary. The relatives of those murdered by unknown perpetrators don't know whether or not they are dead these last 15-20 years. This situation puts those people in pain. If this event is disclosed, these people will cease hoping. For Turkey's bright future, these kinds of works must be done. Especially within this context I see the Ergenekon investigation as a new era."

In the past, DTP has said that unless Ergenekon was investigated east of the Euphrates, their would be little hope for a solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey. Now let's wait and see how much of this is truly investigated and the results revealed. Then we'll find out, too, if Ergenekon's mysterious "black box" has any credibility.

PAŞAS IN A PANIC AND DEEP STATE DRUG TRAFFICKING

"Since the 1950s, Turkey has played a key role in channelling into Europe and the United States the heroin produced in the "Golden Triangle" comprised by Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. The operation is run by mafia groups closely controlled by the MIT."
~ Kendal Nezan.

The Ankara regime has requested used Cobra gunships from the US and it seems to be in somewhat of a panic about it because the regime is described as "urgently" wanting the gunships. They want some of "the US military's own gunships." Those F-16's aren't working out so well against PKK, even with US and Israeli intelligence gathering for Ankara. Or maybe it's just a problem with dead or horribly maimed Turkish pilots. From Defense News:

Turkey, which urgently wants attack helicopters to help fight separatist Kurdish militants near its border with Iraq, recently asked Washington to sell about a dozen of the U.S. military’s own gunships, officials from both sides said.

“To meet our short-term requirement, we would like to buy a number of attack helicopters that are presently in the U.S. military’s inventory,” one senior Turkish military official said.

[ . . . ]

The United States had not formally responded to the request by press time, and it was not clear if any such helicopters were available for sale. U.S. Marines are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Turkey last spring made a similar but informal inquiry, and at the time the U.S. government was not willing to declare that its military had attack helicopters available for transfer to the Turks,” the U.S. business source said. “But since then, the political climate has greatly improved between the two nations.”

[ . . . ]

The U.S. business source said Turkey also has shown some interest in the U.S. Army’s AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter.

But the Turkish military official said the Army had no infrastructure to support the Apache’s maintenance, and that the Army prefers the Cobras.

Good. Helicopters are a lot easier to shoot down than F-16s.

Imagine my shock to learn that the Ergenekon gang was involved with drug-trafficking:

Charges brought against the deep-state linked Ergenekon organization by a Turkish court have shown that the gang was after a military takeover in Turkey while records of phone conversations of its members in the hands of German police show that they were also involved in the drug trade.

Again, the Germans are named.

Germany’s Niedersachsen State’s anti-drug department, the LKA, which tapped the phones of some of the Ergenekon members as part of a narcotics investigation, proved that Ergenekon members were indeed in the drug business as well. The records of a Nov. 20, 2003 phone conversation between retired Capt. Muzaffer Tekin, arrested in June of last year as the owner of the munitions depot found in anİstanbul shantytown that started the Ergenekon operation, and Yılmaz Tavukçuoğlu, an alleged drug trafficker, shows that Ergenekon used drug money to fund its activities. The two men in these conversations talk about the sale of a plot of land in Ümraniye. According to the LKA’s Willi Neumann, the co-owners of the land were Tekin and Ertuğrul Yılmaz, the former owner of Doğuş Factoring, who was murdered in eastern Germany two years ago. Neumann’s report asserts that this piece of land might have been used to launder money from drug trading with Tavukçuoğlu.

This is all a bit hypocritical considering that the Ankara regime funds itself through the heroin industry:

Since the 1950s, Turkey has played a key role in channelling into Europe and the United States the heroin produced in the "Golden Triangle" comprised by Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. The operation is run by mafia groups closely controlled by the MIT. One of their personnel described their relations with the police in the following terms: "Our people are able to pass through Yesilköy (Istanbul) airport whenever they wish, without being controlled by customs, with briefcases containing 3-5 million marks. Sometimes they stamp their passports, sometimes they don’t. Our boss has all kinds of false passports, stamps etc. (6)."

[ . . . ]

After the Gulf War in 1991, Turkey found itself deprived of the all-important Iraqi market and, since it lacked significant oil reserves of its own, it decided to make up for the loss by turning more massively to drugs. The trafficking increased in intensity with the arrival of the "hawks" in power, after the death in suspicious circumstances of President Turgut Özal in April 1993. According to the minister of interior, the war in Kurdistan had cost the Turkish exchequer upwards of $12.5 billion (7). Whereas, according to the daily Hürriyet, Turkey’s heroin trafficking brought in $25 billion in 1995 and $37.5 billion in 1996 (8).

Only criminal networks working in close cooperation with the police and the army could possibly organise trafficking on such a scale. Drug barons such as Huseyin Baybasin have stated publicly, on Turkish television and in the West, that they have been working under the protection of the Turkish government and to its financial benefit (9). The traffickers themselves travel on diplomatic passports. According to witnesses at the Parliamentary Commission inquiring into the Susurluk accident, the drugs are even transported by military helicopter from the Iranian border. The president of the commission himself, deputy Mehmet Erkatmis, has protested against the fact that these damning allegations have been censured out of the commission’s official report.

The Turks aren't the only ones keeping truth out of official reports.

A year ago, Luke Ryland took a hard look at the US State Department's 2006 International Narcotics Strategy Report--in light of Sibel Edmonds' information--which named Turkey as "a key player in this industry." Comparing it to the World Bank's report on Afghanistan's drug industry, Luke noted that the World Bank made virtually no reference to Turkey's role:

At least three quarters of all heroin sold in Western Europe comes from Turkey - 4 to 6 tons every month - yet the World Bank report mentions Turkey exactly... once!

Here's the reference, in all it's glory:

"The large dealers in both Lashkar Gah city and Kandahar claimed that they deal directly with buyers in Pakistan, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States."

That single reference to Turkey is all that the report could muster.

Why would Wolfowitz want to erase any mention of Turkey from his report?

Because those members of the Deep State in the US also benefit from Turkey's heroin industry no differently than their Turkish counterparts, as quoted earlier and as discussed by Sibel Edmonds and Philip Giraldi in Luke's post. In other words, it's not just the handful of criminals in the Ergenekon gang who are involved in narco-trafficking. It's a globalized industry for the elites.

Speaking of Sibel, Luke has an interview with her, in which she slams the US media for its failure in reporting the treason in the American government with regard to US officials--particularly Marc Grossman--and nuclear proliferation activities:

Luke Ryland: Will the US media start reporting on this now that it is 'hot and sexy' again?

Sibel Edmonds: It's hard to know. After being told for years that they won't cover it because it is 'old news,' now there are certain officials in the agencies quietly telling journalists to stay away from the story because I came across a highly sensitive covert national security operation.

Also, Turkey's army of lobbyists in DC are very effective. The US press tends to stay away from any stories critical of Turkey, I would say even more than Israel.

There's also the possible problem of 'eating crow' but I hope this isn't an issue, this story is way too important for any of that. The information that has been published in the Times recently could have easily come out four years ago in the US press. We now need everyone to focus on the important issues.

I have one message for the US media: If they think this is over, it's not over. Much more will come out. They won't be able to ignore it any longer, and so I hope they get over any reluctance they might have.

And there's much more in the interview, so go over to Luke's place and take a look.

ERGENEKON BUSTED?

"There are three bases to the [organized] gang. First is the police, second is the [state] bureaucrats and third is the military. We can question the police and some of bureaucrats, but we cannot question the military."
~ Mehmet Elkatmış, Chairman, Susurluk Commission.

The most interesting news of the day comes from Bianet:

Retired Major General Veli Kücük, nationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz, lawyer Fuat Turgut, who is the defense lawyer of Yasin Hayal, a murder suspect in the Hrant Dink case, Aksam newspaper journalist Güler Kömürcü, retired Colonel Fikri Karadag, who is the leader of the ultra-nationalist Kuvayi Milliye Association, and Turkish Orthodox Patriarchy spokesperson Sevgi Erenerol, are under police custody.

All 33 taken from their homes on Tuesday (22 January) are charged with forming a clandestine group to plot against the government, and attempts at the lives of Kurdish politicians, as well as storing weapons in a secret arsenal.

Photo Radikal. Article: "İşte Ergenekon."

That's right, folks, the Ergenekon gang is in police detention. The news appeared in Turkish online media late last night, US time, but it may have only a brief appearance, as noted in the Bianet article:

According to the NTV news, the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecution made a written statement about the detentions and then immediately announced a broadcasting and publishing ban on the case.

It's this ban that tells us we should not expect too much from this so-called "operation." If they're ordering censorship about the case, it means that there is something to hide on the part of the government. However, one should remember Veli Küçük in connection with the Susurluk scandal, as a close associate of the notorious Grey Wolf, Abdullah Çatlı and the infamous Turkish state assassin, Mahmut Yıldırım, aka Yeşil. Küçük was also named in connection with the 2006 Council of State attack and with Hrant Dink's murder. For a roundup of Küçük's crimes, see a Rastî post from last year.

Zaman has more about what Küçük and the rest of the Ergenekon gang has been up to:

The gang was plotting to kill Nobel Literature Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk and had already hired the hit man to do the job, the investigation found. Thirty-three suspects accused of being part of the gang, which calls itself Ergenekon, were detained by the İstanbul Police Department's counterterrorism unit in İstanbul and other parts of the country in dawn raids on Tuesday, the culmination of an eight-month operation. The police have been observing the actions of the suspects for three-quarters of a year as part of an investigation into a house full of explosives and ammunition found in a shantytown in İstanbul's Ümraniye district in the June of 2007.

The investigation has found that the gang is linked to a clandestine phenomenon referred to as the "deep state" in Turkey that stages attacks using "behind-the-scene" paramilitary organizations such as Ergenekon to foment public opinion according its own political agenda. Ergenekon is the title of a legend that describes how Turks came into existence.

This particular gang is suspected of involvement in a number of political attacks on individuals and institutions, including the murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. At least eight of the suspects are retired from the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK).

The suspects, who include retired military generals, journalists and underground bosses, have not yet been charged and are still under interrogation, but the police found a list of people the gang had planned to assassinate, including pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) deputies Ahmet Türk, Leyla Zana and Sebahat Tuncel; Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir; Nobel Prize-winning author Pamuk; and journalist Fehmi Koru, who is also a regular columnist for Today's Zaman.

Khaleej Times adds a little more information:

Police are also investigating whether the suspects were involved in several politically motivated attacks that shocked Turkey over the past two years, the daily Sabah said.

They include the murders of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro and a senior judge killed by a gunman who stormed into the country’s top administrative court, the daily said.

And, in what may be a very felicitous coincidence, Martin Lee--who's done more to expose the Deep State, Grey Wolves, and the likes of Veli Küçük, in English than anyone else--may now be connecting Sibel Edmonds' case about the Deep State criminals in the US with the Deep State criminals in Turkey. At least Consortium News, which ran Lee's original article on the Deep State in 1997, feels it's necessary to run the article again to give some background context to Sibel's story. From Consortium News, "Turkey's Drug-Terrorism Connection":

Edmonds, who left the FBI in 2002, said she stumbled upon this corrupt network – which also may have involved money laundering and drug trafficking – when she was hired after the 9/11 attacks to translate a backlog of tapes dating back to 1997.

That was the same year when Consortiumnews.com published a remarkable story by Martin A. Lee about Turkish government officials caught in a web of corruption with notorious drug traffickers and right-wing terrorists.

In view of the Sunday Times article and a follow-up on Jan. 20, we are republishing our earlier story to provide historical context for Edmonds’s allegations:

In broad daylight on May 2, 1997, 50 armed men set upon a television station in Istanbul with gunfire. The attackers unleashed a fusillade of bullets and shouted slogans supporting Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Tansu Ciller.

The gunmen were outraged over the station's broadcast of a TV report critical of Ciller, a close U.S. ally who had come under criticism for stonewalling investigations into collusion between state security forces and Turkish criminal elements.

Miraculously, no one was injured in the attack, but the headquarters of Independent Flash TV were left pock-marked with bullet-holes and smashed windows. The gunfire also sent an unmistakable message to Turkish journalists and legislators: don't challenge Ciller and other high-level Turkish officials when they cover up state secrets.

For several months, Turkey had been awash in dramatic disclosures connecting high Turkish officials to the right-wing Grey Wolves, the terrorist band which has preyed on the region for years. In 1981, a terrorist from the Grey Wolves attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in Vatican City.

But at the center of the mushrooming Turkish scandal is whether Turkey, a strategically placed NATO country, allowed mafiosi and right-wing extremists to operate death squads and to smuggle drugs with impunity. A Turkish parliamentary commission is investigating these new charges.

The rupture of state secrets in Turkey also could release clues to other major Cold War mysteries. Besides the attempted papal assassination, the Turkish disclosures could shed light on the collapse of the Vatican bank in 1982 and the operation of a clandestine pipeline that pumped sophisticated military hardware into the Middle East -- apparently from NATO stockpiles in Europe -- in exchange for heroin sold by the Mafia in the United States.

Read the rest at Consortium News.

NEXUS OF EVIL, PART 1

". . . but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before see a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again."

~ Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

In the last week, Luke Ryland from the Land Down Under, has been working like a horse to get the word out on Sibel Edmonds' story, in light of a newly released official complaint against the US government's use of the State Secrets Privilege to silence FBI whistle-blowers.

This new complaint is another piece of documentation that corroborates Sibel's credibility on the whole Deep State mess in the US, and can be added to the credibility given to Sibel's claims by a Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General report from January, 2005. Shortly after the OIG's report, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) filed a motion calling for an open and public hearing of Sibel's case, noting that the DOJ had been so afraid of Sibel that it had attempted to retroactively classify information pertaining to Sibel that had been widely disseminated on the Internet for two years.

I guess retroactive classification is the current administration's attempt to avoid a scandal similar to that which surrounded the leak of what became known as the Pentagon Papers back in the 1970s. From the introduction to the Supreme Court's decision on the NYTimes' publication of the Pentagon Papers:

In 1967 Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara ordered a full-scale evaluation of how the United States became involved in the Vietnam War. A study team of thirty-six persons took more than a year to compile the report, which ran to forty-seven volumes, with some 4,000 pages of documentary evidence and 3,000 pages of analysis. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department economist who had grown disillusioned with the war, copied major portions of the study and then turned them over to the press. On June 13, 1971, the New York Times began publishing the papers, and the Nixon administration immediately sought to stop further publication.

Why is Sibel's case important or, more specifically, why is Sibel's case important for Kurds? It's important because if we want to end the repression of Kurds by Turkey, we must sink the Deep State and all the business interests that keep it afloat. Remember, one of the major contributing factors to the continued repression and genocide of Kurds by Turkey is the military-industrial complex, best exemplified by the recent State Department appointment of Lockheed Martin board of directors' member, Joseph Ralston, as "special envoy" to "coordinate the PKK' for Turkey. In reality, this appointment has served only to enrich the Deep Staters through recent Lockheed Martin/Turkey deals totaling some $13 billion.

As if to continue the farce of Ralston's appointment as "special envoy," we get an idea of the hypocrisy of the appointment from Ralston himself, from the AP:

On Thursday, Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, a special envoy tasked with countering the PKK, said in Washington that the U.S. is addressing Turkish complaints about PKK activity and that reducing the PKK threat to Turkey would go a long way toward improving U.S.-Turkish relations.

"As the snows melt in the mountain passes along the Turkish-Iraqi border in several weeks, we will see if the PKK renews its attacks and how the Turkish government chooses to respond," Ralston said.

That's Ralston bullshit, because it was the US and Turkey that refused the ceasefire and continued with military operations. Let's review Ralston's statements last year. From TDN:

Days before the declaration of the truce, the United States publicly said that a PKK cease-fire would have little value and that the terrorist group instead should lay down its arms and renounce violence. "Cease-fire sort of implies an act that is taken between two states, two actors, to do that. And I don't want to confer that kind of status on the PKK by saying a cease-fire," Joseph Ralston, the newly appointed U.S. special envoy for countering the PKK, said here last Wednesday.

In that case, Ralston was Buyukanit's parrot--read the whole thing. Later, from TNA:

"The PKK is a terrorist organization, not a tool of U.S. foreign policy. We are not using and will not use the PKK in any way in Iraq," said former Gen. Joseph Ralston, the recently appointed U.S. special envoy.

[ . . . ]

"I want to be clear on this point: The U.S. will not negotiate with the PKK. We will not ask Turkey to negotiate with the PKK. And I pledge to you that I will never meet with the PKK."

[ . . . ]

"We have not taken any option off the table for dealing with the PKK. At the same time, as a former military commander, I know that the use of military force must always be the last option for addressing a problem," Ralston said. "To defeat the PKK, we will need to employ all the assets in our counterterrorism arsenal -- diplomatic, intelligence, law enforcement, and financial, in addition to military. We are working on all of these fronts."


[ . . . ]

Asked whether the U.S. intends to use the IRA model in dealing with the PKK, Ralston underlined that these two were totally different problems.

"You are comparing two very different situations, and mixing apples with oranges," the U.S. envoy said. "In the case of the PKK, our objective is to enhance cooperation with the Turkish and Iraqi governments to fight the PKK. We are also working with European governments to cut the PKK's financial and logistics lifeline. We will use all of the tools at our disposal: law enforcement, intelligence, diplomacy, financial pressure. And we have not taken any other option off the table."

More Ralston bullshit. He has "not taken any option off the table for dealing with the PKK" except that of ceasefire and political negotiation. Why, then, has the US been traipsing up and down Qendîl since 2003? And let's note that Ralston did not "underline" that the IRA and PKK are two "totally different problems," so I'll go ahead and underline that for everyone who's too thick to figure it out for themselves: The IRA and PKK are two totally different problems because the US never backed the use of Lockheed Martin aircraft to bomb millions of people out of their villages in Northern Ireland as it did in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. Hence, Joe Ralston as a director of Lockheed Martin, along with all the other rats at Lockheed Martin, were not earning billions of dollars off Northern Ireland.

It's obvious from this that Ralston is a liar and a tool of both the Turkish general staff and the military-industrial complex--and everyone else who cooperates with them. Ralston is only one part of the Deep State in the US. His co-worker at The Cohen Group, former ambassador to Turkey, Mark Grossman, is another Deep State vermin and Sibel's information indicates that he may be an even bigger pimp than Ralston.

Luke was one of the very few people who actively helped to spread the word about the Ralston conflict of interest last October and November. Being so familiar with Sibel's case, he saw how Ralston and the Kurdish situation fit into the bigger picture. It is that bigger picture that maintains the status quo which, in turn, maintains the severe repression of the Kurdish people under Turkish tyranny.

Explaining the bigger picture (and why it matters) is the point where Luke's work over the last week or so becomes brilliant. In distilling Sibel's--and related--information, it becomes clear that the nexus of Deep State evil in the US lies in the American Turkish Council (ATC). Because Luke's work is brilliant, and because he has stolen entire posts from me in the past without permission (!!), I'll do him one better here by stealing two of his posts, one for today and one for tomorrow. Today's theft is made possible by Wot Is It Good 4:



What the heck is Sibel Edmonds' Case about? And why should I care?


As part of our campaign this week to call for hearings into Sibel Edmonds case, below the fold is a short-as-possible piece which hopes to answer the burning question in Sibel's case: What the heck is her case about?

For a longer version, see my recent interview with Scott Horton.

Please call the offices of Congressmen Waxman - (202) 225-3976 - and Conyers - (202) 225-5126 - demanding open hearings into Sibel Edmonds' case and the State Secrets Privilege.

-----------

Sibel Edmonds' case is about the intersection of illegal arms trafficking, heroin trafficking, money laundering, terrorist activities and the corruption of many "highly-recognizable, highly-known names" in and around the US government. Sibel says that the people involved will go straight to prison if we can get hearings into her case. Richard Perle, in prison. Douglas Feith, in prison. Dennis Hastert, in prison. Marc Grossman, in prison.

According to Sibel, the best place to begin trying to understand the case is a recent article by Phil Giraldi in the American Conservative. Sibel says “Giraldi has it 100% right; this I consider the most accurate summary of my case.”

Giraldi writes:

"Sibel Edmonds... could provide a major insight into how neoconservatives distort US foreign policy and enrich themselves at the same time. On one level, her story appears straightforward: several Turkish lobbying groups allegedly bribed congressmen to support policies favourable to Ankara. But beyond that, the Edmonds revelations become more serpentine and appear to involve AIPAC, Israel and a number of leading neoconservatives who have profited from the Turkish connection.

[]

Turkey benefits from the relationship by securing general benevolence and increased aid from the US Congress - as well as access to otherwise unattainable military technology. The Turkish General Staff has a particular interest because much of the military spending is channeled through companies in which the generals have a financial stake, making for a very cozy and comfortable business arrangement. The commercial interest has also fostered close political ties, with the American Turkish Council, American Turkish Cultural Alliance and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations all developing warm relationships with AIPAC and other Jewish and Israel advocacy groups throughout the US.

Someone has to be in the middle to keep the happy affair going, so enter the neocons, intent on securing Israel against all comers and also keen to turn a dollar."

Giraldi goes on to list some neocons who are "linked to Turkey" - Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Grossman, Eric Edelman, and Stephen Solarz - and he suggests that they "enrich themselves" via drug trafficking and arms dealing.

The American Turkish Council (ATC)

The main Turkish lobbying group in the US is an organization called the American Turkish Council (ATC) - one of the most powerful lobby groups in the country. The ATC is heavily stacked with former government officials - statesmen, lobbyists and 'dime a dozen generals' - lobbyists and representatives of the military-industrial-complex (MIC). Brent Scowcroft is the chairman, and heavy hitters from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrup Grumman and other 'defense' contractors populate the board.

It's perhaps not surprising, then, that Turkey is a major recipient of US military aid - running to the billions of dollars - with much of it financed by the US taxpayer. Giraldi suggests in his article that this largesse appears to be the result of bribes paid to congressmen - a suggestion that shouldn't surprise anyone - but there's much more to the story than the usual Iron Triangle / Revolving Door story that we're all familiar with.

In a 10-page article in Vanity Fair on Sibel's case, the ATC is described as "a front for criminal activity" involving "large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder." We'll discuss the drug side of the story shortly, but let's first take a quick look at the military technology element - not only are the MIC contractors bribing congress to ensure that military aid flows to Turkey (and Israel), the Turks and the Israelis are also illegally selling that technology to the highest bidder - which inevitably includes America's enemies, States, and terrorist groups.

Sibel's case also involves the nuclear black market - some Turkish members of the ATC have supplied Pakistan's A.Q. Khan network with hardware, as have American companies that Sibel overheard on the wiretaps. Perhaps even more disturbing, as reported in Vanity Fair, other wiretaps indicate that "Turkish groups had been installing doctoral students at U.S. research institutions in order to acquire information about black market nuclear weapons." Daniel Ellsberg says that, according to Sibel, bribes were paid to people at the State Department to facilitate this activity.

These are extraordinary claims, of course, and we have a lot of evidence to support the claims - including, but not limited to, the fact that Valerie Plame's front company, Brewster Jennings, had been conducting a counter-intelligence operation against the ATC for years.

One very interesting aspect of Sibel's case that has not really gained traction is that while the ATC is understood to be the key focus of her case, it appears that AIPAC is equally involved. In a terrific 2005 interview with Chris Deliso, Sibel said:

Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive one... But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it... You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people.

And she went a little bit further in a great interview with David Swanson this week:

"AIPAC helped form the American Turkish Council - look at the board members, look at the people. You will see the same people involved in both fronts, because it is the same operation."

Reading between the lines (in a number of different places), it appears that Sibel was actively involved in 'the AIPAC investigation' as well as the investigation into the ATC. As she says, both the ATC and AIPAC are both 'fronts' for the 'same (criminal) operation.'

Drug Trafficking.

As I document in "Sibel Edmonds & the Neocons' Turkish Gravy-Train," Afghanistan supplies almost 90% of the world's heroin, and most of that goes straight to Turkey where it is processed, packaged, warehoused, and then re-exported to other countries for final consumption. Turkey supplies approximately 80% of Europe's heroin, and 15% of heroin in the US - worth approximately $40 billion at street prices.

Turkey is widely acknowledged to be controlled by a "Deep State." In 1996, a deadly car crash at a place called Susurluk blew this out into the open. In the car were four people who probably shouldn't have been in the car together:

"an MP, a police chief, a beauty queen and her lover, a top Turkish gangster and hitman called Abdullah Catli... Catli, a heroin trafficker on Interpol’s wanted list, was carrying a diplomatic passport signed by none other than the Turkish Interior Minister himself.

[]

The Susurluk Incident became Turkey’s Watergate, exposing the deep links between the Turkish state, terrorists and drug traffickers. It revealed what Turks call the Gizli Devlet, or Deep State – the politicians, military officers and intelligence officials who worked with drug bosses to move drugs from Afghanistan into Europe."

Sibel spells it out:

"The Turkish government, MIT and the Turkish military, not only sanctions, but also actively participates in and oversees the narcotics activities and networks."

As I outlined in the curiously-titled "Sibel Edmonds: America's Watergate," Sibel's case demonstrates that Turkey's Deep State 'owns' large parts of the American establishment, to the point where it appears that there also is a 'Deep State' in the US as well. ATC/AIPAC appear to be headquarters for this Deep State in the US, a cozy club where drug dealers, weapons traffickers and past-and-present government officials coexist. Happily!

And if that's not bad enough, we also know that:

"Heroin trafficking is also the main source of funding for the al-Qaeda terrorists. A Time Magazine articlereported that al-Qaeda has established a smuggling network that is peddling Afghan heroin to buyers across the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, and in turn is using the drug revenues to purchase weapons and explosives. The article states: “...al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies are increasingly financing operations with opium sales. Anti-drug officials in Afghanistan have no hard figures on how much al-Qaeda and the Taliban are earning from drugs, but conservative estimates run into tens of millions of dollars.”

That is, our Turkish Deep State friends, the people we are directly providing with weapons, are outsourcing some of their distribution activities to al-Qaeda and the Taliban (and, while we're at it, to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA.))

When we are discussing issues such as al-Qaeda smuggling heroin through Afghanistan and the other 'Stans, sometimes it can seem remote and distant, so let's come back to something more concrete. In Adrian Gatton's terrific recent article, The Susurluk Legacy, he quotes Huseyin Baybasin, a Turkish heroin kingpin who is now in jail in Holland:

“I handled the drugs which came through the channel of the Turkish Consulate in England... I was with the Mafia but I was carrying this out with the same Mafia group in which the rulers of Turkey were part.”

Gatton also describes how anyone in the UK government who dared speak about the issue were immediately rebuked by the Foreign Office (the UK equivalent of the State Department.)

The parallels with Sibel's case couldn't be clearer. As 60 Minutes first reported (youtube) in 2002, and Vanity Fair later reported, the Turkish Embassy was directing a lot of the heroin trafficking activity - in conjunction with people at the ATC.

"Sibel also recalled hearing wiretaps indicating that Turkish Embassy targets frequently spoke to staff members at the A.T.C.

[]

In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing... Many (calls) involved an F.B.I. target at (Chicago's) large Turkish Consulate... Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes."

And just as the UK Foreign Office silenced anyone in the UK who tried to speak out, Sibel says:

The Department of State is easily the most corrupted of the major government agencies.

[]

In some cases where the FBI stumbles upon evidence of high-level officials being involved in drug-smuggling, they're even prevented from sharing it with the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency]. The Department of State just comes in and says, "Leave it."

Elsewhere, Sibel says:

"For years and years, information and evidence being collected by the counterintelligence operations of certain U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies has been prevented from being transferred to criminal and narcotics divisions, and from being shared with the Drug Enforcement Agency and others with prosecutorial power. Those with direct knowledge have been prevented from making this information available and public by various gag orders and invocation of the State Secrets Privilege. Why?"

Pay attention here, because the ATC is where the worlds of the MIC and the heroin trafficking collide. One of the key Turkish interfaces at the ATC is the Turkish Generals - people that Giraldi says own a stake in the companies through which the military spending is channeled. As described earlier, these exact same people, the Turkish Deep State, also control much of the global heroin market. In between the MIC and the heroin traffickers - are the "neoconservatives (who) distort US foreign policy and enrich themselves at the same time."

One of the difficulties in trying to unravel the Sibel Edmonds case is that we aren't sure where one case ends and another begins. We know that some of the wiretaps were from the ATC, and some from the Turkish embassy in DC, and some from the embassy in Chicago. We also know that many of the wiretaps involve conversations between the embassies and the ATC.
Some of the wiretaps relate to drug trafficking, some relate to the nuclear black market and other weapons trafficking, and some refer to terrorist activity - including 9/11.

Perhaps it's not surprising, then, when she says:

You have the same players when you look into these activities at high-levels you come across the same players, they are the same people.

Those 'same people' - at least on the American side - according to Giraldi, appear to be Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Grossman, Eric Edelman, and Stephen Solarz. It appears that we can also add William Cohen and Joseph Ralston - and Dennis Hastert - to that roster, and I'm sure there are a few more that haven't yet been publicly identified.

If what Sibel says is true, and her claims are all backed by documents and wiretaps, and also backed up by other agents who have filed similar complaints, and are ready and willing to testify. All of these people should be in jail. For a long, long time.

Congress must hold hearings to get to the bottom of these crimes. If you agree, please call Congress, today, and demand public, open hearings.

Contact Information

Congressman Henry Waxman (contact page)

(Those calling Waxman's office should ask for Michelle Ash & David Rapallo.)

In Washington, D.C.
2204 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-3976 (phone)
(202) 225-4099 (fax)

In Los Angeles
8436 West Third Street, Suite 600
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 651-1040 (phone)
(818) 878-7400 (phone)
(310) 652-3095 (phone)
(323) 655-0502 (fax)

House Government Reform Committee (contact page)
By Mail or Phone:
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-5051

Please also contact Congressman John Conyers, asking him to support hearings by Chairman Waxman.
(Those calling Conyers' office should ask for Elliot Mintzberg.)
Email: John.Conyers@mail.house.gov

Washington, DC
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax

crossposted at Wot Is It Good 4 & Let Sibel Edmonds Speak and dkos and DU




Brilliant, Lukery. Absolutely brilliant. Bijît!