There are a couple of salient points that have focused special attention on Incirlik.
First, the base is a major nuclear weapons storage depot for the USSA military. Open sources that I have seen estimate that there are anywhere from 40 to 90 B-61 nuclear bombs stored there. The B-61 has a variable explosive yield that public reports suggest can be dialed up as high as 170kt, or more than 10 times the power of the bomb that the USSA dropped on Hiroshima, in the closing days of WW-II.
Second, the base played a major role in the recent coup attempt. The Turkish commander of Incirlik was fingered as a coup plotter early on. He requested asylum from the USSA, but was denied. He was then arrested by the Recep Erdogan government, along with thousands of other police and military personnel.
For a solid week, the electricity supply to Incirlik was shut off, and the USSA military garrison there was reduced to using back-up generators for power.
Then last week there was a large, angry, anti-American protest at the gates of Incirlik. A couple of days after that, 7,000 armed Turkish police with armored vehicles surrounded the base to carry out a "security" inspection.
One cannot help but speculate about what aspect of base "security" they were inspecting -- perhaps the level of "security" of the scores of nuclear bombs stored there?
Not surprisingly, the level of anger and massive, armed police attention directed at Incirlik, resulted in a visit last week to Turkey and to Incirlik by the Chairman of the USSA military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. No doubt he wanted a status report on the many nuclear bombs stored there, as well as a report on the status of the USSA military garrison at Incirlik.
Rising Anti-USSA Turkish Anger
All of this takes place within the context of elevated anger at and suspicion of the USSA military and alphabet soup agencies and their alleged role in the events leading up to the coup attempt. The fact that Incirlik was a center of activity for the attempted coup and that Incirlik is also a major military base for the USSA in the region has led to deep mistrust on the part of the Turks.
Erdogan's government is alleging that two American generals were involved in the coup plot: The commander of U.S. Central Command, General Joseph Votel, who has denied the allegation, and also retired USSA Army General John Campbell who is alleged to have managed some $2 billion in CIA disbursed payouts to the coup plotters.
And then there is a Turkish prosecutor who is claiming that the FBI and CIA were involved in training the coup plotters.
As would be expected, Barack Obama has disavowed any involvement by the USSA in the coup plot.
But, of course, the USSA has been involved in numerous violent coups and invasions throughout the world, for the better part of a century. Here is a very partial list; there are many more, but this suffices to give the idea: Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Cuba (attempted, 1961), South Vietnam (1963), Brazil (1964), Chile (1973), Grenada (1983), Venezuela (attempted, 2002), Honduras (2009), Ecuador (attempted, 2010), Ukraine (2014). Also in recent years and decades, we have seen the Pentagon, CIA and their various mercenary armies savage Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and kill the Iraqi and Libyan heads of state, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.
Setting aside the fact that Recep Erdogan is himself a harsh dictator, he cannot have failed to notice what happened to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, courtesy of the USSA. Moreover, seeing as Erdogan's government has been a supporter of the Islamist factions working with the USSA to violently seize control in Syria and remove its President, Bashar al-Assad, from power he knows what happens when a national leader is no longer in the USSA's favor: his country gets invaded, and he gets shot, hanged, or has a sharp bayonet rammed up his butt, and his country is left in bombed out ruins.
All courtesy of the red-white-and-blue hospitality of the Pentagon and CIA, and associated psychopathic riffraff and head chopping scum.
Erdogan knows very well that the USSA established the Incirlik air base to project military force in the region and redraw Middle East boundaries. However, the coup attempt has singularly focused his mind on the fact that Turkey and him, in particular, are now the focus of the USSA's attention.
Enter Fethullah Gülen
An additional, complicating factor is the presence in the USSA, under CIA protection, of one Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Islamic cleric in exile, leader of the most powerful and best organized political opposition movement in Turkey. Gülen is a Pan-Turkic organizer who has operatives and supporters in many countries, certainly in Asian countries with Turkic populations, but in many non-Turkic countries, as well. His is a far flung network, which commands billions of dollars in resources, and the loyalty of many thousands of persons.
One of the best analyses I have seen of the Gülen operation and its relationship to the failed coup in Turkey appeared on the Saker's website and can be read here:
Emigre Super Bloc: The Failed Turkish Coup – An Exploded View
If the coup had have succeeded in removing the Erdogan government from power, the Gülen movement would have stood to gain the most, and would likely have taken over the Turkish state, thus providing a powerful motive.
None of this is lost on Erdogan who has angrily demanded that the Obama government extradite Fethullah Gülen to stand trial in Turkey.
The Plot Thickens
Into this very volatile situation, which has yet to be resolved, enters Hillary Clinton. Watch this short clip with Julian Assange, of Wikileaks. He doesn't say it, but the interviewer does: the Gülen foundation has donated money to the Clinton Foundation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ2p6uQlCz0#t
There's the Hillary Clinton - Turkish connection, and with Gülen no less, who some analysts, as I have pointed out, as well as the Turkish government, believe played a role in the abortive Turkish coup.
The question is whether the Clinton- Gülen tie will become more widely known. We know that Clinton has murderously meddled in Libya, Syria and elsewhere. But does she have any involvement in the events in Turkey?
What can be said is that she got a lot of money from the Gülen organization. So what political favors did the Gülen organization receive from Clinton and when and how?
New Ties Emerge Between Clinton And Mysterious Islamic Cleric
Islamic Cleric May Be Laundering Taxpayer Money Into Clinton Campaign — Hillary Under Pressure To Return Donations
Julian Assange and Wikileaks certainly must know at least this much about the Hillary - Gülen connection, and maybe a great deal more.
The there is the
matter of the alleged $2 billion in pay-offs to the coup plotters which was purportedly laundered through a Nigerian bank. Money, money, lots of money, from this account to that, from Nigeria to the CIA, hush, hush, all directed by a retired USSA Army general. Where did the money come from? A retired general cannot run a huge operation like that by himself. So who were the guiding hands behind General Campbell? Meanwhile, as the political situation in Turkey simmers, stews and boils, the scores of nuclear bombs sit there in their bunkers at Incirlik.
What if one day or week in the near future Erdogan and the Turkish military suddenly decide to "appropriate" the 40 to 90 nuclear bombs that the Pentagon has stashed at Incirlik and transfer them to Turkish military control? And perhaps move them to another miltary base elsewhere in Turkey?
What then? Does the USSA go to war against Turkey? If so, how does that scenario play out? What would be the response of other major powers in the region, such as Russia and Iran?
I don't know the answers to these questions. I would simply observe that we are in very uncertain days.
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