SPECIAL REPORT. Turkish sources: Erdogan behind "false flag" coup by Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. Turkish sources: Erdogan behind "false flag" coup

by Wayne Madsen Report
WMR has been informed by Turkish and foreign intelligence sources inside Turkey that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan staged the July 15 military coup in order to determine what sections of the military would support it. Erdogan, who was never in any real danger of being overthrown by the small group of mid- and lower-ranking military officers who rallied to support the coup, will use the incident as a way to flush out supporters of exiled Turkish charismatic Islamic leader Fethulleh Gulen.

Turkish sources report that the coup was limited by Erdogan's design from the very start. Although the coup began as a classic military overthrow of a civilian government, with strategic points -- the two cross-Bosporus bridges, the Istanbul international airport, the state broadcast network TRT, and the General Staff headquarters in Ankara -- all being taken by the coup leaders, it was doomed to failure.

It is still a mystery how the coup leaders, who limited their actions to seizing a few but not all strategic centers, could shut down all social media in Turkey, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. In fact, after Erdogan left his holiday hotel in Marmaris on the Aegean Sea, his plane was reportedly refused landing at Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport, which was in rebel hands. Erdogan's propaganda operation then began to put out false information that Erdogan, who was in the air on his presidential plane, was seeking asylum in Germany. WMR's sources report that Erdogan's plane never strayed far from Turkish airspace. Although major social media was shut down, Erdogan appeared on FaceTime from his iPhone on CNN Turk, which had not yet been seized by the rebel military forces.

If the coup had been a serious attempt, FaceTime would have been cut off and CNN Turk would have been seized at the same time that TRT was taken over. Also, the state-run Anadolu news agency continued to issue statements from Prime Minister Binali Yildirim claiming that the coup had been put down just after it started. An actual coup would have seen the news agency also shut down.

Erdogan instructed his supporters to take to the streets, in addition to seizing Ataturk airport from the pro-coup military forces. After Erdogan supporters took over the airport, Erdogan landed at the airport during the early morning hours of July 16 to be met by cheering crowds. Generating even more sympathy for himself, Erdogan claimed that his hotel in Marmaris was bombed after he left it for his plane. It would also be in Erdogan's interest to order the bombing of his massive presidential palace in Ankara, again, as a way to garner popular sympathy and support.

Erdogan also held a news conference in which he not only threatened Gulen but his host state of Pennsylvania: "I have a message for Pennsylvania: You have engaged in enough treason against this nation. If you dare, come back to your country." Erdogan substituted Pennsylvania for the name Gulen. However, it is clear that Erdogan, who is used to threatening political leaders in his own country, was referring to Pennsylvania politicians who support Gulen, including senators Bob Casey, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican.

Gulen denied any involvement in the coup. Erdogan has issued an arrest warrant for Gulen and a request to the Obama administration to extradite the cleric to Turkey. An attempt by the U.S. Justice Department to pull Gulen's permanent residency status was forcibly opposed in the U.S. appellate court in Philadelphia by the Central Intelligence Agency. As WMR reported in 2008, "the appeals court ruled that Gulen was 'an alien of extraordinary ability,' a decision that saw approval of Gulen's residency status. Observers of the case suspect the CIA intervened with the court on Gulen's behalf."

Erdogan has already begun a purge of the military and intelligence services. Apparently, the police opted to side with Erdogan. Almost 2000 military officers and conscripts have been arrested by Erdogan's government and the president and Prime Minister Yildirim both stated that the coup participants will be dealt with harshly. Most of the coup participants were from the air force, Army armored units, and military police. It appears that in rounding up coup participants, Erdogan's government is involved in a fish net operation, using the coup as an excuse to also arrest Erdogan critics. The coup attempt was a standard "fly paper" operation, with Erdogan and his allies now seeing which officers attached themselves to the coup.


An actual professional coup would have shut down all social media, including Instagram and FaceTime.

Our sources in Turkey claim that the coup attempt was a false flag operation for a number of reasons:

• The coup attempt started out as a textbook overthrow but rapidly fell apart. Many in Turkey believe that if such a coup was a serious operation, it would not have dissipated so rapidly.
• After first claiming they had total control of Turkey, the coup leaders gave up with only token resistance.
• By closing all lanes on the cross-Bosporus bridges and not keeping one lane open so people could get home from work, the population grew angry at the "coup" and its "leaders."
• Erdogan's plane landed without incident. In an actual coup, his plane would have been surrounded by the military and he would have been placed under arrest. Or, if the presidential plane insisted on landing against the military's orders, it could have been shot down.
• Erdogan was met at the airport by a crowd waving brand new Turkish flags, the folds still visible. This is always a sign of George Soros's involvement in themed revolutions, with protesters always waving factory-fresh flags. Some Erdogan supporters were also seen waving brand new flags representing the Muslim separatist group of East Turkestan in western China, a group supported by Soros. Soros's Open Society Institute operates freely in Istanbul and Soros is on friendly terms with Erdogan.
• Erdogan's government ordered the imams to begin using the minarets to urge people into the streets. In an actual military coup, the minaret speaker systems would have been ordered to remain silent or power would have been cut off to the mosques. Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) supporters were marching in the streets hand-in-hand with imams and other Muslim officials shouting "Allahu Akbar."
• The Pentagon claims it was surprised by the coup. However, U.S. military officers are attached as NATO liaison officers to the Turkish Defense Ministry and Turkish officers work inside the Pentagon. It is doubtful that such a coup could have been planned by a small group of Turkish officers without the Turkish General Staff and U.S. liaison officers knowing about it.
• Erdogan's government, on the morning after the coup attempt, ordered the sacking of 2,745 judges.

There were also three military attacks on the Turkish parliament in Ankara. It is very possible that these were carried out by pro-Erdogan military units. Erdogan has been trying to force through a new Constitution for Turkey that would confer even more powers on the president. Erdogan has also seized control of Gulen-owned media, including the newspaper Zaman and he recently suggested that Syrian refugees in Turkey, including a number of jihadists, be granted Turkish citizenship. These moves were met with hostility by Turkey's opposition parties in parliament. By ordering an attack on parliament, Erdogan was sending a not-so-subtle message to the opposition. In the wake of the coup, Erdogan has silenced the political opposition while having messages of support from U.S. president Barack Obama, German chancellor Angela Merkel, British prime minister Theresa May, and EU President Donald Tusk, among others.

In orchestrating the coup, Erdogan combined a bit of Adolf Hitler's strategy. Hitler ordered the burning of the Reichstag, blaming it on "Communists," in order to abrogate the German Weimar constitution and grant more powers to himself. By waiting to see who joined the false flag coup, Erdogan also borrowed a page from Hitler after the Operation Valkyrie attempt to kill the fuehrer in a remote control bombing. Hitler waited to address the nation until all the supporters of Valkyrie made themselves known. It was then that Hitler ordered their arrests and executions. Erdogan is now operating as Hitler did in 1944 from East Prussia. Erdogan is ordering the arrests of all those involved in or suspected to have been involved in the coup that was destined to fail. And that makes Erdogan infinitely more dangerous than any actual military junta that would have taken over Turkey to restore secular rule and steer the country away from Erdogan's delusion of Ottoman grandeur.

CIA worked against Dukakis campaign in 1988 by Wayne Madsen Report

CIA worked against Dukakis campaign in 1988
by Wayne Madsen Report

WMR's recent exposés on the Central Intelligence Agency involving itself in domestic U.S. politics, down to at least the state level, has uncovered yet another abuse by the agency. During the 1988 presidential election campaign that pitted Vice President and former CIA director George H. W. Bush against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, an internal CIA memo expressed concern about Dukakis's commitment to protect the United States from the unlikely event of an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack from the Soviet Union.

The involvement of the CIA in what had been a considered a close race between Bush and Dukakis after the nominating conventions represents yet another illegal interference by the CIA in the American constitutional process. The cover sheet for the CIA memo was Secret but the memo itself was classified as Top Secret. The author of the memo is Charles E. Allen, the National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Warning. The summary note that mentions Dukakis was authored by Fritz W. Ermarth, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Ermarth, who has been director of National Security Programs at the Nixon Center since 2002, wrote that the EMP threat "has been around for a long time but continues because the Soviets maintain their efforts to exploit the EMP phenomenon in strategic planning."

The CIA in 1988 was over-hyping the Soviet threat even as the Warsaw Pact and the USSR were collapsing in all aspects -- economically, politically, and militarily. Yet, CIA director William Webster, his deputy and successor Robert Gates, and Ermath were misusing their positions to hammer Governor Dukakis.

In a cynical use of the intelligence system for blatant political purposes, Ermath wrote, "Because of Governor Dukasis' reported opposition to C3 [Command, Control & Communications] upgrades that could help combat it [EMP], this threat issue could become somewhat more politicized this fall than is usually the case with such an arcane matter."



In essence, the CIA was identifying the EMP issue as "arcane" but suggesting, at the same time, that it could be politicized as an issue by Bush against Dukakis. The CIA memo, rather than appearing as an intelligence estimate, looks more like a Bush-Quayle campaign talking point.

The EMP memo was not the only time the CIA interfered in the 1988 campaign. At the first presidential debate on September 25 between Bush and Dukakis at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Dukakis charged that Bush and other Reagan administration officials had been dealing secretly with a "drug-running Panamanian dictator," a reference to Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega.

A few days prior to the debate, Dukakis and his national security team had received a classified intelligence briefing in Boston from Webster and Gates. In his response to Dukakis's charge, Bush stated that Dukakis had revealed classified information about the CIA and Noriega gleaned from a recent briefing by the CIA. Bush, the sitting vice president, also hilariously claimed that he had received the very same classified briefing from Webster and Gates as had Dukakis.

Dukakis never once mentioned "CIA" in his debate remarks about the Reagan administration, Noriega, and drug-smuggling. Bush, clearly worried about his own role in the CIA's drug operations in Central America and the United States, tried to make it appear that Dukakis had disclosed something classified during the debate. Rather than publicly state that Dukakis was never briefed on Noriega, drugs, and the White House, Webster and Gates remained silent.