Leaders of opposition political parties, who have otherwise worked against Mr. Erdogan’s government, also spoke out against a seizure of government by the military.
“This country has suffered a lot from coups,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main secular opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, known by its Turkish initials C.H.P., said in a written statement, according to Hurriyet Daily News. “It should be known that the C.H.P. fully depends on the free will of the people as indispensable of our parliamentary democracy.”
.. Mr. Erdogan blamed followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who lives in exile in Pennsylvania and who once was an ally before the two had a bitter falling-out in 2013 over a corruption inquiry that targeted Mr. Erdogan and his inner circle, for the coup attempt.
.. Since the founding of modern Turkey in 1923, the military has staged coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980, and intervened in 1997. The military had long seen itself as the guardian of the secular system
.. Mr. Erdogan attracted a wide-ranging constituency in the early years of his tenure, including many liberals who supported his plans to reform the economy and remove the military from politics. But in recent years he has alienated many Turks with his increasingly autocratic ways, cracking down on freedom of expression, imposing a significant role for religion in public life and renewing war with Kurdish militants in the country’s southeast.
.. “The people tried to stand up against President Erdogan, but they couldn’t, they were crushed, so the military had no choice but to take over,” said Cem Yildiz, a taxi driver.
Michael Flynn, the retired general on Donald Trump’s VP shortlist, explained
At JSOC, Flynn was tasked with dismantling insurgent networks in Iraq and Afghanistan — an experience that seems to have informed his later view of of jihadists as the greatest and most significant threat America faces.
.. Flynn was often accused of being disruptive, and not in the good Silicon Valley sense of the term. According to the Washington Post, he frequently butted heads with the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Michael Vickers. Vickers wanted the DIA to focus on doing analysis and traditional gathering; Flynn wanted its operatives out in hot spots supporting soldiers on the ground.
.. Implying that the US should level the entire city of Raqqa because ISIS controls it: “If we know that their headquarters exist in a place called Raqqa, Syria, we should eliminate, we should destroy Raqqa, Syria.” (Hugh Hewitt Show)
.. The book, according to Flynn, will highlight the “world war” nature of the flight with radical Islam. It’s coauthored with Michael Ledeen, a conservative writer who said in 2002 that “every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”
.. On December 10 of last year, Flynn attended a dinner celebrating the tenth anniversary of RT, the cable network formerly called Russia Today. He sat at the head table, with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and had delivered a talk on his view of foreign affairs today beforehand.
.. “Flynn now makes semi-regular appearances on RT as an analyst, in which he often argues that the U.S. and Russia should be working more closely together on issues like fighting [ISIS] and ending Syria’s civil war,”
.. Flynn’s argument takes Russia’s claim that it is fighting “terrorists” in Syria at face value, when in reality Russia’s intervention is aimed at propping up dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
.. But it’s possible that Flynn genuinely doesn’t care that Russia’s real aim is propping up Assad, because he thinks that anyone who’s against ISIS — as Assad is, at least nominally — is worth supporting.
.. And that, I think, would be the ultimate significance of a Flynn pick. Trump would be telling the world what his priorities are — and that they aren’t promoting democracy or opposing an increasingly aggressive Russia.
Instead, Trump would be signaling that he believes he needs to 1) project strength/toughness and 2) take a strong stance against jihadist groups. These objectives would be so important, in his eyes, that he’s willing to embrace someone with questionable ties to a hostile power in order to further them.
Military-Industrial Election
Among all the 2016 hopefuls, Ted Cruz was the recipient of the most defense-industry dollars, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Cruz received a total of $343,000, followed—perhaps surprisingly—by Bernie Sanders with $323,000, and then Hillary Clinton with more than $273,000.
Sanders’s place at the top of the Democratic heap in terms of defense-sector support may seem odd for a man who attacked Clinton’s support for overseas military interventions. But it’s not so strange at all when one considers that the controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—the most expensive aircraft in U.S. history, and more than a decade overdue—underwent development in Sanders’s home state of Vermont.
.. Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have PACs that rank among the wealthiest in the industry. Lockheed’s PAC, which spread around over $1.6 million for federal candidates this spring, had given $10,000 to Cruz by the end of March. Northrop Grumman’s PAC, on the other hand, gave all of its $1.5 million as of March to House and Senate candidates—mostly Republicans.
.. Clinton has a candidate profile that seems like an especially good fit for military industries.
.. ABC’s Martha Raddatz, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said of Clinton, with classic understatement, “I think that she probably would be somewhat more hawkish than President Obama.”
.. As Landler’s story makes clear, Clinton has had an unusually accommodating relationship with generals and top civilian brass. She has always been portrayed as a sympathetic partner, an enabler-in-waiting. To the wider national-security establishment, she is clearly “of the body.”
.. The defense industry is in fact a relatively marginal player in the presidential contest, at least from what the visible paper trail shows. Hillary Clinton is far more reliant on resources from the securities and investment industry. The war machine doesn’t even crack her top-20 list of contributors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
.. That’s because the defense sector spends its money elsewhere. By putting their cash into Congress, defense industries can elect and influence legislators who will remain in Washington far longer than any president. Congress is where the action is ..
.. “Defense contractors have enormous influence in shaping the secretary of defense’s decisions, but if the secretary happens to do something that displeases the industry, they will get Congress to undo that too, taking advantage of the broad leverage the companies have bought by spreading subcontracts across 48 states, by contributing generously to key committee congressmen, and by unleashing armies of lobbyists and paid-for think-tank pundits.”
.. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, comes in third on the list, with $265,450 as of this writing. The next Republican after him is a top F-35 proponent, Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), chairman of the HASC Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, who raked in $181,950. He’s followed by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chair of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, with $166,700.
.. but critics warn of tricky accounting: the House Appropriations plan uses wartime contingency funds to get around funding caps for baseline budgeting.
.. the big fight in 2017 will be getting rid of those spending caps, which were put into place under the Budget Control Act (BCA), the “sequester” of 2011.
.. “The F-35 is in 46 different states and 350 districts,” Smithburger says. “That is a lot of political support for one program.”
.. Even when the Department of Defense asks for something else, lawmakers in the pocket of contractors make sure the companies’ pet projects are funded anyway. And the corruption is getting worse.
.. Because of this entrenchment, little will change next year no matter who wins the White House, says Dan Grazier.
The Sacred Sacrifice We Honor Today
Remembering the thousands of Americans who gave their lives in defense of freedom.
And all of those who died in all America’s wars ultimately died for the sake of preserving freedom. This was not the fate they wanted. Most if not all of those who died at Midway or in the Argonne Forest or at Gettysburg or in the streets of Hue and Fallujah never intended to give their lives away, certainly not without a fight. But volunteer or draftee, officer or buck private, the moment they took their oath of service they presented their lives willingly for that sacrifice — which is where far too many ended. The sacral nature of this willing sacrifice needs to be understood and appreciated — even revered.
.. General Douglas MacArthur did. It was why he liked to compare the military life to a priesthood: that the sacrifice unto death entailed in America’s military services was one that ranked with the sacrifice of the Son of God Himself.
“It is my humble belief that the relation which He came to establish was based on sacrifice,” MacArthur once said, “and that men and women who follow in His train are called by it to the defense of certain priceless principles, even at the cost of their own lives.”