Sunday, July 17, 2016

Hillionaire as prez would be an unacceptable security risk - today's edition

The concluding paragraph on the second-to-most-recent post here speaks of ongoing ramifications of Turkey's failed coup.

Here's an example for you.  There's an exiled Turkish cleric named Fetullah Gulen living in the mountains of Pensylvania. He's been in this country since 1999. His relationship with the Turkish government is long and detailed, but he is on record as opposing Friday's attempted coup.

Still, Erdogan wants to make wish residence in post-America a point of contention:

Turkey’s president and its prime minister issued thinly-veiled threats to the U.S. on Saturday if it does not extradite an Islamic cleric living in the mountains of Pennsylvania.
“Any country that protects Fethullah Gulen will be an enemy to Turkey,” Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Saturday, naming the imam who Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asserts is the mastermind behind Friday’s failed coup.
“This is not a country that can be run from Pennsylvania,” Erdoğan said in reference to Gulen as the attempted overthrow was still underway.
“Dear Mr. President: I told you this before,” Erdoğan said in a direct address to Obama later on Saturday. “Either arrest Fethullah Gulen or return him to Turkey. You didn’t listen. I call on you again, after there was a coup attempt, extradite this man in Pennsylvania to Turkey. If we are strategic partners or model partners, do what is necessary.”



What is it about Gulen that gets Erdogan so hot under the collar?

Gulen and Erdoğan were allies, at least publicly, until 2013. That’s when Erdoğan, who was prime minister at the time, broke with the cleric and blamed him for orchestrating corruption investigations targeting him and his allies.
Shortly after Erdoğan was elected president in 2014, he reportedly asked President Obama to extradite Gulen. Followers of the cleric and his movement, called Hizmet, fill out many of Turkey’s institutions, including the media, judiciary and police force.
Erdoğan regularly blames Hizmet, which he calls the “parallel structure,” for undermining his regime. The Islamist leader has cracked down on Gulenists and targeted media companies and other businesses with links to Gulen.
Now, here is where things get really complicated:

Links to Gulen could come to haunt Clinton should she become president.
As The Daily Caller has reportedly recently, top U.S. Gulenists have donated heavily to Clinton’s campaigns over the years and to her family charity, the Clinton Foundation. One of those donors, Gokhan Ozkok, even emailed Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, in 2009 to ask for a favor from Clinton.

Ozkok asked Abedin to have Clinton, then secretary of state, to direct President Obama to meet in Turkey with Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, who at the time served as Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
Ihsanoglu lost to Erdoğan in the 2014 presidential election.
Obama did meet with Ihsanoglu in Turkey and invited him to a White House meeting later that year.
Ozkok and another top Gulenist, Recep Ozkan, served as national finance co-chairs for Clinton’s political action committee, Ready PAC. Ozkan, who has served as president of the Turkish Cultural Center, also donated between $500,000 and $1 million to the Clinton Foundation last year.
The Alliance for Shared Values, the group which issued Gulen’s recent statement, also recently hired the Podesta Group to lobby on its behalf. The Podesta Group was co-founded by Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.
Erdogan is obviously in hothead mode. What do you suppose he thinks about the Clinton machine's coziness with loyalists to his nemesis?

12 comments:

  1. Dontcha know the more you rip her and Bill down, the more you bolster Trump? Who do you hate more? Time for the Grand Old Party Convention. Should be verrry interesting. Still waiting for your assessment of Pence as Veep.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, he provides some, as they say, ballast to the ticket. Big concern of course is that he winds up playing cleanup crew toS-H's incoherent / unhelpful eruptions

    ReplyDelete
  3. The FBI thing really hurt Hillie. When Trump picked Pence it even raised my estimation of the ticket after 8 years of Obama looking at least 4 years of the Clintons again. The radical gays and all kinda wrecked the Democratic party too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Radical gays are going to try their best to stick a shiv in Mike's kidney.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yeah, that "FBI thing" kind of gave some folks some pause.

    ReplyDelete
  6. And so it begins with dinner at Chili's. Sheesh. Well, at least he escaped the governor's mansion in Indy. It's gonna take resolve and humor to endure the reaming ahead. Without lubrication.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yeah, that FBI thang. Thanks bloggie and your ilk for the Benghazi witch hunt too. You're helping drive us to Trump/Pence. Then you'll all be happy, right?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ready to disrupt the Republican convention now in your own special ways? Expecting a Cruz endorsement for Trump so he can get some more power somewhere?

    ReplyDelete
  9. I rather doubt that there will be any full-throated endorsement by mane of Squirrel-Hair coming from Ted - or Marco, or Rand.

    Surely you don't mean to suggest that Hillionaire dealt with the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack and its aftermath in stellar fashion, serving as a great example for future secretaries of state re: how to deal with such an event in a prompt, bold, ethical way.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yeah, your ilk damaged Hillie there too. I don't care, I'm sick of her too now. Good job. I am really having a hard look at Trump now that he brought Pence aboard. Looking forward to seeing what his hot 3rd wife has to offer tonight.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Doing my best to avoid watching any of it.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Ahh but you'll be front row center for your boy won't you? At least he's showing up. Probably looking ahead to 2012 is what they're saying.

    ReplyDelete