You know things are not going well for the Turkish government when the crackdown on Journalists is on the rise.

Turkey is already the number one country in the world for imprisonment of journalists. Two more gets ready to raise the bar for publishing dirt secrets of the Turkish state.

However, when the president of Turkey, Erdogan, took on the reporting and exposing the official lies of Turkey personally, it is obvious that the oppression in Turkey is escalating by leaps and bounds by the day. Erdogan promised personal involvement against the journalists for exposing the truth while the Turkish government claimed “humanitarian aid” was being sent to the Turkomans in Syria. The trucks from Turkey turned out to be full of arms.

Actually the twists and turn of the issue is amazing. It involves the fight inside the governing block, as well as the hidden agenda of Turkey to do the dirty work of the USA in supplying arms to the Jihadist terrorists in Syria. Of course, the involvement of Russia, the EU and the Kurds makes the issue more complicated.

Last February, the gendarmerie which is under the Ministry of Internal Affairs stopped a couple of big trucks after receiving a tip that these Government trucks were carrying arms to the Jihadists in Syria. When the trucks were stopped about 100 miles before they reached the Syrian border inside Turkey, armed Turkish intelligence officers in the accompanying cars were also apprehended. The high ranking Turkish intelligence officers protested the stopping of the convoy and demanded to be released without any searching of the official trucks.

The incident started an official war between the different departments of the ruling classes in Turkey.

The intelligence office is under the control of the current president R.T. Erdogan. However, the prosecutors who ordered the search of the official trucks and the officers of the gendarmerie conducting the operation were claimed to be under the control of Fethullah Gulen, a CIA operative based in Philadelphia, USA. Gulen and Erdogan are long associates and partners going back to their early years collaborating to form an Islamic movement and government. Their dream was to establish the caliphate for the Muslims. Caliphate could be seen like the Papacy for the Roman Catholic church for the Muslims. Muslims feel that when the Turkish state abolished the caliphate, the Muslims were left without a leader. They feel the current chaos experienced in the Islamic world is partly due to the abolishing of their leadership after the Ottoman empire.

While Gulen is more respectful and in full cooperation with Israel, USA and the CIA like the early Erdogan, Erdogan more recently has had visions of going on his mission alone planning on his supposed popularity in the region as a hand to play against the US, or to force the US’ hand by his supposed popularity. Erdogan has always acted to convince the US that only he and Turkey were in a better position to act on behalf of the US in the region, better than Israel. He could perform what the US wants in the Middle East by being a Muslim, an insider, not like Israel. Turkey fit into the background and culture of the land not like Israel imported from Europe to do the dirty deeds of the imperialists. Erdogan is still trying to pressure the US to recognize him as the preferred leader in the region, a US insider in a way. Gulen, on the other hand, does not want to make any waves that would bother Israel and is happy to toe any line drawn by Israel or the US. Gulens MO is to move slowly and be low key. Erdogan, on the other hand, is drunk with his self-perceived “success.” These and other issues divided the once close friends in the service of a to be established Islamic empire.

Erdogan, and the Turkish intelligence MIT, immediately claimed that the operation against the Turkish intelligence trucks carrying arms to the jihadists were organized by the Gulen movement they call the “parallel structure.” The term emphasizes Gulen’s organizational presence inside the Turkish state, however outside the control of the government. Gulen is said to be controlling the police department while Erdogan has filled the judiciary with his personal choice of judges and prosecutors since the incident.

Government’s first response to the incident was to threaten the officers in charge of the search to “cease and desist” from the operation and issue an immediate order for releasing the arrested MIT intelligence officers and the trucks. However the prosecutor and the military officer having the possession of the trucks refused, claiming that the countryside the trucks were stopped was In their jurisdiction.

To the public, first the government declared no such operation ever took place. Then the story changed to Turkey helping the Turkomen people in Syria Turkey claims to be related to the Turks. The help was relayed as “humanitarian aid of food and medicine.” However, soon afterwards, the Turkomens declared they never received any kind of help from Turkey. The leader of the Turkish fascist National Action Party, a so-called opposition to the ruling Erdogan’s JDP, Turkes, appeared on live TV and swore to Allah that the trucks never carried any kind of aid to the Turkomens. The Turkomens in Syria are claimed to be racially Turkish by the neo-Nazi, racist National Action Party MHP. Turkes claimed he had insider information from the Turkomans and he could confidently say the trucks from Turkey were not going to the Turkomens. With the prosecutors and the officers that stopped the intelligence operation arrested and charged with espionage Erdogan gathered an upper hand in the issue.

Just when the issue was supposed to be closed and as the head of the MIT, Turkish intelligence Organization later claimed more than 2,000 such trucks carrying “humanitarian aid” to “our Turkomens” continuing, the daily Cumhuriyet published photographs and videos taken during the time the trucks were stopped. Hidden under the thin layer of food, the trucks were full of bombs, ammunition, RPGs, and explosives. The videos and photographs were undisputable.

This did not go unnoticed by the president who had been caught and exposed lying openly on the matter as well as the Intelligence Service, the prime minister and other government officials. He promised on live TV that he would pursue the newspaper for “espionage.” He also threatened that Can Dundar, the editor in-chief of Cumhuriyet, would pay for exposing the load of the Turkish intelligence trucks full of arms. President Erdogan publicly threatened Can Dundar, “I will not leave him alone,” he thundered.

It didn’t take long for his prosecutors, whom the president Erdogan had initially bypassed and had taken the case individually and personally into his own hands to catch up and start the investigation.

The pro-government, state, and mainstream media started a witch hunt against the liberal Cumhuriyet and all those who exposed the lies of the government. This was not supposed to happen, just when Turkey and the US were in an agreement over the war on ISIS and the world was to be convinced that both were “in war” with the jihadist, Al Qaida affiliate terrorist ISIS. With the US’s approval, Turkey had declared a war on the Islamist terrorists; however no ISIS targets were being hit by Turkey. All Turkish jets flying to combat the ISIS terrorists were hitting the Kurds hundreds of miles away or those Kurdish forces that were actually the only force on the ground fighting and extracting a toll from ISIS! Just when the US and Turkey thought they had fooled the world, exposing the scandal of this proportion had to be severely punished.

The real target of the war against terror had never been the terrorist ISIS. That was a story for the kids and for those who would swallow the official lies both in Turkey and the US. The US’s issue is only with Syrian president Esad who enjoys the 70% approval from the Syrian population. With no reason to attack Syria, except for fighting Israel’s war with Syrian Esad, US was stealthily supporting the ISIS terrorists as she had done before with Al Qaida, Taliban etc. terrorist groups with tax payers money, all the time claiming she was at war “with terrorism.”

However, since the US and its junior partner EU had no presence on the ground, someone had to do the dirty work to support the ISIS jihadists. Turkey had proved itself previously by transporting the Libyan arms shipped by the US to its ports and delivering them to the Syrian Islamist terrorists. Now working in unison, and during the pretense fight against terrorism, Turkey was trying to carve out a place for itself helping Erdogan’s lifelong dream of establishing the Islamic caliphate and re-forming the defunct Ottoman empire. Erdogan could get his feet in the door with the help of the Saudi, Qatari, Israeli and other terrorist states. Turkey could get several birds, even a flock of birds, with one stone: Be the US’s reliable partner in doing the dirty work for the US by helping the ISIS terrorists against a rival country; hitting the Kurds in Syria who may try to establish a Kurdistan in the land Erdogan is eying; stake a claim in the oil fields in Syrian Kurdistan; hitting the Kurdish forces in Turkey who want to be treated like normal human beings and citizens and are giving a struggle for democracy in Turkey. Kurds in Turkey are fighting a 90 year old struggle to be recognized as equal citizens under a racist and nationalist Turkey.

However there needs to be a pretense and “fighting ISIS” is as perfect as an excuse as any other. The agreement between Turkey and ISIS goes two ways. Turkey provides cover for ISIS, supplies them with arms, maintains an open border for them to escape when Kurds get the upper hand, and also and most importantly, provides an open market for ISIS to sell their oil they stole from Syria. The ISIS jihadists on the other hand prepare the ground for a Turkish expansion and invasion as well as taking part alongside the Turkish security forces that attack the Kurdish towns in Turkey and provide “street fighters” to do assassinations and murders of Erdogan’s opposition. Of course, all this occurs while the EU and the US purposefully look the other way.

Thus, the exposure of Turkish compliance in the support ISIS receives to the whole world was not something to be taken lightly. How would the Turkish government and the president Erdogan explain the 2,000 trucks taking arms and supplies to terrorists every day? Erdogan felt they did not owe an explanation. The issue changed in the news from Turkish support of terrorists into an issue of espionage against the Turkish state. Erdogan accused the Gulen movement’s “parallel structure” of attacking the Turkish state and exposing its internal operations to the enemy. Can Dundar, the editor in-chief was accused Just like Snowden, Manning and Assange were accused by the US.

During this time, all opposition media started to get their share from Erdogan’s government and the Turkish state. One by one anybody opposing the JDP government was being closed down by the government. Sendika.org was banned 7 times. The Kurdish news organization, Dicle News Agency was shut down more than 22 times. In some places in the East, Dicle was the only agency that had reporters on the ground exposing Turkish military and police’s atrocities. Opposition Gulen newspapers and media also were hit. The government took the possession of opposition papers one night because, “their books are perfect, and this is a proof that there is something wrong in there.” Overnight the opposition papers became Erdogan mouth pieces only few days before the national elections. The newly appointed government “owners” of the papers are now being paid about 30,000 US dollars a month by taxpayers money thanks to the JDP, Turkish government.

Having the US backing made Erdogan more arrogant as he decided the Turkish state owned no explanation to anybody. He came out saying, “So what if we carried arms or not?” His recent question showed giving up all pretenses of “war on terror.” US still firmly behind him.

The issue was now in the hands of the pro-government, state and the mainstream media. While fueling racist and nationalist attacks against the Kurdish population of Turkey, natural allies of the Kurds in Syria fighting ISIS, the media concentrated on the “crimes” of the fellow journalists in the daily Cumhuriyet.

Turkish state owned Anadolu News Agency went after the journalists with vengeance. They “obtained” the Secret Service reports on the journalists and compiled a list of complaints from the far right and published regular attacks against them:
– “The aim of Cumhuriyet and other newspapers that published the photographs is to embarrass Turkey in the eyes of the world.”
– “By publishing the photographs Can Dundar of Cumhuriyet Daily is trying to legitimize the reporting of the Turkish state to the international arena. This will harm Turkey’s image. There should be a sanction against this.”
– “Freedom of expression is not the only freedom to be protected in a society.”

As expected, any exposure of illegal actions of a state always gets disputed with concerns of state security. Manning, Snowden and Assange can testify on what happens when a whistleblower exposes the state’s crimes.

The National Action Party leader neo-Nazi Turkes who had sworn on Allah on live TV that the “humanitarian aid” was not being received by the Turkomens in Syria and thus exposing the lies of the Turkish state and government did a bout face and disobeyed his party in support of the JDP government, was expelled and he took refuge in the governing JDP party he accused of lying to the world. Some people have short memories.

Appearing at the state court yesterday and charged with espionage, with prosecutor demanding 20 years in prison, Can Dundar, the editor in-chief of Cumhuriyet replied to Erdogan’s flip remark of “So what if we carried arms or not?” with his defensive come back, “So what if we published the news or not?” Just before he was arrested and taken to jail. Another day in Turkey, the second largest army in the NATO, a reliable and trustable ally of the US in the “war against terror.”

Sendika.Org News (Mehmet Bayram)