Monday, August 08, 2016

Turkish president/autocrat Recep Tayyid Erdogan heads to Moscow Tuesday for talks with, and I quote, "my friend Vladimir."

This touching reunion takes place seven months after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter which led to a severance of commercial ties.

Russia did not respond militarily. Or did it?

Three weeks ago Erdogan beat back a coup d'etat, one of the most ill-conceived, ill-executed coups d'etat in the history of coups d'etat. Erdogan has been busy since purging his military, drawing some mild remarks of concern from NATO, which drew the wrath of Erdogan down on the NATO chap's head, blaming the coup on the United States and demanding the extradition of the man Erdogan is convinced instigated the plot, an aged gentleman living in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania from which no plotting or advanced thinking of any kind has ever emanated.

It is the life's mission of Erdogan's friend Vladimir to destabilize the West, particularly NATO, particularly the eastern fringe close to Russia, whenever opportunity presents. Turkey has a key air base used by NATO in its bombing runs in Syria and is also on the Moscow-to-Damascus route. Russia and NATO/U.S. are going after different target groups however. The United States has no motive to give safe harbor to an exiled Turkish coup plotter. Russia does have motives: revenge for the downing of the Russian fighter, probing NATO's reaction (NATO members being obliged to come to each other's aid if one is attacked as one would have assumed Russia would do in retaliation), shaking loose NATO low-hanging fruit, general destabilizing.

There has been widespread rumor that the July putsch was staged in some fashion, that it was not real. The suspicion here, on no evidence, is that it was orchestrated in some fashion from Moscow, not from the Poconos, and that Erdi don't know that yet. The suspicion here (on the same foundation of sand) is that the spate of terrorist attacks in France and Germany--Two of the attacks were committed by Syrian immigrants.--were also directed in some fashion from Rus. The U.S. has concluded that the hacking of Democratic Party computers emanated from Russian intelligence agencies.

Russia has a plan.