President Donald Trump and Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan meet at the White House and deliver joint statements to the media:

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It’s not on the official public press release page yet, however several media are reporting a call between President Trump and President Erdogan.

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Taken in the abstract it’s disconcerting for President Trump to be congratulating Erdogan on the controversial referendum. However, I had a sense this was going to happen because Press Secretary Sean Spicer really FUBAR’d a diplomatic protocol earlier in the day when questioned about yesterday’s election result in Turkey.

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Turkish President Recep Erdogan is quick to declare victory today, albeit by a narrow margin, as a national referendum to consolidate power passes during a national vote.

[…]  The 18 constitutional amendments that will come into effect after the next election, scheduled for 2019, will abolish the office of the prime minister and hand sweeping executive powers to the president. –link–

Having watched the Erdogan objectives play out over the past six to eight years the approach he has taken has been highly effective.

Erdogan essentially imported a base of support consisting of mostly Muslim Brotherhood political supporters to aid his desire to transform Turkey from a secular nation into a more Islamic dictatorial endeavor.

He may never fully achieve the goal of recreating the Ottoman Empire, but that doesn’t mean there is going to be anything less than toxic turmoil ahead for Turkey and the EU as his endeavors continue to be successful.

A decade or two from now when our children look back upon the period from 2010 to 2020 there will be a rather obvious similarity between the rise of Erdogan to power and the rise of Libya’s Muamar Qaddafi.

Both power-hungry nuts utilized immigration to construct their objectives, and both were national gatekeepers. Qaddafi held power over Europe via the North African migration gate, and Erdogan gaining power over Europe through the use of the Mid-East gate.

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Political Islam is fraught with coded messaging used to convey intention to Islamic audiences while simultaneously presenting a false face to the West.  When you know what signals to look for you are able to fully understand the ideology behind the message.
When Mohammed Morsi rose to power in Egypt his rise was on the back of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The “Islamist Spring” brought forth a more radical version of Islamic sentiment – The Muslim Brotherhood, or just “Brotherhood”, is the political branch of various hardline Islamic ideologies.

The foundational ideological block under ISIS, al-Qaeda and Al Nusra, is the Muslim Brotherhood.   The Brotherhood has its own signature; and when you know what to look for you can identify its appearance.
Islamist activists, and demonstrators hold four fingers in the air to display a hand sign referring to the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, the site of a violent confrontation between Morsi’s followers and the Egyptian army.
Reported deaths from the clash range from hundreds to thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters. In Arabic, “Rabba” means “four” or “the fourth;” hence the Rabaa symbol.
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11:30pm Turkish President Recep Erdogan claims he is back in full control. Claims the coup has failed.

9:00pm Some Reports that Coup has failed / Others it has succeeded.  Unfortunately, if coup did fail, that means the Islamists have won.  If Islamists win, anticipate extreme backlash from a returning Recep Erdogan who will most likely go full dictator now.
Erdogan is notorious for punishing his enemies.  Erdogan will probably open the floodgates for more Islamists to flow freely into the European Union to punish the secularists for their uprising.
Recep Erdogan will therefore have replaced former EU blackmailer Muammar Gaddafi using the exact same strategy, uncontrolled immigration, to punish his neighbors.   The EU was previously paying Gaddafi €5+ million/yr to keep North African immigration under control.  If coup fails it will be a very bad day for the EU, as Erdogan will now leverage his dictatorial power to force EU compliance with his wishes.
This fits the grandiose plans of Erdogan swimmingly.  He desperately wants to recreate the Ottomoan Empire in his lifetime.
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There’s no way these media reports are accidental or not directly connected.  And none of this looks the least bit good against the larger dynamic of the Syrian crisis and President Stompy Feet’s prior position on ISIS.

Yesterday, well, actually Friday, the release of the information was yesterday, Vice-President Joe Biden met in Turkey with President Recep Erdogan.  They met for several hours as reported in The Hill and the topic was an escalated U.S./Turkish military footprint against ISIS :

Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday said the U.S. and regional ally Turkey are prepared to seek a military solution in Syria to try to solve the nation’s five-year-long civil war.

Speaking after a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul, Biden stressed that a political solution to the problem would still be preferable.

“But we are prepared if that’s not possible to having a military solution to this operation and taking out Daesh,” he said, according to AFP, using another name for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

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As this meeting takes place – France begins leveling Raqqa, for all intents and purposes the HQ, Capital of ISIS operations and the Islamic Caliphate.

UPDATE: So far 30 airstrikes have pounded #ISIS stronghold of #Raqqa. No end in sight.

— Conflict News (@Conflicts) November 15, 2015

Readers here will note the geopolitical partnership with President Obama and President Erdogan is based on their mutual friendship, very close friendship, and common ideological world view.

The mostly secular Muslim nation of Egypt took control (through general Fattah El-Sisi) of their nation and dispatched the Muslim Brotherhood (the political outreach division of ISIS).  Several key leaders of the Brotherhood were exiled, they sought safety in Qatar. Jordan, Bahrain, and Saudi-Arabia eventually joined with Egypt and pressured Qatar to stop being a safe-haven for the Muslim Brotherhood and by extension ISIS.

Exiled yet again the five primary leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist network found a home in Turkey – where they remain today.

By action, not words, Recep Erdogan has shown he is in alignment with the Brotherhood, and their military apparatus that is now ISIS. Erdogan, head of a NATO nation, refused to allow NATO operations to launch in defense of the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds.

Erdogan refused to allow or assist coalition rescue operations to save the Yazidi people in Northern Iraq. Erdogan also strenuously and violently blocked any assistance from reaching Kurds during the siege of Kobane (Kobani).

This is the factually accurate and historic backdrop for the following: (more…)

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, aka President Obama’s BFF, has been working earnestly trying to recreate the Ottoman Empire with himself as the proclaimed head of the Islamist Empire.

Toward that end Erdogan built himself a grand and opulent palace, aligned himself with ISIS radicals, and provided a safe-harbor for exiled Muslim Brotherhood leadership after Qatar kicked them out for advocating extremist violence.  Yes, even Qatar, home of the GITMO 5, realized the Brotherhood leadership were essentially ISIS sycophants.  However, Erdogan viewed them as ideological brethren deserving of more than a little sympathy.
Erdogan is ‘all-in’ toward his goals of recreating a modern Ottoman Empire.  Nothing was going to stand in his way; even if it meant killing journalists who were exposing his extremist plans.  Erdogan even jails people who make fun of him, and shut down Twitter just because it posed a threat to his power. However, today he suffered a significant, well, actually a devastating, setback.  (more…)

We don’t call it Marylandistan for nothing.

[…]  The mega-mosque is called the Turkish American Culture and Civilization Center and, according to the Muslim Link,  it “will likely become the largest and most striking examples of Islamic architecture in the western hemisphere” when it is finished.  The Muslim Link explicitly says it is “a project of the government of Turkey.”

(Via Right Scoop) A couple of years ago it was reported that Turkey was helping fund the building of a $100 million dollar mega mosque in Lanham, Maryland. In fact Erdogan visited the mosque when he was here in May of 2013, promising to come back for the opening.
Well that time has apparently arrived and now Erdogan and Obama will be together at the mosque for the big opening ceremony: (more…)

Al Nusra is a front for, and has openly aligned with, al-Qaeda in Syria – which is essentially ISIS.

It is not a secret that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has tried to deliver the maximum benefit to ISIS (in Northern Syria) in direct opposition to the Kurds who are trying to formulate their own independent nation of Kurdistan. Erdogan views Kurdistan as a proxy for Irans’ growing sphere of influence.

Erdogan opposes Iran for many ideological reasons, but arguably most of all because he sees Iran’s growing influence as a threat to his own political ambitions to lead a new Ottoman Empire.

In my opinion Erdogan views his envisioned construct as most possible with a constituency of: ISIS, The Muslim Brotherhood, Al Nusra (al-Qaeda) and various other segments of Sunni Islam including the Palestinian Authority, vis-à-vis Hamas. Erdogan, like Obama, has more grand aspirations than his own territory – all of his prior behavior aligns with this perspective.

So it comes as no surprise to see Turkey’s Erdogan take the opportunity provided by the distractions of both Yemen and Iraq, to act against one of Iran’s benefactors in Syria, namely Assad. (more…)