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Thread. It took me a little longer than expected to give this article a close read. Although repetitive and meandering, important points emerge.
1. While his Vatan (Fatherland) party is electorally insignificant in Turkey, Perincek’s placement of followers in senior military ranks over decades enabled him to offer Erdogan loyal replacements for officers purged after the 7.16 coup attempt, thereby securing influence.
2. Significantly, ‘Perincek’s generals’ are drawn to him b/c of his life long anti-Westernism. They are anti-NATO and draw on a long tradition of Turkish suspicions and resentment of the West’s role in the collapse of the Ottoman empire.
One of these Perincek generals is Ismail Hakki Pekin, about whom more later. He is the former chief of Turkish military intelligence, the equivalent of DIA, and now serves as Perincek’s #2 in Vatan.
3. Perincek’s Marxist-Maoist past, and strong connections to both Moscow and Beijing, have in recent years been transmuted into the ‘Eurasianism’ of Alexander Dugin, a Putin confidant w/ whom Perincek meets frequently.
4. Perincek has in all likelihood helped influence Erdogan’s rapprochememt w/ Putin, and Erdogan’s increasing affinity for Eurasianism. As interpreted by this author (Ahmet Yayla), that affinity is less ideological than personal defense (shielding Erdogan corruption).
WRT Trump and Flynn related matters, the following points should be noted. First, Ekim Alptekin (who fronted for the Turkish govt in engaging Flynn) is the son a close Perincek associate (a leftist), who fled to the Netherlands when Perincek was arrested and jailed in 1970.
Alptekin later performed the same maneuver, fleeing Turkey for the Netherlands in 2014, when his closest associates in Erdogan’s circle were arrested for involvement in the corruption disclosed in audio tapes leaked in Dec. 2013.
‘Ekim’ is Turkish for ‘October.’ It is said that he was named in memory of the Bolshevik’s October Revolution. In his business history, in the US and elsewhere, there appear multiple strands of Russian involvement, including investment funding.
The US 501(c)3’s through which Alptekin conducted the illicit lobbying activities for which he has been indicted in the US were, curiously, organized by Russians in D.C.
One of the tasks performed by Flynn Intel under its contract w/ Alptekin’s Dutch company, Innovo, was to produce an anti-Gulen “documentary.” Only two persons were interviewed on camera, one a Turkish journalist and the other Gen. Ismail Hakki Pekin.
Whether witting or not, Flynn was at a minimum dealing with a Turkish circle heavily influenced by Moscow. Given Flynn’s own suspect dealings w/ Moscow, the possibility of a Russian nexus in his Turkish relationships can’t be discounted.
I have suggested, for example, that the Turks may have been guided to Flynn by the Russians. It wd have been, from Moscow’s pov, a way of putting money in Flynn’s pocket (at a time when he needed it), w/out it being traceable to Moscow.
Without such an ‘introduction,’ it’s hard to understand why Ankara would have come knocking on Flynn’s door. The Flynn engagement w/ Innovo was signed in Sept. 2016. Only 2 months earlier, at the RNC (as a coup attempt unfolded in Turkey), Flynn had harangued a crowd with an
anti-Erdogan, pro-coup speech. What persuaded the Turks, 2 months later, that he could be trusted ? END
