The so-called “disappearance” of Orhan Inandı, president of the Kyrgyz-Turkish Lyceum network, in Kyrgyzstan is adding new details, which put both the so-called “Western democracy fighters” and Ankara’s demonstrative disregard for international norms and the sovereignty of independent states, stealing their political opponents abroad with the patronage of the US and the EU in a very negative light.

Firstly, it should be recalled that, unlike the “solidarity” demonstrated by Washington and Brussels in imposing multi-format sanctions against Belarus literally the day after the incident with the detention in Minsk of Roman Protasevich, founder of the Telegram channel NEXTA, there has been no critical action by these “bulwarks of Western democracy” against Turkey since May 31. By doing so, Washington and Brussels have fully confirmed the bias of their policy, which actually endorses the theft by force of political opponents by Western allies in third countries who thus influence political processes.

Secondly, we unwittingly become witnesses to the indifferent attitude of the current Turkish authorities to international norms, to the use of any unscrupulous methods of neo-Ottoman expansion with the patronage of the West, the desire of Ankara to establish their own orders in other independent states with the use of national security services.

According to published reports by Kyrgyz law enforcement agencies, Orhan Inandı did not officially cross the Kyrgyz border. Meanwhile, on July 5, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly confirmed that Orhan Inandı, the head of the Sapat network of Kyrgyz educational institutions, who disappeared back on May 31, was secretly taken to Ankara to face a Turkish court. “As a result of the painstaking work of the Turkish security services, Orhan İnandı, FETO’s handler in Central Asia, was brought to Turkey and brought to justice,” said Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking on the TRT television channel. “To date, over 100 people from many countries have been brought to Turkey in the fight against this terrorist group.” It should be noted that while the Turkish authorities have always hunted for supporters of the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen and obtained their extradition with the consent of the authorities of third countries, in the case of Orhan İnandı the Kyrgyz authorities claim that they had no knowledge of the abduction operation by Ankara. And, taking into account that, according to Erdoğan, not only İnandı, but “more than 100 people from many countries were taken to Turkey,” it cannot be ruled out that a similar scheme of abduction of political opponents by the Turkish secret services was carried out not only in Kyrgyzstan but also in other countries, which requires additional investigation, including by “democracy fighters” in Washington and Brussels.

“The abduction of Orhan Inandı, president of the Sapat school network and citizen of Kyrgyzstan, by the Turkish secret services is commensurate with the attempt on the sovereignty of the country,” the leader of the Kyrgyz Ata Meken political party Omurbek Tekebayev wrote on his social network page on July 6 and urged the Kyrgyz authorities to assess the situation adequately and take appropriate measures. According to the politician, the Constitution stipulates that the state guarantees protection to its citizens and must not acquiesce to such hostile actions by foreign states.

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Zhaparov told 24.kg on July 6 that since 2016, Ankara has already made three attempts to kidnap Orhan Inandı.

On July 6, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kyrgyzstan Ruslan Kazakbaev handed a note to Ambassador of Turkey Ahmet Sadik Dogan “in connection with the operation of the Turkish side to detain and deliver to Turkey a citizen of the Kyrgyz Republic Orhan Inandı.” The Foreign Ministry urged the Turkish side to return İnandı and take “all necessary measures to ensure his proper treatment and to prevent the use of violent and humiliating acts against him.” The Kyrgyz side also pointed to the inadmissibility of such actions, which are a gross violation of the basic principles and norms of international law.

It should be noted that the incident with the abduction of political opponents in Kyrgyzstan by Turkish special services is by no means the only one. A similar case occurred in 2018 with the Orizont network of lyceums in Moldova. Then the teachers who had previously requested asylum were expelled from the country, but the procedure itself was carried out by the Moldovan Information and Security Service.

Kyrgyzstan is the eastern most distant flank of the notorious Turkic Council and its humanitarian and cultural branch, TURKSOY, actively promoted by Ankara in Central Asia as part of Turkish expansion. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has repeatedly stated that expanding ties with Central Asia is his country’s “national policy” and part of the foreign policy initiative Asia Anew, which involves a comprehensive approach to the region in areas ranging from trade and defense to technology and culture.

All of this explains Ankara’s growing influence on domestic political processes in Kyrgyzstan. Particularly through young people who were educated in Turkey and in 2008 had already created the Tartip (“Order”) party.  In addition, the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), established in 1993, had already implemented more than 30 investment projects in Kyrgyzstan by 2020 and had carried out 324 soft power activities. Turkish investments in Kyrgyzstan (direct and portfolio investments) have now exceeded 25% of total foreign investments in the country. A very important tool is the military training segment: the training of military personnel of the “Turkic Council” member countries in Turkey (at its expense) takes place not only at the bilateral level, but also in the framework of cooperation programs of these countries with NATO.

However, it should be understood that participation in various organizations under Turkish auspices is an opportunity for Kyrgyzstan and other countries in the region to diversify their foreign relations, especially in the economic sphere. But Turkey, which is in deep economic crisis, lags far behind such regional actors as China and Russia. Therefore, despite Ankara’s desire to intensify its expansion in the region, the participation of Turkish business is limited to small and medium enterprises but it does not include breakthrough projects with significant investments coveted in the region.

Under these circumstances, although Kyrgyzstan is seriously dependent on Turkish investment, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Zhaparov nevertheless expressed his willingness to confront Ankara in the case of Orhan Inandı’s abduction by the Turkish special services. At the same time, public protests continue in front of the parliament building in Bishkek, demanding the return of Orhan Inandı to Kyrgyzstan.

Beyond any doubt, the violent actions of the Turkish special services in Kyrgyzstan in the incident with İnandı will have certain negative consequences for Turkey in the assessment by the Central Asian countries of Ankara’s illegal policy.

 

 

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

Read more:

https://journal-neo.org/2021/07/12/turkish-intelligence-establishes-its-own-laws-in-central-asia/

 

MEANWHILE:

 

Following the departure of regular US troops from Afghanistan, Turkey has stepped in to protect the Kabul authorities from the Taliban.

Turkish secret services are recruiting 2,000 combatants among the jihadists stationed in the Turkish-occupied area of Syria to send them to Afghanistan.

Moreover, Turkish secret services have already resorted to using Syrian-based jihadists in the Libyan war and in the Upper Karabakh conflict. If pulled out from Armenia, the “Syrian” jihadists are regularly replaced by others in Libya.

 

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article213644.html

 

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 How Politico and the New York Times pass off hawkish opinions as facts  

The journalistic ‘voice of God’ is often used to defend interventionist policies or push our leaders to do something about, well, everything.

 

Written by 
Robert Wright and Connor Echols

 

This article first appeared in the Nonzero Newsletter 

 

This week the New York Times published an article titled “Senate Poised to Pass Huge Industrial Policy Bill to Counter China.” It details how the growing perception of a threat from China has created bipartisan support for massive new government spending on tech. What makes the piece interesting is how it subtly supports the trend it describes. Here’s the lead paragraph:

WASHINGTON — Faced with an urgent competitive threat from China, the Senate is poised to pass the most expansive industrial policy legislation in U.S. history, blowing past partisan divisions over government support for private industry to embrace a nearly quarter-trillion-dollar investment in building up America’s manufacturing and technological edge.

Note that “urgent competitive threat from China” has no attribution. The Times simply states as fact that China poses a threat—and an urgent one, the kind that must be countered immediately—even though many foreign policy analysts would take issue with this claim.

The piece was co-written by David Sanger, a star foreign policy reporter for the Times whom this newsletter has characterized as having “apocalypse-hastening tendencies.” Through melodramatic framing and occasional editorializing, Sanger has time and again heightened America’s perception of threat from such adversaries as China, Russia, and Iran.

But Sanger is far from being the only mainstream reporter who subtly promotes a hawkish worldview. The journalistic “voice of God”—the ostensibly objective and therefore authoritative tone that traditional American news outlets convey—is often used to defend interventionist American policies or push our leaders to do something about, well, everything. Indeed, as another news outlet illustrated this week, sometimes this hawkish voice of God is used to create scary stories almost out of whole cloth.

The Iranians are coming!

Over the past two weeks, Politico has published a series of pieces—all billed as “exclusive”—about two Iranian naval ships that appear to be on course for Venezuela. Here’s how the first article starts:

The U.S. national security community is monitoring two Iranian naval vessels whose ultimate destination may be Venezuela, according to three people familiar with the situation, in what would be a provocative move at a tense moment in U.S.-Iran relations.

A provocative move! Why, one might ask, should the US feel provoked by the specter of Iranian warships docking on the other side of the Caribbean?

Let’s assume that, as some intelligence sources told Politico in a subsequent installment of its series of stories on this non-story, that the ships may be delivering weapons to Venezuela. So what? Lots of Latin American countries have bought military hardware from countries on the other side of the Atlantic. The Monroe Doctrine notwithstanding, the US has no lawful claim to be the Western Hemisphere’s police force.

Politico doesn’t name the “three people familiar with the situation” who notified it of the breaking news that ships had been spotted moving across water, but we will venture two informed guesses about them: (1) They are members of the Blob; and (2) they possess the deficiency in cognitive empathy—that is, in the ability to see the world from another actor’s perspective—that seems to be a requirement for Blob membership. If having two Iranian naval ships within 1,500 miles of the US is provocative, then what should Iran make of the dozens of American warships parked less than 150 miles from its shores? Especially given that less than two years ago the US assassinated Iran’s most important military leader with flagrant disregard for international law?

After that first Politico article, the rest was predictable—and, for all we know, was eagerly anticipated by some of the “people familiar with the situation” whom Politico seems to have taken its initial cues from. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio seized on the story to argue that President Biden should do something to stop the ships from crossing the Atlantic. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board chimed in: “Reports that two Iranian frigates may be steaming into the Atlantic toward Venezuela ought to concentrate minds in the Biden Administration. So much for Iranian goodwill amid President Biden’s determination to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal.”

Having triggered calls to do something about the ships, Politico reporters Lara Seligman and Andrew Desiderio wrote a follow-up in which they documented the fruits of their efforts. They quoted an anonymous National Security Council spokesperson saying the US “would reserve the right to take appropriate measures” to deter any weapons transfer. And, lest this resolve flag, Seligman and Desiderio invoked the voice of God to remind the American public that this was a “major test for the Biden administration.” When they finally got around to quoting an expert who would support this kind of framing, it was an “Iran expert” from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that specializes in freaking out about Iran and sabotaging US diplomacy with it.

A third piece, written by Seligman and Nahal Toosi, added fuel to the fire by saying that “a successful crossing would be a significant demonstration of Iran’s naval capability and potentially provide Tehran a new foothold in America’s near abroad.”

Readers had to wait until the final paragraph for what, after all the buildup, may have struck some as a letdown: “Experts cautioned that there is not much the United States will be able to do to deter the warships if they continue on their current trajectory. The ships are in international waters, and it is not clear they are breaking any laws.”

You might think that a line like that would put an end to the story. But Politico managed to get a fourth piece out of the controversy. It quoted an unnamed Biden official assuring readers that the US is doing everything it can to deter the ships. The rest of the write-up was dominated by quotes from hawkish commentators like Elliott Abrams and Kirsten Fontenrose, an expert with ties to Saudi Arabia, Iran’s arch-rival.

The brouhaha reached such proportions that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had to answer questions about the ships in a congressional hearing on Thursday. (He is “concerned” about their voyage.) Thankfully, we learn near the bottom of Politico’s piece on the hearing that—for the time being, at least—the Biden administration may be resisting Politico’s hype. “A defense official said the Pentagon is not currently drawing up plans to monitor the ships more closely using air or naval assets in the region, or to conduct an intercept in international waters.”

America needs an adversary

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether reporters who engage in threat inflation are giving voice to their ideology or are just in it for the clicks. Certainly the Politico series got some clicks, as reflected in the site’s “most read” list.

But Sanger’s motivation may have an ideological component. On Wednesday’s Daily podcast, host Michael Barbaro spoke with Sanger about the China piece he co-authored. The podcast ends resonantly, with an exchange that’s worth recounting:

SANGER: What we’ve learned here essentially is that the competition with China, the fear of China—both the realistic and the exaggerated fears of China—have become the one great unifying element of American politics today.

BARBARO: And if that is true, David, then I guess there is some hope that a democracy can plan for the long term—that this is not just the domain of an autocracy.

SANGER: That’s right. Even after this bill passes, our research and development spending as a percentage of our GDP is still going to be well below the Chinese and some other countries. It is more of a start. But if there’s one key lesson that emerges from the debate—really the non-debate—over this bill, it’s that America needs again, as it always has, an adversary to be the organizing thought for things we probably needed to do anyway.

BARBARO: First Russia, now China.

SANGER: Russia in the Cold War, China in the new cold war.

BARBARO: That’s how America gets its act together.

SANGER: That’s how America has a shot at getting its act together.

[Dramatic music]

So David Sanger is on record as saying that fear inflation can be a good thing; he believes that fear of China—”both the realistic and the exaggerated fears”—is what gives America “a shot at getting its act together.” Kind of makes you wonder whether we should trust him when he intones, in the voice of God, that China poses “an urgent competitive threat” to America.

 

Read more:

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/06/14/how-politico-and-the-new-york-times-pass-off-hawkish-opinions-as-facts/

 

Read from top.

 

 

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