Turk vote; Erdogan claims victory as opposition claims fraud

And from this distance, you really don't know who to believe.

There is no question that Erdogan maintains massive popular support. There is also no question that he faces massive popular opposition.

Is this what "democracy" comes down to?

Competing claims for popularity?

Erdogan's position is a little more complicated than most. He's been targeted by a lot of former allies for being tied too closely to the Muslim Brotherhood. At the same time he remains a NATO ally. At the same time, his NATO ally the US is busy nurturing the "international imam of mystery" Fethullah Gulen.

Erdogan was drawn deeply into the civil war next door with all sorts of assurances from his betters that they had his back.

Now that it's obvious that the great Syria gambit has been a resounding flop, "having his back" means sooner or later sticking a knife in it and making Erdogan the fall guy for everything that has gone wrong with the NATO plan for Syria.

Erdogan is up a stump. All but abandoned by his NATO buddies, he is being left to fend for himself.

Desperate men take desperate measures.

Turkey struggles with terror tourists

"We strongly condemn every kind of terrorist act," Turkish PM Erdogan claimed at an OECD gathering in Istanbul last September.

And here is Erdogan again in November, "It is out of the question that groups like al-Nusra and al-Qaeda can take shelter in our country."

Either Erdogan is unaware of what goes on in his country, or he is lying.

Here's a senior Turkish bureaucrat putting a sightly different spin on the matter;

It's not correct to say that no members of these radical groups have crossed through Turkey. But 35 million tourists are coming through Turkey. It's not possible to monitor all of them.

Aha! While Turkey has a zero tolerance policy against supporting jihadists, nothing can be done to deter those who hide among 35 million tourists.

Here's a BBC report that offers some insights into the terror tourism industry. If you're a young Islamic man with a sense of adventure and a calling to kill infidels, you find your way to Turkey from wherever you happen to be in the world.

From the airport you find your way to one of many B&B's near the Syrian border. Stay a couple days, see the sights, then slip over the border for a tour of death and destruction with al-Nusra. Play jihad for a few weeks or months, kill a few infidels in the name of Allah, and off you go, back to that B&B, back to the airport, and back to France or the UK or Minnesota.

Now that's a vacation with a kick! No wonder attendance at Disneyland is down!

Joining hands in peace... just in time for war

They say Obama's Air Force One was still on the taxi-way enroute to Jordan when Netanyahu picked up the phone and put a call through to Turkey's President Erdogan.

"Hey, so sorry about that Mavi Marmara business," the Israeli PM whispered into the ear of Erdogan, and that's all the Turk PM needed to hear.

"Ah, thank you so much, all is forgiven!"

The pouty Turks had been waiting three years for today's apology. And Middle-East watchers knew it had to come sooner or later.

So while the Oracle of Nairobi didn't accomplish anything in terms of Israel-Palestine peace, he has set the stage for the next phase in the Syrian war.

Look at a map. The Syrian capital is less than fifty miles from the Israeli border. That's about an hour's drive for a column of Merkavas.

And of course Turkey has the northern border.

NATO-member Turkey and NATO step-child Israel have been having that unfortunate internecine spat ever since that unfortunate Mavi Marmara incident.

Looks like Obama was able to patch things up.

All we need now is the "major provocation" that will breach the "red line."

International imam of mystery

There's something of a flap unfolding over there in NATO's weakest link. Seems that sometime over the past few years miscreants of unknown origin were able to install eavesdropping devices both in the office and the personal residence of Prime Minister Erdogan.

Now who would do such a thing? Who would harbor such a distrust of the patriotic islamic nationalist that they would seek to plant bugs in his home and office?

The suspect list includes but is not limited to the following;

• his former Israeli allies
• his former Syrian allies
• his former Hamas allies
• his former allies in Hezbollah
• his former allies in the Islamic Republic
• his former friends in UK
• his former US allies
• his former allies among the Turkish Defense Forces
• his would-be future allies in the EU
• his current imaginary allies in NATO

Wow! That's a guy with a long list of former allies but no friends! And now the editor-in-chief of Hurriyet Daily  has added another name to the list.

Fethullah Gulen, international imam of mystery.

Gulen was a prominent imam in Turkey before he came to America for medical treatment about fifteen years ago. He was so inspired by American freedom and democracy that he decided not to get well but to stay in the US indefinitely, which he has.

And when you read up on the man, it's not hard to see why he's the kind of guy America's 101 security agencies might want to keep around.

They're obviously grooming him for something special.