"50 billion dollars worth of foreign debt is nothing, it is two lorry loads of heroin..." or Turkish capitalism at work

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Sep 4, 2010 at 06:50

Caleb wrote :

>The US probably should have let Greece go Communist in 1949.<

Turkey as we know it started as the first and most faithful ally of Lenin's Russia with Kemal's envoys bringing solemn assurances of the common struggle against Western capitalism and imperialism to the victorious end. Soviet communist generals and spies were Kemal's most trusted friends and advisors and they have remained until now honorrary citizens of the Turkish republic and can be recognized in public statues and portraits.

Yet here we have a big-mouthed Turk who tells us that the erstwhile boot-licking beggars for Soviet help are now staunch anti-communists . ;)

Anyway , the other outcome of the war in Greece between 1944-1949 would have been a very interesting historical option with Turkey placed between the Russian hammer and the Greek and Bulgarian envil. This constellation might well have punished Turkey for her genocides, perfidy , lies, treason and jihad.

> As a capitalist country it is and has been a complete flop.<

Let's take a look at the "success" story of Turkish capitalism for a while. Under Kemal it remained a strictly state-controlled or etatist economy with gosplan based on the Soviet pattern. During the WWII thanks to huge Nazi contracts and the predatory policy towards the minorities Turkey's gold reserves quadrupled and a Nazi loan had never to be paid back. After WWII Turkey's economy was heavily subsidized by the US. Until 1964 Turkey received $ 4,3 bln worth economic aid. Every year the Turkish budget deficits were covered with US tax payers' money. So e.g. in 1962 the budget deficit amounted to 1,7 bln Turkish liras. 1,2 bln (=$133 mln) from these moneys were taken directly from the US economic subsidies. Turkish newspapers wrote openly "America will pay our deficits".

This US-sponsored boom was shattered in the 70-ies and 80-ies with the advent of the civil war against the left and costly and devastating war to suppress the Kurdish independence movement. Some $ 12,5 bln were spent on killing and expelling the Kurds with little or no revenues in terms of booty. The poor Kurdish peasants in Eastern Antolia had nothing comparable to the swag in Northern Cyprus. Yet the most serious blow to Turkish economy came with the break-down of the Iraqi oil market in 1991 and the ensuing Kurdish autonomy there. Turkey desperately needed hard currency to cover its soaring deficits and pay for oil. And it found it in ...drugs! As John Stanton writes in his excellent article "A Fantastic Tale Turkey, Drugs, Faustian Alliances & Sibel Edmonds" in 1998 the US Department of State had to admit that Turkey was a major refining and transit point for the flow of heroin from Southwest Asia to Western Europe. It was "reported that MIT , and the Turkish National Police force were actively supporting the trade in illicit drugs According to the daily Hürriyet, Turkey's heroin trafficking brought in $25 billion in 1995 and $37.5 billion in 1996...Only criminal networks working in close cooperation with the police and the army could possibly organize trafficking on such a scale. Drug barons have stated publicly, on Turkish television and in the West, that they have been working under the protection of the Turkish government and to its financial benefit. The traffickers themselves travel on diplomatic passports…the drugs are even transported by military helicopter from the Iranian border."

This criminal policy was not condemned in Turkey. Quite the contrary. It was seen as a windfall or even a legitimate way to save and keep Turkish economy going or even to bring a new life to it . John Stanton writes in this context :

"I was reminded of my teacher's words at university in Ankara ten years ago. He was also working for the Turkish Foreign Ministry. The topic of a lecture discussion was about Turkey's Economy and I still remember his words today, "50 billion dollars worth of foreign debt is nothing, it is two lorry loads of heroin..."

The short-term drug-driven boom was soon over due to hyperinflation, tax evasions, corruption and misgoverment. Stolen money is rarely put to rational use . The illusory economic recovery under Erdogan was financed in turn by the mass influx of money from another source - Saudi Arabia. It is estimated that the green money infusion into the Turkish economy amounted to up to $12 billon .Yet the new subsidies were intended to finance not so much Turkish economy as Turkish Islam. Currency stabilization, free books, and consumer goods tax relief was announced at first. But even Ergodanistan turned out to be another Potemkin village in the long run.

A typical representative of this criminal Turkish capitalism of the late 80-ies and 90-ies is Cem Uzan , the fraudster who cheated out of the American company Motorola $ 2,7bln in loans and equipment and scammed also Siemens, Saatchi&Saatchi and Mark Mobius and a number of other companies and found safe haven in a large-scale political activity. Together with Turgut Özal's son Ahmet he created Turkey's first private television station. "He acquired Telsim, one of Turkey's first GSM telephone services and, in 1993, went into partnership with Motorola. Beginning in 1998, Motorola issued a series of eight loans to Uzan totaling $1.8 billion. When it became clear that Uzan would not repay, Motorola sought legal recourse. Uzan may have been dishonest, but with anti-foreign sentiment high in the wake of Turkey's 2001 financial crisis, he became a popular hero. "People say that the International Monetary Fund] cheated Turkey, so it's good he [Uzan] cheats Motorola," a sociologist at Istanbul's Kadir Has University told The Chicago Tribune. Uzan launched a political party and a "rock 'n' roll-style" nationalist campaign, which earned him 7.25 percent of the vote, placing his Genç [Youth] Party fifth. Had he entered parliament, he would have enjoyed parliamentary immunity. "His philosophy was instead of paying Motorola $2.5 billion, 'I can become prime minister of Turkey by spending $30 million.' " "

Today's economy of Turkey is in deep troubles. The growth of GDP in 2009 was reduced to -5.6% whereas industrial proudction growth - 11.8% . Turkey's GDP per capita income is $11 400 (97th place ) compared to $31 000 (44th ) in Greece. The population below poverty line amounts to 17.11% , unemployment to 14,1% . External debt is $ 274,000,000,000 ... If Turkey remains true to its belief in criminal capitalism, then she will try to pay this debt ... smuggling 11 lorry loads of heroin to the US or the UK.

> As a Communist country it could be isolated like a Mediterranean North Korea rather than being a burden on its European neighbors and the whole western economic system.<

Definitely, if one has such a dysfunctional and jihadist country like Turkey as a neighbour this must be a very great burden and stress to everybody, including the latter in the first place. It is hard to see with a quiet face that while in infidel Greece some 6 kg of toilet paper are used annually per capita in Allah-beloved Turkey it is 600 gr (8% of the European avarage) with disastrous effects in terms of epidemics and health ! "During the past decade, nearly 600,000 people in Turkey suffered from diseases caused by excretion, such as typhoid fever, dysentery and jaundice". Turkey is definitely not only a major security threat in the region but also a serious epidemiological one.

But Turks visibly can do well without toilet paper and acquiesce in typhoid fever and jaundice as long as they grab enough foreign subsidies be they from the US or Saudistan or drug trafficking to buy new arsenals to bomb Greek or Kurdish villages into nothingness, to suppress freedom of speech even more effectively, to build more mosques and more statues of Kemal in Northern Cyprus and to blame the infidels for all of their problems.

> Turks are fascists, The US is nazi, the whole world is out to "get" the Greeks.<

That Turks are fascists is obvious to anyone who understands what "fascist" stands for. Just look at the mad cult of the deified mass murderer and liar with five names - Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha Ataturk. Look at the consistent record of genocides, pogroms, terror, persecutions of minoriotes and uniform genocide denials and denials of any crime perpetrated by the Turks. Add to that the primitive Turkish jingoism , herd instincts which make any public criticism of Turkey impossible, distorted historical education , lies and dogmatism , self-glorification, extreme intolerance , total lack of freedom of thought and expression with anti-freedom of speech laws in full force , show trials of dissidents, regular assassinations of opponents ... If all that diabolical mixture is not fascism pure and simple, then what is ?

That Turkish fascism enjoys respect, support and admiration among the American power elite is also obvious and clear and not just in the case of the US-sponsored tragedy and genocide in Cyprus in 1974 where his unholy alliance is so conspicuous and glaring.

Now what do you think, if you think at all ? Who loves and supports fascists unless a person himself with a fascist mindset ? It is not me who called Kissinger , Ecevit's teacher , so. This scoundrel just like any apologist and supporter of fascist Turkey doesn't deserve a different name .

> Yeah, sure. You can call them all the hard names you want, Ianus, but as another lonely dissenter here has pointed out, things have been peaceful on Cyprus since the Turkish army set up its presence. The level of violence: way, way down since 1974. <

This 'dissenter" was a brainwashed Tukish conformist and igoramus just as you are. He spoke of "peace" in Cyprus since 1974. I can tell you it is nonsense. I understand that in the fascist double talk of Turkey "war is peace" and all both of you do is to misuse the word "peace" to mean your favourite "peace of the graves" ... with one mental reservation though , namely that the graves would be desecrated, destroyed and disappear in due course too.

What has been happening in Northern Cyprus since August 1974 is the total and implacable war against the graves, churches and monuments and other symbols and memories of the kafiri past. And the kafiri losses , i.e. Islamic "victories" in this war against the dead are impressive indeed ! The Turkish army changed directly 77 churches into mosques, 28 into hospitals or camps and 13 more into barns . "500 other churches and religious sites belonging to the Greek-Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Cyprus, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Holy Monastery of St. Katherine in Sinai, the Roman Catholic Church, the Catholic-Armenian Church, the Catholic-Maronite Church, the Jewish community, as well as the Protestant Church, along with their cemeteries have been willfully desecrated, pillaged, looted and destroyed".

Parallel with the Islamization, desacration, looting and destruction of churches , chapels and monasteries under the protection of Turkey's military there has been an unprecedented construction boom of mosques, minarets and Quranic schools in Northern Cyprus from which profited even the most remote villages. It goes without saying that much -if not most - of the money spent on these pious activities came from the US tax payers' money , the Turkish drug barons and/or Saudi sponsors.

Yes, this is what Turks mean by "peace" as indeed Turkish fascism means a permanent state of war - first with napalm bombs against hospitals like in 1974 or with axes, spades, sledgehammers, crowbars against Christian tombs , crosses, ancient frescoes and mosaics and archaeological sites as after 1974 until now.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".