Turkey, fascism, drugs and nukes...

The most tangled tales of modern parapolitics (the Al Qaeda trail, the nuclear supermarket and the Plame affair, and more) often bring us to Turkey. That's why I recommend Christopher Deliso's new piece on the Turkish "deep state":

On 22 January, Turkish police arrested 33 individuals, some connected with the military, in the largest concerted action against the "deep state" – that shadowy underworld linking extremists and criminals from the spheres of military, political, judicial and the academy. Some were accused of belonging to an ultranationalist group, Ergenekon, that was allegedly "preparing a series of bomb attacks aimed at fomenting chaos ahead of a coup in 2009 against Turkey's center-right government, whose European Union-linked reforms are opposed by ultranationalists."

Deliso traces the Turkish far-right's involvement with the CIA's notorious Operation Gladio -- and with the drug trade.

The records of a Nov. 20, 2003 phone conversation between retired Capt. Muzaffer Tekin, arrested in June of last year as the owner of the munitions depot found in an Istanbul shantytown that started the Ergenekon operation, and Yilmaz Tavukçuoglu, an alleged drug trafficker, shows that Ergenekon used drug money to fund its activities.

The intellectual head of the movement, Ümit Sayin, is a Hitler admirer. Here's an intriguing bit of speculation:

Some have speculated that legalizing the nuclear trade with Turkey is the Bush administration's way of retroactively legalizing the activities of any of the shadowy governmental figures that the Times alleges were involved with the illicit commerce, so that they cannot be touched in the event that their alleged misdoings are exposed.

(Many thanks, as always, to Larisa...)