SHAFAQNA – Despite the much-discussed failure of the coup attempt in Turkey, retired Turkish Admiral Turker Erturk told Sputnik Turkiye that it has actually reached its point: the actual target of the attempted overthrow, instigated by CIA, were the Turkish military, out of fear that they would hamper the “Greater Middle East” project.
“My view is that the CIA was behind the coup,” Turker Erturk told Sputnik Turkiye.“The major blow was delivered at the Turkish military. And the coup attempt was a success, in a sense that certain aims pursued by some certain forces, have been reached.”
The retired Admiral further explained that the attempt turned out to be a failure for the supporters of the Gulen Movement, led by Turkish opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen, but for the CIA, which was “pulling the Gulen supporters by the strings” it was a success because the actual purpose of the attempt was to paralyze the Turkish military, disempower them and spoil their image.
“Why has the CIA done it?” he asked himself. He then replied:
“They wanted to hit the Turkish Armed Forces out of fear that Turkey, especially after normalizing its relationship with Russia, could hamper the creation of the so-called Kurdish corridor they are trying to set up in the north of Syria. And it’s all part of the ‘Greater Middle East’ project.”
Turker Erturk explained that under this project, they don’t want the forces which oppose the setup of hegemony in the Middle East to be present in the region, where Turkey, Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria are the key nations.
Hence they try to polarize the key players according to ethnic or religious criteria. And the high-ranking American officials are openly saying: do what you want, but without an attack on the Turkish military; it is impossible to implement the part of the project which involves Turkey.
The first blow, he says, was leveled by the court trials “Sledgehammer” and “Ergenekon.” And the recent attempt comes as the second blow under the very same project.
Its purpose was to deliver a fatal blow to the image and influence of the Turkish Armed Forces, who tried to hamper the “revamping of the region in a new way.” It was a success: the Turkish Armed Forces have been practically destroyed.
Turker Erturk claims that the “imperialist forces” did not actually want to see Erdogan ousted. They actually wanted a coup attempt to weaken the power of the military, factor them out of the active ongoing processes, and liquidate the mere opportunity that Ankara would pose a threat to projects aimed against Syria, Iraq and Russia, as well as projects aimed at breaking down Turkey.
“This is why I am saying that the coup has failed but the coup attempt has reached its goal,” the retired Turkish Admiral told Sputnik.
“If the imperialistic forces really wanted to oust Erdogan with the help of a successful coup, why would they need Gulen supporters?” he wondered.“They would have set the Armed Forces leadership against him, everything would have been done with insubordination, and the coup would have been a 100 percent success,” he explained.
Turker Erturk thus summarized that the final objective had not been a coup and the ouster of Erdogan, but an attempted coup which was designed to fail, delivering a hurtful blow at the Turkish Armed Forces, depriving them of public support and spoiling their image. It was a success, he concluded.