Turkey

Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a capitalist state in Western Asia and Southeast Europe that succeeded the Ottoman Empire in 1923. It is a member of NATO and conducts imperialism in places like Cyprus and northern Syria, while also having a history of committing genocide against Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, and other ethnic groups which the modern state of Turkey denies happened. Despite being in NATO since 1952, Turkey's relationship with it is tenuous, doing things like blocking NATO access into northern Iraq during the Iraq War and threatening to veto Finland and Sweden's accession to NATO.

Allegedly, there is a deep state in Turkey composed of groups of high-level elements in the intelligence and security agencies, military, judiciary, and mafia that manipulates political and economic figures towards nationalist, corporatist, and anti-socialist ends. Rumors of such a deep state existing have been widespread since the 1970s, when prime minister Bülent Ecevit (Turkey's only leftist prime minister) revealed the existence of a Turkish version of Operation Gladio. The Turkish military for its part has a long history of involvement in politics, overthrowing the government several times and attempting to do so several times more.

History

Following the Ottoman defeat in World War I, the Allied Powers occupied Turkey and planned for massive territorial concessions which were fiercely resisted by the Turkish, including Ottoman military commanders. A high-ranking general named Mustafa Kemal (later known as Atatürk) enabled and eventually came to lead this nationalist resistance movement that successfully pushed back the Allies and forced them to renegotiate Turkish borders. In this, the Soviets supported Atatürk and sent arms to his forces against the Entente. A communist party was organized in 1920 through the efforts of Mustafa Suphi, and according to E.H. Carr, "The indigenous Turkish movement of sympathy for communism which grew up in 1919 was mainly of peasant origin and was rooted in agrarian discontents. Its overt expression was the creation of a multitude of local Soviets which became for a time the effective organs of local government. The movement was fostered by Kemal, partly because its loyalty to the nationalist cause was fervent and unquestioned, and partly because an outlet was required for the real social and agrarian discontent represented by it. In the spring of 1920 it took organized shape in the creation of a Green Army which, recruited from the small and landless peasants, formed a major part of the national forces."

Then, however, Atatürk worked to undermine the communists: a short-lived "official" communist party was created as a rival of the existing party, with the Green Army being declared dissolved. Further, "on January 28, 1921, [Suphi] together with sixteen other leading Turkish communists, [were] thrown into the sea off Trebizond - the traditional Turkish method of discreet execution." By the time of the Comintern's third congress in mid-1921, "the treaties with Persia and Turkey equally discouraged communist propaganda which might threaten or offend the Persian and Turkish Governments." In other words, while the Bolsheviks obviously did not welcome the persecution of Turkish communists, it was not allowed to disrupt relations between Soviet Russia and the Kemalists. From that point onward the USSR tried to maintain cordial relations with Turkey, the exception being the period 1946-1953 when the Soviets feuded with Turkey over their border and over access through the Turkish Straits.

Links to terrorism

The Turkish state has close relations with terrorist groups in Syria, primarily ISIS, with which it has commercial deals including the purchasing of stolen oil from Syria and Iraq. In order to fulfill its geopolitical agenda and defeat political opponents, Turkey funds, supports, and trains terrorists on its own territory to then commit crimes in Syria.