It’s not just Donald Trump who is willing to sell out his policies. He’s hired an entire team of kleptocrats, including a National Security Adviser who was on both sides of an attempted coup in a NATO ally country.
When a faction of the Turkish military attempted to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn celebrated the coup effort as something “worth clapping for.” …
He warned that Erdogan was an Islamist and “very close to President [Barack] Obama,” who was leading his country toward disaster. However, that was before Flynn’s company was hired by an Erdogan ally. After that, Flynn began singing a slightly different tune.
Turkey is really our strongest ally against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as well as a source of stability in the region. It provides badly needed cooperation with U.S. military operations. But the Obama administration is keeping Erdoğan’s government at arm’s length — an unwise policy that threatens our long-standing alliance.
As unlikely as it seems, Flynn managed to weave both sides into his no-Muslim-is-above-suspicion narrative. At coup time, Erdogan was a scary ‘Islamist’ who was leading Turkey into the caliphate. But once under contract, the same authoritarian leader was actually fighting the good fight against a scary Muslim hiding right here in the United States—a Muslim who was, of course, tied to President Obama.
A Muslim who went after Erdogan for corruption.
During the coup attempt, Flynn painted Erdogan as the scary Islamist with ties to Democrats.
“Probably most of you don’t know, but there’s an ongoing coup going on in Turkey right now,” Flynn said during remarks. Turkey, Flynn warned, had begun “to move toward Islamism.”
“This is Turkey under Erdogan ― who is actually very close to President [Barack] Obama,” Flynn said, speaking at the Cleveland chapter of ACT for America, a group that describes itself as “the [National Rifle Association] of national security.”
But after his abrupt about-face, Flynn said Erdogan’s only real problem is this guy:
Fethullah Gülen, a shady Islamic mullah residing in Pennsylvania whom former President Clinton once called his “friend” in a well circulated video.
That “shady Islamic mullah” would be the founder of a movement that tries to wed traditional Islamic views with a pacifist opposition to more radical interpretations. He’s also the man behind a number of institutes urging interfaith dialog that include both Christian and Jewish scholars.
But in 2014, after Gülen appeared to support a corruption investigation, Erdogan turned on his former ally and issued an arrest warrant.
The move comes amid a national crackdown on perceived supporters of the cleric.
Over 20 journalists working for media outlets thought to be sympathetic to the Gulen movement were arrested last weekend.
Arresting public protesters, religious leaders, and journalists? Check, check, double check. Yet Flynn’s sympathy is completely with the man cracking down on pretty much every item protected under the First Amendment.
For those of us who have closely studied the careers of Seyed Qutb and Hasan al Bana, the founders and followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, Gülen’s words and activities are very familiar.
Al Bana died in 1949, and Qutb in 1966. But since, in Flynn’s view, every Muslim is the same, it’s perfectly fine to draw analogies between their actions and those of Gülen. Especially when the pay is good.
The one thing Flynn doesn’t want to talk about? His ties to Erdogan and the change in his position.
Despite his inflammatory rhetoric, Flynn, with his decades of military experience, was considered by many to be one of the more serious individuals in the national security arena to endorse Trump. But his comments from July, juxtaposed with his recent opinion piece and his firm’s lobbying ties to Erdogan, suggest that the former DIA chief’s foreign policy positions can be shaped by the highest bidder.
Which does seem to indicate that Flynn is a very good fit in a Trump administration.
There’s really only one consistent feature of Michael Flynn’s policies: blame everything on President Obama.