by Nick Giambruno, International Man:
Their mission was to capture—or more likely—kill.
Dozens of renegade commandos in three Blackhawk helicopters swooped in on the holiday residence of the president.
Immediately, they engaged in a fierce gun battle with the president’s bodyguards and killed a number of them.
Tourists in a nearby five-star resort fled for their lives. Their idyllic vacations had turned into a warzone in the blink of an eye.
The president, however, was nowhere to be found.
He had been tipped off about the plot and made it to the safety of his private jet. He had cheated death by mere minutes.
The renegade soldiers got wind of the escape. They commandeered a couple of F16 fighter jets and sent them to the skies to shoot down the presidential jet.
Aware the rebel F16s were hunting them, the president’s pilots were able to obfuscate the identity of their aircraft by altering the jet’s transponder signal.
The transponder is an electronic signal that shows an aircraft’s identity. It’s used by air traffic controllers to keep track of planes in the air.
Somehow, the pilots of the presidential jet were able to set their transponder signal to make it appear as if they were instead a civilian passenger jet.
The confused rebel fighter jets ran out of fuel and had to return to base before they figured out what happened.
The president had cheated death for the second time that day.
This story sounds like something out of a Tom Clancy novel or a Hollywood blockbuster. But it’s not…
It happened in real life earlier this summer. In Turkey.
The country is one giant powder keg… and the fuse is already lit.
When the next global crisis explodes, there’s a good chance Turkey will be involved somehow.
Turkey was founded from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. It’s where Europe meets Asia.
Today, it’s at the epicenter of many crises that are destabilizing the world… the migrant disaster in Europe, the ongoing carnage in Iraq and Syria, the battle with ISIS, a conflict with the Kurds, and the new Cold War with Russia. It could soon also play a big role in the collapse of the world’s largest economy, the European Union (EU)…
It’s hard to think of another place that has more tripwires for a global meltdown.
In light of all these potential triggers—as well as the recent failed military coup d’état that killed over 290 people—I thought it was time to take a closer look at Turkey.
Doug Casey and I just returned from the crisis-stricken country, the latest destination we visited with (literal) blood in the streets.
We put our boots on the ground in the same area where that hit squad of rebel soldiers nearly assassinated Recep Tayyip Erdogan—the Turkish president.
(In addition to all of the crises listed above, the Turkish military had invaded northern Syria just before our arrival.)
Perhaps most importantly, Turkey is at the heart of the migrant crisis that is tearing Europe apart. The migrant crisis will be one of the main issues on the minds of Italians as they vote in the upcoming referendum, which could very well decide the fate of the EU and the euro currency. That’s why I’ve spent weeks on the ground in Italy, watching these events unfold.
The Financial Times commented on what would happen if the Italian referendum fails:
It would probably lead to the most violent economic shock in history, dwarfing the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008 and the 1929 Wall Street crash.
Like with the Brexit vote, the migrant issue—and by extension Turkey—may determine the outcome of the Italian referendum on December 4, 2016…
Turkey Holds the Keys to the EU’s Future
Parroting U.S. concerns about democracy and human rights, the EU has also harshly criticized Turkey’s response to the failed coup.
This hasn’t endeared them to the Turkish government. It’s actually incredibly stupid for the Europeans.
And by stupid I mean exactly that… an unwitting tendency toward self-destruction. The Europeans fail to see the indirect and delayed consequences of their decision to antagonize the Turkish government.
That’s because the Turkish government holds the trump card on what is perhaps the most explosive political issue on the continent right now: the migrant crisis.
Concerns about the unprecedented flow of migrants into Europe over the past couple of years played a key role in the Brexit vote. It’s also acting as a political accelerant to the rise of anti-EU parties all over Europe.
It’s a simple relationship. The more migrants come to Europe, the more popular anti-EU political parties become, and the weaker the EU itself becomes.
This is where Turkey holds the keys to the future political landscape of Europe.
Turkey is a major transit point migrants use on their way to Europe. The Turkish government doesn’t want the migrants to stay in Turkey, so they haven’t really had much of a reason to stop them from leaving for Europe. They even enjoyed the situation because it gave them negotiating leverage with Brussels.
The Turks essentially said “give us what we want or we’ll open the floodgates.”
What the Turks want is lots of money and to join the Schengen visa-free zone, which allows unfettered access to most of Europe.
Brussels partially gave in to the blackmail. They started giving the Turks money—to the tune of $6 billion—and agreed to hold talks about getting visa-free access to the continent. In return, the Turks would cut off the flow of migrants.
For a while this arrangement worked.
But after the attempted coup… and then the purge of suspected putschists, the EU cried foul. They deemed the purges to be an erosion of democracy and the rule of law.
They basically told the Erdogan government it can forget about joining the Schengen zone.
Unsurprisingly, the Turkish government not-so-subtly warned that if the EU walks away from its part of the deal, so will it. Specifically, the Turkish government has threatened to open the migrant floodgates… just in time for the Italian referendum and other key European elections.
Read More @ InternationalMan.com