With its stunning vistas and former Ottoman palaces, the banks of the Bosphorus – the strategic waterway that cuts Istanbul in half and divides Europe from Asia – may be the perfect place to distinguish friend from foe and establish where your country's interests lie.

And sitting in his grandiose headquarters beside the strait, long the symbol of Turkey's supposed role as bridge between east and west, Recep Tayyip Erdogan had little doubt about who was a friend and who wasn't.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's radical president whose fiery rhetoric has made him a bête noire of the west? "There is no doubt he is our friend," said Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister for the last six years. "As a friend so far we have very good relations and have had no difficulty at all."

In sworn testimony to attorneys on Aug. 8, Sibel Edmonds described a Pentagon where key personnel helped pass defense secrets to foreign agents or provided them names of knowledgeable officials who were vulnerable to blackmail or co-option.

And firmly rooted in this espionage program in the 1990s, according to Edmonds’ deposition, were two men who, with the election of George W. Bush as president in 2000, found themselves in the Pentagon: Douglas Feith, who would head the Office of Special Plans, and Richard Perle, who would become chairman of the Defense Advisory Board.

"They were 100 percent directly involved," Edmonds told Military.com. "They were not in the Pentagon [in the late 1990s] but they had their people inside the Pentagon." One of those people, she said, was Larry Franklin, an Air Force officer assigned to the Office of Special Plans who, in 2003, passed classified information to representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Office, or AIPAC. By then Feith was leading the OSP.

It seems it is now hard to get a cup of Turkish coffee in Tel Aviv. Israel’s patriotic restaurant owners are giving Turkey the “freedom fries” treatment because of the Turkish decision to exclude Israel from the annual air combat exercises that since 2001 Turkey has been sponsoring in collaboration with its allies.

Advisers to Turkey’s prime minister have said that Syria would accept only their country as a mediator in peace talks with Israel, after Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu recently voiced doubts that Ankara could continue in the role.

Following a crisis in relations between Israel and Turkey last week, Netanyahu said he objects to Turkey resuming its role as mediator and does not see how the country can remain “an honest broker.”

They said neither the Syrians nor the Turks are of the belief that Israel is interested in advancing peace talks with Syria, given Netanyahu’s public refusal to relinquish the occupied Golan Heights, a key Syrian demand.

Less than a week after Ankara cancelled an air exercise with Israel, Turkey's state-sponsored channel TRT1 broadcast "Ayrilik" ("Farewell"), a new prime-time TV show that depicts the true image of Israel's genocidal military operation in Gaza last January.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday accused the international community for shifting responsibility for the war in the Gaza Strip from Israel to Muslims.

"There are countries in which children receive the best education and the most advanced medical services. In other places there is desperation, poverty, war, and weapons of mass destruction," The Turkish agency Sabah quoted Erdogan as saying. "We must listen to the voices of the oppressed. Iraq was conquered, and so was Gaza. Humanity is watching the evils from a comfortable seat."

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday warned against further harming Israel’s relations with Turkey, after Turkey excluded Israel from a joint military exercise because of its criticism of Israel’s offensive against the Gaza Strip that killed over 1400 Palestinians, including 420 children and injured more than 5300 others.

An 18-year Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Manager for the FBI has called for a Special Counsel to be appointed to investigate the allegations of FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. John M. Cole, who now works as an intelligence contractor for the Air Force, made his comments during an audio interview released late last week with radio journalist Peter B. Collins.

He also offered a detailed insiders look at the concerns among high-level officials inside the Bureau as Edmonds disturbing allegations began coming to light back in 2002, before they would be quashed for seven long years by the Bush Administration's unprecedented use of the so-called "State Secrets Privilege" to gag her.

One of the most significant developments in recent Middle East affairs is the close relationship which now exists between
Turkey and Israel in military, political, economic and intelligence matters. This change in the power structure is usually
attributable to the old Arab maxim “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Since both Turkey and Israel count Syria and
Iraq as their strongest threats, the close ties between Turkey and Israel are quite logical.

However, there is good evidence of a less widely known but absolutely fascinating story behind this relationship. Turkey,
which has a population almost exclusively Muslim, has a government which by law is committed to being totally secular.

Giraldi, a long time counterterrorism specialist with the CIA commented on the confirmation by 18-year FBI counterintelligence vet John Cole, who, in a published claim yesterday, acknowledged the existence of a "decade-long investigation" targeting the former third-highest ranking official in the Bush State Department, Marc Grossman, as Edmonds has long maintained. Citing Cole's first-hand experience with the espionage investigations in question, Giraldi told Collins during the interview:

This is something that, presumably, if the mainstream media were interested in it, would be a line of inquiry that would lead to a major investigation. ... I'm a former intelligence officer, I find her very credible. And of course, as a former intelligence officer, I'm normally suspicious of these kinds of stories. In this case, John Cole, who obviously had direct access to the investigations going on, is confirming her story.

Turkish premier warns against military strike on Iran
Posted : Mon, 28 Sep 2009
Istanbul - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned against a military strike on Iran's controversial nuclear plants, according to Turkish media reports Monday. Such an attack would be "madness" and its terrible consequences would not just affect Iran, Turkish newspapers quoted Erdogan as saying.
"We are completely against nuclear weapons in the Middle East," daily newspaper Radikal quoted the prime minister as saying at the end of his trip to the United States."But there is a country in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons: Israel. There is a difference, though; Israel is not a member of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), while Iran is."

George W. Bush's third-highest ranking State Department official, Marc Grossman, who became the Under Secretary of State after previously serving as Ambassador to Turkey, was targeted as part of a "decade-long investigation" by the FBI, according to an 18-year veteran manager of the agency's Counterintelligence and Counterespionage departments.

For still-unknown reasons, the investigation which also involved a multitude of cases involving Israeli espionage, was ultimately "buried and covered up", according to the official.

If they go after ACORN they will have to go after defense contractors too.. Boeing, Lockeed, Kellogg Brown and Root,.. General Dynamics.. all of the corporations that have defrauded the American people, in order to make the bust on ACORN stick.

Fat Chance of that happening.

Sibel Edmonds has a story to tell. She went to work as a Turkish and Farsi translator for the FBI five days after 9/11. Part of her job was to translate and transcribe recordings of conversations between suspected Turkish intelligence agents and their American contacts. She was fired from the FBI in April 2002 after she raised concerns that one of the translators in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation. She appealed her termination, but was more alarmed that no effort was being made to address the corruption that she had been monitoring.

Exclusive: Upcoming Cover Story on Edmonds 'Outs' Video-taped, 'Blackmailed' Dem Congresswoman; Alleges State Dept. Mole at NYTimes; MUCH MORE...

It seems it may be difficult to not notice it, given that Edmonds finally names, on the record, for the first time, in a right-leaning periodical founded by Pat Buchanan, the identity of the currently-serving Democratic Congresswoman she has previously described as married with grown children and having been "hooked" into participating in a lesbian affair with a Turkish foreign agent, as she was secretly video-taped for blackmail purposes.

Edmonds has alluded to the Congresswoman, without naming her, in the past, most notably in her recent sworn and video-taped deposition in the Schmidt v. Krikorian case now pending before the Ohio Election Commission. In that testimony, she did manage to name the names of other Congress members she had previously identified publicly. At the time, we (and virtually no other media outlets) reported on her disclosures that Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Bob Livingston (R-LA), Dan Burton (R-IN), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Stephen Solarz (D-NY) and Tom Lantos (D-CA, deceased), were all participants in blackmail and/or bribery schemes by and with agents of the Turkish government, as she became aware while translating wiretaps in the FBI's counterintelligence division after 9/11. Some of those crimes are said to have resulted in the theft and sale of nuclear weapons technology to allies and enemies alike.

Turkey, a long-time US ally, is the only NATO member to have a land border with Iran.

12 The reason there's a question mark is I lacked
13 -- I was terminated by April 2002, but this
14 particular Congresswoman -- the Turkish --
15 these Turkish organizations and operatives, if
16 they can't do it by money, they do by
17 blackmail. So they collect information on
18 sexual lives and other information like that,
19 and with this particular Congresswoman, it
20 being 2000 until I left, they -- this
21 individual, this Congresswoman's married with
22 children, grown children, but she is bisexual.

1 So they have sent Turkish female agents, and
2 that Turkish female agents work for Turkish
3 government, and have sexual relationship with
4 this Congresswoman in her townhouse actually
5 in this area, and the entire episodes of their

BREAKING NEWS FROM WMR: TURKISH GOV. BLACKMAILED SITTING MEMBER OF US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
Date: Saturday, 8-Aug-2009 20:29:21
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=152928
UPDATE TO:TURKISH GOV. BLACKMAILED SITTING MEMBER...: GOV. BLAGO REFUSED RAHM TO APPOINT BLACKMAILED CONGRESSWOMAN
Sunday, 9-Aug-2009 19:50:51
August 10, 2009 -- SPECIAL REPORT. The Congresswoman and the Turkish Lobby sexual blackmail ring
[WMR is publishing its 10 August issue a day earlier because of the breaking nature over the weekend of the story involving the American Turkish Council blackmail of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence].
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/ [by subscription only]

By Brad Friedman on 8/8/2009 8:51AM
LIVE BLOG: Deposition of Sibel Edmonds Completed, DoJ a 'No Show', Bombshells Under Oath
UPDATES INCLUDE: CONGRESS MEMBERS NAMED IN ESPIONAGE, BRIBERY, SEXUAL BLACKMAIL SCHEMES; NEW BREWSTER JENNINGS / VALERIE PLAME DISCLOSURE...
'State Secrets' privilege NOT asserted by DoJ; FBI whistleblower answered ALL questions under oath on Turkish infiltration of U.S. Government...
Live blogging coverage of the Sibel Edmonds deposition at the National Whistleblowers Center in Washington D.C. For background see previous coverage:

A plan to demolish a building in Cankiri, central Turkey went badly wrong when the 25-metre high structure rolled over onto its roof.

For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.

A passenger jet carrying 135 people crashed as it attempted to land at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport this morning.

The Turkish Airlines 737 broke into three pieces as it hit the ground near the runway, narrowly missing a main road and some houses.

One person is thought to have died, while 20 are injured. As many as 50 people miraculously escaped the crash, CNBC Turkey reported.

Many wonder whether the crisis in Turkish-Israeli relations has reached the point of no return. Did the show-down in Davos between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Shimon Peres permanently damage the once “special ties” between Israel and Turkey?

~~snip~~ Israel still harks back to a time when the Turks would have acted anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian just to appease the West. Now, though, it is difficult to imagine Turkish-Israeli relations returning to the “special relationship” of yore. Rising resentment of Israel among Turkish public opinion is enough to put a damper on ties for some time to come. According to recent polls, 80 per cent of Turks support the AKP’s tough stand on Gaza.

Turkey can turn the crisis in Davos into an opportunity, and this has become possible because of a historical turning point in the meeting in Davos that occurred when Mr. Erdo?an (as he should have) left a panel discussion after an argument with the Israeli president. While the Turkish media discuss whether the behavior of Prime Minister Erdo?an was right, Erdo?an’s action, which can be defined as active, smart and not to be outdone, has carried Turkey into a key position. Now, what is the probability that this attitude and this occasion will be turned into a stable one in the international arena? This aspect of the issue deserves to be discussed. One of the things that bothers Israel most is the possibility that Turkey may work out a stable peace between Hamas and Fatah.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for recognition of Hamas which won a landslide victory in Palestinian elections.

In an interview with The Washington Post published Saturday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said isolating Hamas is the reason for the ongoing tensions in the region.

He criticized world leaders for failing to respect the political will of the Palestinian people who voted for the Palestinian resistance movement.

The prime minister of turkey talking about war on gazza
taip erdogan

Turkey risks a collapse of its secular political system akin to that of the Soviet Union if it bows to international pressure to recognise the 1915-22 Armenian genocide, the head of Armenia's state memorial to the event has told the Guardian.

Hayk Demoyan said Ankara could not acknowledge the systematic killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman troops during the first world war because it would lead to a wholesale re-writing of history and undermine the ideological basis of the Turkish state.