Turkey flag during coup attempt
© AP Photo/ Emrah Gurel
The Katehon think tank has produced a fascinating documentary on the failed Turkish coup of July this year and the dynamics and events leading up to it. It features Alexander Dugin, among others. Dugin was in Ankara on the day of the coup and he provides details of his relationship with the secular Kemalists, and his support for Turkish-Russian ties for the past dozen or more years. Several of the more interesting revelations are listed below:


  • In 2005, two Turkish Kemalist generals told Dugin to watch for an eventual break with NATO by Turkey, and a possible military-strategic partnership with Russia, China and Iran.
  • Gulen's network infiltrated had all Turkish institutions, and practically ran the judicial system, police and air force. (They even infiltrated the Russian army.)
  • Growing ties between the secular Kemalists and the Russians in the early 2000s led to the Ergenikon affair, in which U.S.-tied Gulenists fabricated charges against the pro-Russian Kemalists. (The West even tied the accused Kemalists to Dugin.) Many of the prosecutors who put them in jail are now themselves in jail.
  • Putin and Erdogan held a conversation shortly before the Russian jet shoot-down in which they agreed to cooperate on Syria, and Erdogan would soften his stance on Assad.
  • Erdogan was completely in the dark about the shoot-down. It was ordered unilaterally by Gulenist officers on the military base and designed to sour Russian-Turkish relations.
  • Just weeks after the shoot-down, three high-ranking Kemalists - who had previously been in prison due to the trumped up Ergenikon crack-down - flew to Russia to urge a rapprochement with Erdogan, and warn of an American-backed coup.