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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

> Western capitals were dead silent during the 2016 coup attempt.

Yeah, and for the better. The coup attempt is very controversial and it's not good guys vs bad guys situation.

To be fair, the west cheered for Erdogan up until Erdogan completely abandoned his initial positions. Later, the west simply worked with Turkey and Erdogan was properly elected through the years.

What the West was supposed to do? Invade Turkey? Assassinate the politician who consistently got about %50 of the vote of the Turks on elections with no less than %85 voter turnaround?

Foreign influence cannot solve local problems.

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The way Fethullah Gülen got red-carpet immigration treatment in the US stinks to high heaven, though. It seems suspicion the US was behind the coup attempt is widespread in Turkey and not limited to AKP supporters.

Any important person can get red-carpet immigration treatment, why exactly does this particular case stink?

Well, for once the CIA agent Graham Fuller[0] actively supported Gulen's green card application[1]. I don't know if Gulen was a CIA himself but there are ample clues that he is at least involved with the US government. CIA has a rich history of pulling such operations. That's Fascinating read actually.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_E._Fuller

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/graham-fuller-turke-issues-a...

I don’t think this really supports the original claim.

E: s/your/the/

What's my original claim?

“The way Fethullah Gülen got red-carpet immigration treatment in the US stinks to high heaven”

That's not me. You can tell by the way the letters in the username are arranged. My point is that the guy behind the coup has known ties to the CIA and in my opinion that stinks. Of course I wouldn't know if or what role CIA had in the coup but I find it fair to ask the questions due to the established links.

My mistake, I was browsing through the user page so I didn’t see the name of the user I originally replied to.

Sorry.

However, I bet someone like Gülen would get red carpet immigration treatment even if the CIA wasn’t involved. I don’t necessarily doubt CIA involvement, I just doubt that his immigration treatment is indicative of anything.

No worries!

> However, I bet someone like Gülen would get red carpet immigration treatment even if the CIA wasn’t involved

I guess we will never know that because CIA is indeed involved and we can't have an alternative reality :)

He was given a green card as a "prominent educator" despite not having a degree himself. Anyone who's been through the US immigration wringer knows the process is very strict, and prima facie Gülen was not eligible.

The only similar case that springs to mind is the maid of the former Indian vice-consul in NY's maid:

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/maids-fami...

That also stinks to high heaven, and created a serious diplomatic incident with India.

* What the West was supposed to do? Invade Turkey? *

Apply economic and political pressure. Threaten their standing in NATO? Stall their admission to the EU?

They did all that but Turkey is also a powerful country and important ally.

EU can stall Turkey's admission in the EU and they did that however they also need Turkey to tackle the refugee crisis, Russia and other issues.

EU got to the brink of collapse with 1 million Syrian refugees, Turkey is hosting 5 million of them. EU and Erdogan got a deal, EU turns blind eye to some of Erdogan's stuff and Erdogan takes back all the refugees that EU sends back.

Similar agreements are in place with the USA. US lowers the heat under Erdogan and Turkey keeps the peace in Kabul. Stuff like that.

> EU got to the brink of collapse with 1 million Syrian refugees

That's overblown. Support for the EU is the highest for a decade and close to all time highs. Brexit seems to be proving something of a cautionary lesson.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/11/17/majorities-in-...

https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/2532

Now the support is strong, it wasn’t as strong in 2016 when refugees were marching in Europe and EU’s proposed solution for the refugees was to distribute them evenly to all states.

EU managed to sign(actually, re negotiate the one signed in 2013 that Turkey no longer wanted) a send back deal with Turkey, now it’s all good.

> EU got to the brink of collapse with 1 million Syrian refugees (...)

That's quite the extraordinary claim. Can you offer any extraordinary evidence that supports your claim? Because from what I've gathered, it barely holds any bearing with reality.

Yes, check Brexit and Marie Le Pen, politics in Poland, Hungary, Germany back in 2016. The refugee crisis was a central theme back then and anti-EU politics managed to gain significant grounds thanks to it. In UK, they even passed the mark narrowly and left the EU.

Sure, the refugees are never the only EU issue but the 2016 crisis pushed EU to its limits and even chopped of part of it. That's why EU was at the bring of collapse and if it continued there was as strong probability that anti-EU politics would prevail in other(than UK) EU states too.

One country left the EU and was made an example. Britain is worse off for it and didn't gain anything. The entire world had the pendulum swing to conservative governments, including the US which had even less refugees at the border.

I don't appease bigots. We are going to see many more refugees within our lifetime and the "1st world" cannot ignore the problem forever by sending them to different poor countries.

It's not the number of refugees that the EU can't handle, it's the fact that they're not white, english-speaking christians. We can bullshit around that, but statistically refugees commit fewer crimes and attain higher education in larger numbers than native-born citizens.

Germany, to give an example I can speak to, has a fertility rate around 1.5. Quite frankly most of the EU could really use the new blood if they could only get over the fact that those people weren't born on magical "EU soil"

You mean Brexit, which started 3 years before the Syrian refugee crisis and Marie Le Pen, whose support numbers moved from 17.8% to 21.3% after the Syrian refugees? That's your "major fracturing"? Meanwhile Poland and Hungary have been moving to a far right dictatorship pretty steadily.

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