Istanbul blast may be false flag attack: Commentator

Press TV interviewed Mark Glenn, a political commentator in Idaho, to discuss a huge bomb explosion that hit a crowded shopping district in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Do you think that the Turkish government has bit a little more off than it could chew when dealing with basically trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and that we are seeing some of the repercussions of supporting terrorism actually come back to haunt the government and the people in Turkey?

Glenn: Yes, you just stated it very clearly and I think it is infallible in its analysis which is that this is a case of simple cause and effect. It has been established now for many years that Turkey has been actively supporting these very dangerous groups with arms, with shelter, with logistics and we have an old saying here in the West that if you play with fire you are going to get burned and clearly this is the case which is now Turkey has raised this, has created this fire that it hoped it was going to be used to destroy Syria and in the process that Erdogan was going to be able to become the new Sultan of the new Ottoman Empire … and now it is coming back to burn him.

But I think the other question that we have to ask in this case is whether or not this was a self-inflicted wound.  We know for a fact that this is a tactic that is used by especially governments that are closely aligned with United States and Israel, it is known as false flag terrorism, and given the fact that Erdogan is so unpopular in his country right now and the fact that he is absolutely bristling with rage over what the Russians have achieved in Syria, that whether or not that this was done by the Turkish government itself in order to get … public opinion around the government.

Press TV: Why do you think, we look at the situation in Turkey, why would the Turkish government basically do this to themselves? I am not talking about the false flag, possible false flag operation that you have just mentioned, but in general we look at getting involved in the Syrian situation when of course they were close allies and had pretty good relations with the Syrians, why would they basically shoot themselves in the foot to begin with?  

Glenn: Yes, that is a very good question. My personal theory is that the West and Israel, they do a very complete and thorough study of people’s personalities that  they are going to be working with and having studied Erdogan in particular, they understood that this was a very ambitious man.

The Turks, they lost their Ottoman Empire after World War I. This was an empire that existed for 400 years, this was a great loss to them and I am sure that having studied Erdogan’s personality, they said he has certain weaknesses in his character that we can exploit.

And the West - what I perceived to be – they made a deal. They said, listen, we rebuild this thing that was destroyed a century, the Ottoman Empire, you are going to be the head of it. We are going to need you to play the role here. In order to do this we are going to have to get rid of these various leaders including Assad who are going to stand in the way of recreating this Ottoman Empire and I think that this was the main reason why they were able to seduce Erdogan into going with … suicidal tendencies that are destroying his country now.

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