STRATEGY OF TENSION IN ISTANBUL

There was a minor incident in Istanbul today when three armed gunmen attacked the police at the entrance to the American consulate compound. The NYTimes is as good a rag as any to give you the basic rundown. The media lapdogs are dutifully echoing the straw man of the US embassy in Ankara, Ross "If I Only Had A Brain" Wilson, in blaming this little shoot-out on Al-Qaeda.

However, an item from the AP tells me that something else entirely is going on and it doesn't have too much to do with Al-Q:

NTV television and Dogan news agency identified the attackers as Erkan Kargin, 26, and Raif Topcil, 20, from the southeastern city of Bitlis and Bulent Cinar, 23, from the eastern city of Igdir. Police would not confirm their identities, but Interior Minister Besir Atalay said two of the assailants had criminal records.

Why, oh why do I smell Turkish Hezbollah? Could it be because the gunmen were recruited from The Southeast, where the AKP has been attempting to resurrect the Turkish Hezbollah? Turkish media is proposing that the gunmen were members of the IBDA-C
(İslami Büyükdoğu Akıncılar Cephesi; Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front) and I wasted too much time reading various articles with headlines that were too promising compared to what information was actually delivered. Basically, there are suggestions of a similar ideology between IBDA-C and Al-Q but nothing that substantially, well, substantiates a deeper relationship that would justify equating IBDA-C with Al-Q. It does, however, make great propaganda copy for the lapdog media."
Rasti