0:02

This is a preview of an

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episode from our new Patreon only

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show Skeleton Key. It's

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focused on the real threat of contemporary

0:11

far right militancy all over

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the world. To listen

0:15

to this series go to patreon.com/popular

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front, sign up, go to the

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collections tab and you'll see it

0:22

there. Skeleton Key, all episodes

0:24

are there. Gray

0:27

wolves, also known as

0:29

Boskerts, neo-fascist,

0:31

Turkish militancy, but also kind

0:34

of a legitimate organization there.

0:37

Who are these people? What is

0:39

the gray wolves? So the gray

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wolves are inextricable

0:43

from modern Turkish nationalism

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and particularly ultra nationalism.

0:49

Turkey has a very long and complicated

0:51

history of left

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right conflict that goes in the modern era

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I should say after the fall of the

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Ottoman Empire and the founding of the modern

0:59

Turkish Republic in 1923. Part

1:03

of the mission of the, part of the work

1:06

of the early Turkish Republic, it

1:09

was establishing the foundation

1:11

of a quote unquote Turkish identity that

1:13

work that had already started under the

1:17

nationalist regime that took over right before the

1:19

fall of the Ottoman Empire during the first

1:21

world war. The Young Turks, the

1:24

Ottoman Empire was a polyglot

1:26

empire to say the least.

1:28

It was comprised of people

1:31

who came from all

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over Eastern Europe, Anatolia,

1:35

the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant,

1:37

North Africa, and that really

1:40

informed the kind of ruling

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class of the

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way that the Ottoman bureaucracy was set up

1:46

in the sense of nationalism. It was very,

1:48

very, very polyglot and in the late 19th,

1:51

early 20th century, those

1:54

nationalist sentiments, the independence,

1:56

the war of independence with Greece,

1:59

the independence. the independent

2:01

movement in Armenia that caused

2:03

a lot of clashes

2:05

within the Empire. I mean, it's

2:07

the prefiguration for the Armenian genocide

2:11

during the First World War. And

2:13

those sentiments, that sort of sense

2:16

of division, those conflicts really

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perpetuated into, they perpetuated themselves

2:20

into the Republican era,

2:22

particularly after the Second World

2:27

War. The

2:29

Turkey was a neutral country during the Second

2:31

World War, but, and received

2:34

a lot of influence both before

2:36

the Second World War from the

2:39

fascist states in Italy and Germany

2:41

and Spain, because they were strong

2:43

nation-building enterprises that built up their

2:45

economies quickly, and also from

2:47

the Soviet Union, which is,

2:50

was in the form of the

2:52

USSR and still is in the form of Russia

2:54

and the post-Soviet states, a neighbor to Turkey right

2:56

across the Black Sea. The USSR

2:58

was also the first country to recognize the

3:01

Turkish Republic, so there was a lot of

3:03

left-wing influence in Turkey,

3:05

a lot of Marxist influence. And

3:07

the kind of, and the same goes for the flip

3:09

side of the coin with the fascists, and

3:12

that kind of conflict, that

3:15

ideological rubric, plus

3:17

the influence of the American

3:20

and British and Western Europeans

3:22

post-World War II, really

3:25

sets up the kind of

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left-right dichotomy in Turkey

3:30

that the Great Wolves are really part of.

3:32

So long story short is that in

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the post-World War II era, Turkey

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was incorporated into the North

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American Treaty Organization, NATO, as

3:44

a, before West Germany was,

3:46

it was seen as a key

3:48

bulwark against Soviet influence in the

3:50

region, because it's right

3:52

up against the Soviets and, you

3:55

know, the American Station, Nike missile

3:57

bases in Turkey, Turkey side. signed

4:00

up a lot. They signed defense, common

4:02

defense treaties with NATO. The Americans signed

4:04

in the late 50s

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a defense accord that

4:09

essentially guaranteed Turkey's both

4:11

their external protection against foreign foes

4:13

and also set up a rubric

4:15

for the Americans to intervene in

4:18

internal security. Big

4:20

picture, right? Now we drill down. So

4:24

there were quite

4:26

a few. Turkey was a

4:28

neutral country in World War II and they

4:30

had quite a few ties to Germany. There

4:32

was even an official liaison

4:35

to the Wehrmacht from the Turkish

4:38

military forces. This guy is

4:40

going to be quite important. His

4:43

name was Ruzi

4:45

Nazar, right? He was

4:47

a Uzbek national

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who formerly served,

4:53

he was president of the Russian army, then taken

4:56

in captive, flipped

4:58

over, served in a Wehrmacht volunteer

5:00

division for people from Central

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Asia, the Turkic division, and

5:05

then became part of something called

5:08

the Anti-Bolshevik Nationalist Organization in Munich

5:10

once he demobilized after

5:12

the Second World War. The

5:14

Americans used him unsurprisingly as an asset

5:18

and in one Munich he

5:20

became close friends with people like

5:22

Stepan Bandera, Jaroslav Sesko, you

5:25

know who those people are. They're the

5:27

Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, they're neo-Nazis. It's kind of

5:29

the world that they all flowed in.

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So while he was in Munich, Nazar

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met someone named Alvar Slan

5:37

Kürkös, who was a Turkish

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army officer, the former

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attaché to the Wehrmacht in Ankara. So

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he was the connection to Ankara

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and the Wehrmacht

5:49

in Germany during Hitler's reign. And

5:52

those two met and

5:55

Turkish was

5:57

involved in setting up

5:59

what is called a Gladio

6:01

unit in Turkey. Gladio

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was a stay behind paramilitary

6:06

organization, quasi-military organization that the Americans

6:08

and Western Europeans set up

6:10

throughout Europe and Eastern and Western

6:13

Europe in the case of a

6:15

Soviet invasion and takeover of that

6:17

country. So whereby they'd have

6:19

a guerrilla force ready-made to stand

6:22

up and fight back against the,

6:25

you know, godless communists

6:27

and all that shit. And in

6:29

Turkey, the name of that organization

6:31

was the Sefer Birlik Taktik Kurulu,

6:34

which is the basically like special tactical,

6:37

special tactical, excuse me, tactical

6:39

mobilization group. Now, they

6:42

were in Turkey, these organizations,

6:44

which were made up of our own. That

6:48

was a preview from our

6:50

Patreon-only show, Skeleton Key. If

6:53

you wanna hear the rest of

6:55

it and get the other episodes

6:57

one a month, go to patreon.com/popularfront.

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Sign up, go to the collections

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tab, and you'll see where to

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find it there. patreon.com/popularfront. ♪

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