The Deep State

Trump's Defeat by the Deep State

• Atlantic article on John McEntee as personnel director (2021)

The Susurluk scandal in Turkey

The Turkish word for "deep state" is derin devlet. Americans only recently became interested in the Deep State; Turks have a longer history of concern.

In 1996, Turkish police investigated a car crash. Inside the offending car, they found:

1. The deputy police chief of Istanbul
2. A notorious mafia leader with ties to the Grey Wolves militia group
3. A member of Parliament
4. A beauty queen
5. A fake passport linked to the man who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II
6. "Numerous" guns, including two submachine guns
7. Drugs
8. Several thousand US dollars

This was a remarkable set of people and things to find in the same car! I can’t quite follow all of the threads of what later became known as the Susurluk scandal, but they apparently involved drug smuggling, terrorism, human rights abuses, several assassinations, Iranian spies, a coup against the government of Azerbaijan, and "a number of Susurluk investigators [dying] in suspicious car accidents curiously similar to the Susurluk car crash itself".

Anyhow, this led to people thinking maybe something suspicious was going on in Turkey.

• "Book Review: The New Sultan| Summary and commentary on Soner Cagaptay's "The New Sultan: Erdogan And The Crisis Of Modern Turkey," Astral Codex Ten (2021).

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