Turkish False Flags and Invasion that Almost Was

David Boyajian

Turkey seems fond of so-called ‘false flag’ operations. In 1955, for example, the Turkish government covertly bombed its own consulate in Thessaloniki, Greece and blamed it on Greeks. The following day, Turkey stage-managed massive anti-Greek riots in Istanbul that killed over a dozen Christians and caused hundreds of millions in damage.

Fast forward to March 2014.   A leaked audiotape caught Turkish officials plotting to stage ‘false flag’ military attacks on their own territory and blame them on Syrians.  Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, General Yaşar Gürel, and Intelligence chief Hakan Fidan planned to use the attacks as an excuse to invade Syria.  The title of this article could easily apply to that plot.

To close observers of the Caucasus, however, it could also describe a failed covert Turkish plan to attack Armenia two decades ago and turn the geopolitics of the region upside down.

$6.2 Billion Siphoned Out from Armenia Between 2002 and 2011

More than $6.2 billion was siphoned out of Armenia from 2002 through 2011 as a result of government corruption, tax evasion and other illegal activity, according to an anti-graft group based in Washington.

The watchdog Global Financial Integrity (GFI) cited the figure, worth nearly twice the Armenian foreign debt, in a report on illicit capital outflows around the world during that period. It claimed that developing countries lost almost $6 trillion in cash as a result. It defined illicit capital as "capital that is illegally earned, transferred, or utilized and are unrecorded, unlike broad capital flight which consists of a mix of licit and illicit capital."

Eduardo Eurnekian is Armenia's Largest Foreign Investor

The volume of foreign investments in Armenia in the first half of 2013 comprised $293.1 million, showing a 34.7 percent decrease as compared with the same period last year, National Statistical Service said.