Turkey

There’s really one supreme element of this story that you must keep in view at all times: a society (i.e. an economy + a polity = a political economy) based on debt that will never be paid back is certain to crack up. Its institutions will stop functioning. Its business activities will seize up. Its leaders will be demoralized. Its denizens will act up and act out. Its wealth will evaporate. Given where we are in human history - the moment of techno-industrial over-reach - this crackup will not be easy to recover from. Things have gone too far in too many ways. The coming crackup will re-set the terms of civilized life to levels largely pre-techno-industrial. How far backward remains to be seen.

Important pillars of the bull case evaporated throughout 2015. Global price pressures weakened, the global Credit backdrop deteriorated and the global economy decelerated. The huge bets on central bank policies left markets at high risk for abrupt reversals and trade unwinds – 2015 The Year of the Erratic Crowded Trade. Indeed, a global bear market commenced yet most remain bullish. Serious and objective analysts would view this ominously.

The deeper we dig into the story of Dubai's vaporized gold, the more skeletons just tumble out of the closet on what may be the world's biggest gold smuggling ring ever, one involving not just Turkey and Iran, but the mother of all gold smuggling: China itself...

Back in August, Nationalist opposition leader Devlet Bahceli took to Twitter to call Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a "locally produced Hitler, Stalin or Qaddafi." While Bahceli probably meant that as an insult, Erdogan seems to agree.

The seventh anniversary of Zero Hedge is just around the corner, and so, for the seventh year in a row we continue our tradition of summarizing what our readers found to be the most relevant, exciting, and actionable news of the year, determined by the number of page views. We bring you the articles that you, dear reader, found to be the most interesting in the past 365 days.

According to a piece published earlier this month by Spiegel, ISIS obtains the satellite technology it needs to disseminate its propaganda in Antakya. In addition to reinforcing the link between the group and Turkey, this also raises an interesting question: why are the satellite service providers not doing anything to stop the group from spreading its message?

Earlier in 2015, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he found it difficult to understand what Russia was doing in Syria, since "it does not even border Syria." By that logic, Turkey should not be "doing anything" in the Palestinian territories, Somalia, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan or any of the non-bordering lands into which its neo-Ottoman impulses have pushed it.

In 2015, the iron fist of power clamped down on humanity, from warfare to terrorism to surveillance, police brutality, and corporate hegemony. The environment was repeatedly decimated, the health of citizens was constantly put at risk, and the justice system and media alike were perverted to serve the interests of the powers that be. However, while 2015 was discouraging for more reasons than most of us can count, many of the year’s most underreported stories evidence not only a widespread pattern that explicitly reveals the nature of power, but pushback from human beings worldwide on a path toward a better world.

“The tanks fire all day and we have nowhere left to hide,”...

The Muslim population of Britain surpassed 3.5 million in 2015 to become around 5.5% of the overall population of 64 million. In real terms, Britain has the third-largest Muslim population in the European Union, after France, then Germany. Islam and Islam-related issues were omnipresent in Britain during 2015, and can be categorized into five broad themes: 1) Islamic extremism and the security implications of British jihadists in Syria and Iraq; 2) the continuing spread of Islamic Sharia law in Britain; 3) the sexual exploitation of British children by Muslim gangs; 4) Muslim integration into British society; and 5) the failures of British multiculturalism.

"Following Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet striking the Islamic State (IS), it is undeniable that Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan supports jihad terrorism in Syria. IS exports oil via Turkey and terrorists of IS, al-Qaeda, and other jihad groups transit the border."

State Department spokesperson John Kirby is raising eyebrows after he released a reap of 2015 “success stories” in which he credits the United States for bringing “peace” and “security” to Syria and “stepping up” to help the country’s people at a difficult time. Using the hashtag #2015in5words to highlight last year’s wins, Kirby boasted: “Bringing Peace, Security to Syria.”

Even as Islamic State oil continues to flow from Syria and Iraq through Turkey, Ankara says it's cracking down on ISIS sleeper cells. In the latest example, Turkey has arrested two men the government says were planning a suicide attack on New Year's Eve in the country's capital.

"The bottom line is that people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security, and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures.  This applies to foreign leaders as well." - Barack Obama, January 17, 2014

According to eKathimerini, Greek and Turkish jets just got into a dogfight over the Aegean Sea on Tuesday when Ankara's warplanes violated Greek airspace nine times. Two of the Turkish planes "were armed."