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Friday, April 21, 2017

Turkey Could Start a Global Meltdown - By Nick Giambruno

Dozens of renegade commandos in three Black Hawk helicopters swooped in on the president’s holiday residence.
Their mission was to capture him—or more likely, to kill him.
The commandoes engaged in a fierce gun battle with the president’s bodyguards, killing a number of them.
The president, however, was nowhere to be found. He’d been tipped off and made it safely to his private jet, cheating death by mere minutes.
When the renegade soldiers learned of his escape, they commandeered a couple of F-16 fighter jets and sent them to shoot down the presidential jet.
To escape the rebel F-16s, the president’s pilots hid their aircraft’s identity by altering its transponder signal, making it “look” like a civilian passenger jet.
The confused rebel F-16s ran out of fuel and had to land before they figured out what had happened.
This story sounds like something out of a Tom Clancy novel. But it actually happened last summer in Turkey. The failed military coup d’Ă©tat killed over 290 people.
Today, Turkey is at the epicenter of many crises destabilizing the world…
·         The migrant crisis in Europe
·         The ongoing carnage in Iraq and Syria
·         The battle with ISIS
·         The Kurdish conflict
·         The new Cold War with Russia
Turkey is one giant powder keg, and the fuse is already lit.
When the next global crisis explodes, Turkey—which straddles Europe and Asia—will likely be involved. It has more tripwires for a global meltdown than any other place in the world.
In the coming weeks, Turkey may also play a big role in the collapse of the world’s largest economy.
You see, the EU has harshly criticized Turkey’s response to the failed coup. This has not endeared them to the Turkish government.
It’s actually incredibly stupid. (And by stupid I mean exactly that—an unwitting tendency toward self-destruction.)
That’s because Turkey could quickly and easily flood Europe with more unwelcome migrants.
The migrant crisis is the most explosive political issue on the Continent right now. It played a key role in the Brexit vote. And it’s a political accelerant for anti-EU parties gaining traction throughout Europe, including Marine Le Pen’s Front National party in France.
It’s a simple relationship. The more migrants that arrive in Europe, the more popular anti-EU political parties become, and the weaker the EU gets.
This is where Turkey holds the key to the EU’s future…
Turkey is a major transit point for migrants headed to Europe. The Turkish government doesn’t want these migrants to stay in Turkey. So it has little reason to stop them from leaving for Europe.
This gives Turkey leverage with the EU. The Turks have essentially said, “Give us what we want or we’ll open the floodgates.”
What the Turks want is a lot of money.
Last year, Brussels partially gave in to the blackmail—to the tune of $6 billion. In return, the Turks agreed to stop migrants from illegally entering Europe.
This arrangement worked for a while. But recent tensions between the EU and Turkey have reached a boiling point.
The Turkish government has warned the EU. If Brussels walks away from its part of the deal, the Turks will, too.
Specifically, the Turkish government has threatened to flood Europe with migrants… just in time for France’s presidential election on April 23.
This election could lead to the end of the euro and the EU itself. Ultimately, it could trigger a global financial meltdown of historic proportions.
The Financial Times explains what could happen if an anti-euro populist party wins and causes the collapse of the EU:
It would probably lead to the most violent economic shock in history, dwarfing the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008 and the 1929 Wall Street crash.
If Turkey sends a new wave of migrants into Europe just before this key election, it will help seal the EU’s fate.
Doug Casey and I (Nick Giambruno) went to Turkey not long ago. It’s the latest of many spots we’ve visited with literal blood in the streets.
We put our boots on the ground in the same area where rebel soldiers nearly assassinated Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president.
I think there’s a good chance Turkey will flood Europe with migrants before France’s April 23 election. This would virtually ensure an anti-EU win in France—and kill the EU itself… triggering an unprecedented global financial crisis far worse than 2008.
Of course, when there’s a crisis—especially one this catastrophic—most people only see danger. But Doug Casey and I see opportunity.
Reprinted with permission from International Man.

Nick is Doug Casey’s globetrotting companion and is the Senior Editor of Casey Research's International Man.
Copyright © 2017 Casey Research, LLC
Previous article by Nick Giambruno: The EU’s Collapse Is Imminent