Saturday, July 16, 2016

Saudi regime and the Turkish coup

There are factions within Saudi Arabia and the Ikhwan faction is not dead.  Oddly--unlike in the UAE--the Ikhwan faction is permitted to operate and function.  The best representative of the views of the ruling faction of Muhammad bin Salman is clearly Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat, which is owned by sons of King Salman.  For many weeks, it has been taking a clearly anti-Erdogan line.  They have been criticizing him and mocking him on a variety of matters, and they were quick to underline the statement by the Turkish prime minister about relations with Syria (and they actually distorted the words of the prime minister to make him sound like he was calling for normalization with Bashshar, which he never said).  The distorted words of Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat were later carried by Arab media (not by Qatari media obviously) and were regurgitated later by Western media (as usual in recent years).  So the Qatari regime solidly supports Erdogan while UAE and Saudi Arabia oppose Erdogan and the Ikhwan.  Yesterday, the reaction of Al-Arabiyya (the news station of Muhammad bin Salman) was initially enthusiastic and some tools of the Saudi regime also were celebratory in their reaction.  Al-Arabiyya (and Arabic Sky news which represents the views of the UAE--don't you like those Arabic branches of Western media outlets which serve as advocates for Gulf regimes, just as Arabic Huffington Post is now a crude advocate for the Qatari regime) was quite enthusiastic at first and they were also among the first to claim falsely that Erdogan sought asylum in Germany.  One news presenter of Al-Arabiyya even said "unfortunately" the coup failed.  This Ikhwan Saudi professor (who is widely followed by young Saudis) criticizes and deconstructs Al-Arabiyya daily, and yesterday he refuted and monitored the coverage of Al-Arabiyya. Take a look.  Do we have evidence that the coup plotters had contacts with foreign intelligence services? Not yet.