EXCLUSIVE TO THE SPOTLIGHT
By Marin Mann

December 25, 2000

The U.S. government is planning another American taxpayer-fundeed bailout of the corrupt and thieving financial market in Turkey.

In coming weeks, at the direction of Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, backed by the full faith, credit and hard earned money of American taxpayers, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will pony up a whopping $10.5 billion to refloat one of the most corrupt and larcenous financial markets in the world: the foundering Turkish banking system.
"To get a candid picture of this scandal, you only have to see the videotape of banker Yahya Murat Demirel, nephew of Turkish President Suleiman Demirel, who cleaned out the major Ankara bank he managed, but forgot about the security cameras overhead that showed him emptying the vaults of his own bank and staggering as he walked out dragging two large suitcases stuffed with stolen cash," related Ranan Khalish, New York bureau chief of a major Turkish daily newspaper.
This fall, the Turkish government had to confront the fact that the 10 largest money-centers of its national payments system had been looted to the bone by the "mobsters and other assorted criminals" who ran them, as the London Economist, the leading weekly of the world's financial markets, put it at year's end.
"A 1994 law, under which the state fully guarantees all bank deposits, made banking one of the most lucrative sectors for crooked (Turkish) entreprenuers with influential political friends," reported The Economist.
To understand waht happened in Turkey, one must merely look at Indonesia, says Dr. Roand Berthold, an econonist specializing in Asian monetary policy.
In 1997, mired in hundreds of corrupt deals and contracts involving, for the most part, greedy U.S. corporations that have never been identified, the Indonesian government saw its currency raided and devalued by a syndicate of New York financierss headed by Billionaire speculator George Soros.

Soros and Summers are stalwarts of the secret Bilderberg group, an annual gathering of the world's elite.
Indonesian strongman Suharto turned to the IMF and begged for a bailout. He got it-some $14 billion for starters-but under corrosive and subversive terms that rapidly destroyed his regime, his nation's economy and its territorial integrity.
Today, Indonesia is listed by one of its main lenders, the World Bank, as "the most corrupt country in the world" while it perilously teeters on the brink of civil war.
But Malaysia's leader, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, confronted by the same disaster, took a different path. He forthrightly denounced Wall Street currency raiders who had attacked and undermined his nation's payment system as a "gang of Jewish speculators led by the criminal George Soros," and refused the IMF's offer of bailout.
Instead, the Malaysian government introduced strict and firmly nationist curbs on short-term foreign "casino" investments.
"The herd {of international financiers}will destroy you, Dr. Mahathir," sneered The New York Times. But its prediction was wrong.
Today, unlike Indonesia, Malaysia can boast a stable government under Mahathir, as well as a stong and growing economy.
With regard to the massive Turkish bailout, "the real question is, once again: why should American taxpayers make good the losses casused by thieving foreign financiers?" asked Berthold.
The answer is that, in return for their "license to steal," Turkey's rulers have done the bidding of Washington and its power elites. The clique of corrupt generals who dominate the Turkish government has brutally repressed their nation's majority Islamic movement and disbanded its political parties.
In recent years, defying the will of the people, the Turkish generals have concluded a series of military, security and commercial pacts with Israel, moves that greatly enhanced the persecution of Islamists and the pervasive corruption that has now brought this large nation to the brink of economic collapse.
"These blatant abuses-foreigners looting their own banks in the expectation that the IMF, backed by the U.S. government, will refinance them-will continue until Washington finds a congressional leader with the courage to stand up and demand a public answer to the question, why are we doing this?" continued Berthold.