1980 In Turkey the commander of the stay-behind army Counter-Guerrilla, General Kenan Evren, and the Grey Wolves, Turkey’s Gladio unit, initiated yet another successful military coup to seize control of the government.7 Like Italy, Turkey remained of pivotal concern to Gladio during the Cold War. It guarded one-third of NATO’s total borders with Warsaw Pact countries and maintained the largest armed forces in Europe. Knowing that a Communist takeover of Turkey would be catastrophic, the Gladio forces, at the instigation of the CIA, opened fire on a rally of a million trade union supporters in
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