Tag Archives: Erdogan

The Real Reason Why US-Turkey Relations Have Hit an All-Time Low, by Jim Carey

Posted on August 13, 2018 | Leave a comment

This is an excellent survey and analysis of the US-Turkey relationship. From Jim Carey at theantimedia.com:

Over the past week, US-Turkey relations have hit an all-time low, but how did these two allies end up at odds with each other?

If you’ve been watching the news over the past week you may think the current hostility between Washington and Ankara is about the US pastor, Andrew Brunson. Brunson, who has been in police custody or under house arrest in Turkey since October 2016, has now apparently become a high priority for the Trump Regime.

But why did this take so long? Vice President Mike Pence has known about Brunson since day one of the administration thanks to his ties to the US evangelical community but neither he or the President have previously expressed this level of outrage. There have already been low key talks between Washington and Ankara in the past concerning the return of Brunson to the US, but what the Western media isn’t reporting now is how these talks to return a US national fit into the bigger geopolitical picture of US-Turkey relations.

Andrew Brunson and Fethullah Gulen: “A Pastor for a Pastor”

Behind the general request by the US to return Andrew Brunson is a several-year-long process involving several closed-door meetings about the pastor between US and Turkish officials. During all of these meetings, the US demand was the same as it is now, but they weren’t the only one who wanted something out of the negotiations.

You aren’t hearing much about Ankara’s demands right now but Turkish President Recep Erdogan has previously said he would be willing to return the US pastor in exchange for Turkey’s own expat “pastor,” Fethullah Gulen. Erdogan made this perfectly clear at a rally for Turkish police officers in March, saying that the trade should be a no-brainer since “the one that we have [in our hands – Brunson] is being tried, the one you have [in your hands – Gulen] is not being tried.”

Gulen is the exiled cleric and former-Erdogan ally alleged to be behind a failed coup in July 2016 with supposed US assistance. Turkey has been asking for the return of Gulen since before the dust even settled after the coup attempt but the US has so far refused to extradite the charter-school magnate and religious leader.

To continue reading: The Real Reason Why US-Turkey Relations Have Hit an All-Time Low

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Trump’s Turkey Tariffs Are Retaliation For A Major Military Escalation, by Duane Norman

Posted on August 11, 2018 | Leave a comment

Trump’s tariffs on Turkey may be about a lot more than the American pastor being held by Turkey. From Duane Norman at fmshooter.com:

The Trump administration recently levied additional tariffs against Turkey, with Trump himself tweeting about how “Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!”:

The Wall Street Journal was just one among many mainstream media voices that suggested the tariffs are retaliation for Turkey’s refusal to release US Pastor Andrew Brunson…

During high-level talks in Washington, U.S. and Turkish officials were unable to produce a breakthrough in an impasse that has pushed Turkey’s economy into turmoil, the officials said. Turkey’s currency has plunged amid the crisis amid fears that the U.S. could take tougher steps before the standoff is resolved.

The Trump administration is now positioned to impose new penalties on Turkey for refusing to free Andrew Brunson, an evangelical North Carolina pastor who was detained in Turkey as part of a sweeping crackdown after a failed July 2016 coup.

…but a much more plausible reason for the tariffs is due to Turkish threats to raid Incirlik Air Base, the major US air base in Turkey:

The 60-page criminal complaint also calls for Turkish officials to shut down U.S. military flights from Incirlik, a portion of which the U.S. Air Force has sole control over, and execute a search warrant at the facility to look for additional evidence. So far, the Turkish government does not appear to have acted on any of the charges.

The complaint specifically calls for the arrest of 11 individuals, but it’s not clear if any of them are still assigned to Incirlik. The first two are U.S. Air Force Colonels John Walker and Michael Manion, who were, respectively, the commander and vice commander of the 39th Air Base Wing at Incirlik in 2016.

Incirlik is of pivotal importance to US military interests, and not just for its role in basing/launching aircraft involved in Syria and all across the middle east – the base also houses “as many as” 50 B-61 nuclear bombs:

According to open-source estimates, the United States may store as many as 50 B61 gravity bombs at Incirlik. Those make up one-third of the approximately 150 nuclear weapons thought to be housed in five nations in Europe as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements.

A USAF F-16 testing the latest B61-12 variable-yield thermonuclear bomb

To continue reading: Trump’s Turkey Tariffs Are Retaliation For A Major Military Escalation

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As Erdogan Cements His Hold Over Turkey’s Economy, Global Investors Begin to Panic, by Don Quijones

Posted on July 11, 2018 | Leave a comment

There have always been rulers who thought they could stop basic economic forces. Turkey is ruled by just such a deluded clown. From Don Quijones at wolfstreet.com:

His Toxic Mix: destruction of the lira and a mountain of foreign-currency debt.

By Don Quijones, Spain, UK, & Mexico, editor at WOLF STREET.

Two big European banks, Italy’s Unicredit and Spain’s BBVA, will be following current events in Turkey extremely closely. The two lenders have the biggest exposure to the country, which is one of the world’s fastest growing emerging economies. But investing there is an increasingly risk business.

Turkey continues to grow at high speed, expanding by 7.4% last year. But that growth has been fueled by reckless public and private-sector borrowing, much of it at the insistence of Turkey’s strong-arm leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey’s overall stock of private sector debt has grown from 33% of GDP in 2007 to 70% today. Due to the long-collapsing lira, much of this debt is in foreign currencies. As of the end of April, Turkish private sector companies owed more than $245 billion in foreign-currency debt, or nearly one-third the size of the country’s overall economy.

There’s already growing pressure on Turkish banks to reorganize foreign-currency denominated corporate loans as companies struggle to service them. At least $6.1 billion of loans taken out by energy companies are being restructured or refinanced, Bloomberg reports. If this trend continues, it could trigger a wave of bankruptcies that could leave financial institutions and taxpayers staring at massive losses.

Turkey is one of the three most vulnerable large emerging markets at present, alongside Argentina and Ukraine, according to rating agency Fitch. For its part, The New York Times warned that “in a global economy increasingly plagued by worries — from an unfolding trade war to higher oil prices — Turkey may present the most immediate cause for alarm”:

The country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has dominated national life for 15 years, was sworn in again on Monday following a re-election victory that came with extraordinary new powers. He has wielded his influence to deliver relentless economic growth through unrestrained borrowing, lifting debt levels to alarming heights. And the additional authority he has been granted is expected to further test the limits of economic reality.

Before Erdogan’s reelection at the end of June BBVA’s chairman Francisco González told CNBC that he thought — or at least hoped — that whoever was elected president would do whatever was necessary to stabilize Turkey’s overheating economy. The exact opposite is happening.

To continue reading: As Erdogan Cements His Hold Over Turkey’s Economy, Global Investors Begin to Panic

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Turkey and India Have Leverage in Trump’s Iran Sanction War, by Tom Luongo

Posted on July 2, 2018 | Leave a comment

Trump is not going to get universal compliance with his sanctions against Iran. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:

Both India and Turkey have said they will defy President Trump’s call for them to stop buying Iranian oil once the U.S. reapplies sanctions in November.  That isn’t really news.

Both of them defied the Obama administration in 2012, albeit in different way. Turkey changed its banking rules to monetize gold and used its gold reserves as a means to launder Iranian oil payments for third parties through its banking system.

India bypassed cutting off Iran from the U.S. dollar by beginning a goods-for-oil swap program.

Today, however, the geopolitical background is far different.  Today, Iran can and does list its oil for sale in Shanghai’s futures market payable in Chinese Yuan.  Turkey can recycle its Yuan it receives from its large trade deficit with China to up its purchases of Iranian oil if need be.

But, more importantly, both India and Turkey have geopolitical freedoms they didn’t have in 2012.  I have covered the Turkey angle on this at length.  India, on the other hand, I haven’t.

Iran has become Turkey’s biggest oil importer.

Turkey, a NATO ally, is dependent on imports for almost all of its energy needs. In the first four months of this year, Turkey bought 3.077 million tons of crude oil from Iran, almost 55 percent of its total crude supplies, according to data from Turkey’s Energy Market Regulatory Agency (EPDK).

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last year said Turkey was looking to raise the volume of its annual trade with Iran to $30 billion from $10 billion.

And it doesn’t look like this will change with Trump’s sanctions.

With President Erdogan winning re-election he now goes into the NATO Summit with Trump on July 11-12th with a lot of leverage.  Erdogan has openly courted Russia on energy supplies.

It just began construction on its first nuclear power plant being built by Russia which is due to begin generating power by 2023.  But, in the near term, Turkey is in bed with Gazprom on the Turkish Stream pipeline, which is ready to begin the land-based portion.

To continue reading; Turkey and India Have Leverage in Trump’s Iran Sanction War

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Erdogan Scores Another Triumph, by Eric Margolis

Posted on June 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is another tough, authoritarian, nationalist who is leading his country away from the American alliance. From Eric Margolis at lewrockwell.com:

Few phobias run deeper in Europe than the fear and hatred of Turks.  For at least six hundred years, Europe was locked in innumerable wars with first Seljuk, then Ottoman Turks.  My big St Bernard is a descendant of dogs bred to attack Arab and Turkish raiders coming over Switzerland’s St Bernard Pass.

Today, by contrast, there are some 10 million ethnic Turks in Europe, most of whom came in past decades as guest laborers, prized for their hard work, honesty and reliability.

Turkey joined NATO in 1952 at a time when the US dominated the continent and Mideast.  The Turkish armed forces were the second largest in NATO after the US.   Joined at the hip with the US military, the Turkish generals ran the government in Ankara behind a screen of squabbling politicians. The US gave Turkey its marching orders. Turkey’s small but powerful westernized elite was delighted to follow Washington and keep Islam in Turkey handcuffed or exiled to rural areas.

This all changed in 1994 when a young, 40-year old nationalist, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, became a reformist mayor of Istanbul and began cleaning up and modernizing the decrepit metropolis.   After a brief jail term for reading an ancient  Islamic poem, he was released and formed the Justice and Development Party (AK) which is an Islamist Lite party dedicated to democracy guided by Muslims principals of national pride, welfare for the poor and elderly, sharing wealth, supporting fellow Muslims and urging followers to lead lives of moderation.

There was no stopping the dynamic Erdogan, who was a semi-pro footballer before his full-time political career. By 2003, he was elected prime minister by Turkey’s 81 million people and ever since has proved wildly popular with the majority of Turks.  The big city westernized elites in Turkey, who deny their Muslim culture and try to pass for Europeans, bitterly oppose Erdogan and his Islamic allies.

Under Erdogan’s predecessors, the alliance of westernized elites and the military controlled the nation’s media, education, courts, diplomatic corps and big business, all with Washington’s blessing.

To continue reading: Erdogan Scores Another Triumph

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Turkey’s European dream may be over, is the Sultan ready for Eurasia? by Pepe Escobar

Posted on June 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

Turkey may quit trying to be the square Muslim peg in Europe’s round hole. From Pepe Escobar at atimes.com:

Erdogan has lost his parliamentary majority and must now establish a coalition with the far-right Nationalist Action Party; given the latter is anti-Western, the road ahead points in only one direction: Eurasian integration

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan waves to supporters from a balcony at the AK Party headquarters in Ankara, on June 24 as they celebrate him winning five more years in office with sweeping new powers after a decisive election victory. Photo: AFP / Turkish Presidential Press Office / Kayhan Ozer

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan waves to supporters from a balcony at the AK Party headquarters in Ankara, on June 24 as they celebrate him winning five more years in office with sweeping new powers after a decisive election victory. Photo: AFP / Turkish Presidential Press Office / Kayhan Ozer

To the utter despair of stoic defenders of “Western values,” Europe is now condemned to suffer two populist autocracies on its eastern borders: Putin’s Russia and Erdogan’s Turkey.

For the EU’s political leaders, the only accepted narrative is blanket, hysterical condemnation of “illiberal democracies” distorted by personal rule, xenophobia and suppression of free speech. And that also applies to the strongmen in Hungary, Austria, Serbia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

These EU leaders and the institutions that support them – political parties, academia, mainstream media – simply can’t understand how and why their bubble does not reflect what voters really think and feel.

Instead, we have irrelevant intellectuals mourning the erosion of the lofty Western mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission), investing in a philosophical maelstrom of historical and even biblical references to catalog their angst.

They are terrified by so many Darth Vaders – from Putin and Erdogan to Xi and Khamenei. Instead of understanding the new remix to Arnold Toynbee’s original intuition – History is again on the move – they wallow in the mire of The West against The Rest.

They cannot possibly understand the mighty process of Eurasia reconfiguration. And that includes not being able to understand why Recep Tayipp Erdogan is so popular in Turkey.

Sultan and CEO

Profiting from a large turnout of up to 85% and fresh from obtaining 52.5% of the popular vote – thus preventing a run-off – Erdogan is now ready to rule Turkey as a fascinating mix of Sultan and CEO.

Under Turkey’s new presidential arrangement – an Erdogan brainchild – a prime minister is no more, a job Erdogan himself held for three terms before he was elected as president for the first time in 2014.

Erdogan may be able to rule the executive and the judiciary, but that’s far from a given in the legislature.

With 42.5% of the votes and holding 295 seats, Erdogan’s AKP, for the first time in 16 years, lost its parliamentary majority and must now establish a coalition with the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP).

The doomsday interpretation spells out a toxic alliance between intolerant political Islam and fascistic extreme-right – both, of course, hardcore nationalist. Reality though is slightly more nuanced.

To continue reading: Turkey’s European dream may be over, is the Sultan ready for Eurasia?

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How regional rivalries threaten to fuel the fire in Syria and Iran, by James M. Dorsey

Posted on January 31, 2018 | 1 comment

Proxy wars are not over in either Syria or Iraq. This article illustrates why the only way the US is ever going to “win” in the Middle East is to get out. The Middle East is centuries-old rivalries that have seen many outsiders have their heads handed to them. The US is not exempt. From James M. Dorsey at almasdarnews.com:

Turkish allegations of Saudi, Emirati and Egyptian support for the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) threaten to turn Turkey’s military offensive against Syrian Kurds aligned with the PKK into a regional imbroglio.

The threat is magnified by Iranian assertions that low-intensity warfare is heating up in areas of the Islamic republic populated by ethnic minorities, including the Kurds in the northwest and the Baloch on the border with Pakistan.

Taken together, the two developments raise the spectre of a potentially debilitating escalation of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran as well as an aggravation of the eight-month-old Gulf crisis that has pitted Saudi Arabia and its allies against Qatar, which has forged close ties to Turkey.

The United Arab Emirates and Egypt rather than Saudi Arabia have taken the lead in criticizing Turkey’s incursion into Syria designed to remove US-backed Kurds from the countries’ border and create a 30-kilometer deep buffer zone.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said the incursion by a non-Arab state signalled that Arab states would be marginalized if they failed to develop a national security strategy.

Egypt, for its part, condemned the incursion as a “fresh violation of Syrian sovereignty” that was intended to “undermine the existing efforts for political solutions and counter-terrorism efforts in Syria,”

Despite Saudi silence, Yeni Safak, a newspaper closely aligned with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), charged that a $1 billion Saudi contribution to the reconstruction of Raqqa, the now Syrian Kurdish-controlled former capital of the Islamic State, was evidence of the kingdom’s involvement in what it termed a “dirty game.”

To continue reading: How regional rivalries threaten to fuel the fire in Syria and Iran

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Gold dealer’s testimony puts Erdogan on shaky ground, by M. K. Bhadrakumar

Posted on December 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

Turkey is always interesting by virtue of its geography at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is especially interesting now; it may be switching its allegiance from the US and NATO to Russia. A corruption scandal may reach all the way up to Turkish President Erdogan. From M.K. Bhadrakumar at atimes.com:

As on the soccer field in his youth, so in a tumultuous political career spanning four decades: Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has consistently shown his mettle as a fighter who won’t be satisfied with anything short of total victory. But in the battle that is now unfolding around him, and which is besieging him, there isn’t going to be a winner.

What is at stake is survival – the chance to live another day, even if in some ignominy. That much is clear from the opening testimony in a federal courtroom in New York on Wednesday from the Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who allegedly helped Tehran sidestep US sanctions to export oil with the connivance of corrupt Turkish high officials and then to launder the income.

When the principal accused becomes the star witness in a US court, he has possibly struck a deal with the authorities. The remaining ambiguity is with regard to when it was that Zarrab struck the deal – was it when he landed in Miami 18 months ago, ostensibly to show his young son around Disneyland, or before he was spirited out of Turkey to America on the express understanding that he’d get clemency for providing hard evidence to nail Erdogan.

Zarrab explained before the court the elaborate scheme he orchestrated to free “a few billion euros” of Iran’s sanctioned oil using funds deposited in the Turkish state-owned Halkbank which were used to buy gold that was subsequently smuggled to Dubai and sold for cash. (The FBI also nabbed a senior functionary of Halkbank, Hakan Atilla, who is on trial.)

Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab is shown in a court room sketch as he appears in Manhattan federal court in New York. Photo: Reuters / Jane Rosenberg

Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab is shown in a court room sketch as he appears in Manhattan federal court in New York. Photo: Reuters / Jane Rosenberg

Zarrab named a confidant of Erdogan, the former Turkish Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan, as having taken bribes amounting to over US$60 million and also implicated Turkey’s Aktif Bank, which is part of a holding company headed at the time by Erdogan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak (the current energy minister). Zarrab is due to testify again. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg.

To continue reading: Gold dealer’s testimony puts Erdogan on shaky ground

 

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Trump Reportedly Tells Erdogan US Will Cease Arming Syrian Kurds, by Tyler Burden

Posted on November 25, 2017 | Leave a comment

Here’s the money Tweet, from President Trump: “Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!” From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Just after Putin hosted trilateral talks on Syria and the Middle East in Sochi involving Russia, Iran, and Turkey, President Trump spent part of his Friday after Thanksgiving on the phone with Turkey’s Erdogan. While the two discussed Syria and other regional issues, it appears they broached the delicate and contentious topic of US support to Syrian Kurdish fighters (namely, the Kurdish YPG, which forms the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces). The call came amidst a flurry of diplomatic activity over the Middle East driven by the Kremlin, and follows a lengthy Trump-Putin phone call on Tuesday.


Members of the Kurdish YPG, Mint Press

Though the details of the call are still unclear, Trump outlined what was to be generally discussed in a tweet, and said this morning, “Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!”

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!

Though not verified by the US side, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Trump told Erdogan during Friday’s call that the US will cease supplying weapons to the Syrian Kurdish fighters, according to the AP. Turkey has long considered Syrian Kurdish militant groups to be terrorists, and Erdogan reportedly insisted at the Sochi summit that Syrian Kurds be excluded from all negotiations over the future of Syria on the grounds that they have links to the PKK. However, it is unlikely that a lasting political settlement for Syria can be negotiated and successfully held without Syrian Kurdish input.

To continue reading: Trump Reportedly Tells Erdogan US Will Cease Arming Syrian Kurds

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Caesar, Turkey and the Ides of March, by Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Posted on March 13, 2017 | Leave a comment

Not that many people in the US are interested in either Turkey or Holland, but this is a good explanation of their spat, and why it haslarger implications and repercussions. From Raúl Ilargi Meijer  at theautomaticearth.com:

I don’t think Holland realized they planned their election on the Ides of March, don’t remember the date or event ever being mentioned when I lived there as a child. That Washington knew what it was doing when back in 2013 it set the end of the latest debt ceiling compromise to March 15 is not likely either. Nor is Janet Yellen deliberately setting the Fed’s ‘next’ rate hike on the date. They may all, in hindsight, wish they had possessed a little more historical knowledge.

When Shakespeare (and Plutarch before him) wrote ‘Beware the Ides of March’, he was talking about the murder of Julius Ceasar in 44 BC, by a group of senators, which included Brutus. But the incident can also be more broadly seen as the separation line between the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. And now we’re getting somewhere interesting when looking at present day events. Democracy under threat of absolutism.

Leafing through the Dutch press, opinions differ on which politicians will profit most from the sudden row with Turkey that flared up over the weekend. Is it far right Wilders, who can now claim that he always foresaw things like this? Or is it “just a little less right” PM Rutte, who gets to look like a statesman and a decision maker? None of the other parties, there are 31 in total, look positioned to reap any gains from the bewildering developments.

The Netherlands is the ‘capital of fascism’, said Turkish foreign minister Cavusoglu on Sunday in France, where he ended up after being refused landing rights on Saturday. I know I’m biased, but no matter how you twist and turn it, that’s quite a statement about the country of Anne Frank, which lost most of its extensive Jewish population, and it was only a follow-up to Turkish president Erdogan earlier calling the Dutch ‘nazi’s and ‘remnants of fascists’.

To continue reading: Caesar, Turkey and the Ides of March

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