Tag Archives: Turkey

‘Like Horse-Mounted Cavalry Against Tanks’, by Scott Ritter

Posted on November 30, 2020 | Leave a comment

The future of warfare will involve drones, and Turkey has some of the world’s best. From Scott Ritter at RT News via lewrockwell.com:

From Syria to Libya to Nagorno-Karabakh, this new method of military offense has been brutally effective. We are witnessing a revolution in the history of warfare, one that is causing panic, particularly in Europe.

In an analysis written for the European Council on Foreign Relations, Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow, argues that the extensive (and successful) use of military drones by Azerbaijan in its recent conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh holds “distinct lessons for how well Europe can defend itself.” 

Gressel warns that Europe would be doing itself a disservice if it simply dismissed the Nagorno-Karabakh fighting as “a minor war between poor countries.” In this, Gressel is correct – the military defeat inflicted on Armenia by Azerbaijan was not a fluke, but rather a manifestation of the perfection of the art of drone warfare by Baku’s major ally in the fighting, Turkey. Gressel’s conclusion – that “most of the [European Union’s] armies… would do as miserably as the Armenian Army” when faced by such a threat – is spot on.

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Short Armenia vs Azerbaijan war update, by the Saker

Posted on October 16, 2020 | Leave a comment

The situation is getting both worse and more complicated. From the Saker at thesaker.is:

As was predicted by many, in spite of the agreement signed in Moscow, thing on the ground in the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan  have escalated: the Armenians have claimed that Azeri drones have attacked Armenian tactical ballistic missiles on Armenian soil and the Azeris have confirmed this, saying that this was both a warning and a preemptive attack to protect Azeri civilians.

Bottom line is this: Azerbaijan has now officially attacked Armenian soil (as opposed to Karabakh soil) and Armenia now has the right to appeal to the CSTO.  So far, the Armenians have not done so, but now they can and, I believe, probably will do so.

Another interesting development is that the USA has accused Turkey of being involved in this war.  This means that by now all three countries Russia, France and the USA are now declaring that the Turks (and or their “good terrorist” proxies from Syria) are involved.  Aliev is outraged and accused everybody of lying.

Finally, Azeri and Turkish outlets have claimed the Kurds are now fighting on the Armenian side.  However, there have been no verifiable sources for this probably false rumor.

As for the Armenian leader Pashinian, he has accused Aliev of being “Hitler”.

What does all this mean?

Well, for one thing, it was inevitable that the very first ceasefire agreement would be broken.  In such situations, they typically are.

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Driven By Delusions: The West’s Nagorno-Karabakh Hypocrisy, by Danny Sjursen

Posted on October 7, 2020 | 1 comment

What’s at stake in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. From Danny Sjursen at antiwar.com:

Something stands out in recent U.S. and most Western reporting on the ongoing bloodletting in Nagorno-Karabakh (NK). Well, two things actually: ignorance and hypocrisy. Having shuttered most of their foreign bureaus long ago, there’s a distinct lack of expertise in the mainstream press on this – and many other – regional hot spots. That’s translated to a series of Nagorno-Karabakh “explainers” that read like Wikipedia-ripoffs hastily filtered through Washington’s built-in “blame Russia” conflict-colander.

Peddling in platitudes, they assume binaries that aren’t and Russian aggression that isn’t. All the while missing the core cause of this far worse than standard flare-up along the unmonitored Azeri-Armenian “line of contact.” In other words, the Erdogan elephant in the regional room. High-intensity air and armored combat has entered its tenth day, with little sign of abatement. Hundreds have been killed, including civilians, and major cities shelled, along with credible and corroborated reports that Turkey has indeed shipped in Ankara-paid Syrian mercenaries to support the Azeri army.

In other words, while the current conflict has largely local roots, and is prolonged by subpar political leaders on both sides of the frontlines, the real inciter this time around is Turkey. That is, the violence is heightened and widened by a NATO member state that’s led by an ethno-national-chauvinist president who’s stretched that alliance’s ostensible purpose and utility well past breaking point.

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U.S. Weighs Into Mediterranean Tensions With Weapons and Hypocrisy, by the Strategic Culture Editorial Board

Posted on September 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

The U.S. government is once again sticking its nose into a situation it doesn’t really belong. From the Strategic Culture Editorial Board at strategic-culture.org:

Twice in the past week, the United States has clumsily weighed into mounting tensions in the East Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey.

First, Washington announced last weekend the opening of a maritime security base on the island state of Cyprus, which is allied with Greece. Then the U.S. followed up by formally clearing the way to send weapons to Cyprus, ending a 33-year arms embargo. Washington claims the arms are “non-lethal”, but we have seen that semantic ruse played before with regard to U.S. weaponizing Ukraine and other places. Never mind the hairsplitting, the move is a military involvement whichever way it’s presented.

Both U.S. moves have infuriated Turkey, which lies to the north of Cyprus and which maintains territorial claims over the northern part of the island populated by Turkish-Cypriots. The main part of the island, the Republic of Cyprus, is historically aligned with Greece. Cyprus became divided in 1974 after Turkey invaded following a coup led by the Greek military. The territory has been a source of tensions ever since and a recurring cause for confrontation between Greece and Turkey over competing claims.

This year tensions have flared up again over disputed rights to oil and gas exploration in the East Mediterranean Sea. The area is reckoned to be rich in untapped hydrocarbon resources. There are even fears of a military confrontation escalating between patrolling Greek and Turkish navy vessels.

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Turkey Hit By Bank Runs, Currency Panic As Locals Sell Their Cars And Houses To Buy Gold While Lira Implodes, by Tyler Durden

Posted on August 16, 2020 | Leave a comment

The prime impetus for electronic money is that the banks and the government (almost the same thing) control the money and can prevent runs on the banking system. Right now runs are the scariest thing in banking, as Turkey is demonstrating. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

It has been an miserable five years for Turkish citizens who have seen their purchasing power slashed by more than half, and it’s only getting worse.

The Turkish lira has cratered against the dollar and most developed currencies, plunging from 3 TRY per dollar, to a record low 7.37 last week after a brief and valiant attempt at imposing shadow capital control by Erdogan (who is now de facto head of the Turkish central bank) failed miserably at the end of July, and not even a draconian hike in overnight funding rates above 1000%  last week (to crush the shorts) was able to prevent a plunge in the Lira to new all time lows.

As their currency implodes (in a nation that is becoming increasingly more “banana” with each passing day as Erdogan solidifies his takeover of every government institution, in the process turning off any potential foreign investors) Turks are discouraged from material purchases of dollars to hedge the collapse in their native currency due to some of the strictest capital controls on the planet, which has left them with just one option.

As Reuters reports, Hasan Ayhan followed his wife’s instructions last week and took their savings to buy gold at Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar as Turks scooped up bullion worth $7 billion in a just a fortnight while their currency went up in flames.

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European Union: The End? by Judith Bergman

Posted on March 21, 2020 | 1 comment

So-called solidarity is great when you’re trying to ram a mandate down a member country, but what happens when that member country asks for your help in the name of solidarity? From Judith Bergman at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • When an entire continent is in the midst of a highly contagious virus epidemic, solidarity becomes a more complex issue. Every state inevitably considers whether it can afford to send facemasks and protective equipment that might be needed for its own citizens. In other words, every state considers its own national interest first. In the case of Italy’s appeal for help, EU member states made their own interests their highest priority. This is classic state behavior and would not have caused any outrage prior to the establishment of the European Union.
  • While such revelations may not spell the immediate end of the European Union, they certainly raise questions about the point of an organization that pledges solidarity as a founding principle, but abandons that principle the moment it is most called for.
  • The current crisis on the Greek-Turkish border has shown the EU not only as unhelpful, but an actual liability: The EU has left an already overwhelmed Greece to deal with the migrant crisis — manufactured by Turkish President Erdogan for political gain — on its own… On top of Europe’s attempts to deal with the coronavirus outbreak, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, ordered that Greece must allow the migrants that Erdogan transported to the border to apply for asylum.
  • If the EU were to approve visa-free travel for Turks – or anyone who had the means to buy a Turkish passport – millions of Turks would be able to enter the EU legally and potentially “disappear” there. Already at breaking point, the EU would arguably become a very different kind of “European” Union with Turkey, a country of 80 million people, literally invited to enter Europe.
  • All Erdogan needs to do now it sit back and wait for the EU, with Merkel at the helm, to meet his demands.

When Italy appealed to the EU for supplies of medical equipment at the beginning of its coronavirus crisis, it received exactly nothing. In addition, Germany and France even imposed bans or limitations on the export of facemasks and protective equipment. Pictured: Cleaning personnel in protective gear work in a tent of a new field hospital in Cremona, Italy on March 20, 2020. The field hospital is financed by the American evangelical Christian NGO Samaritan’s Purse. (Photo by Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images)

Since the outbreak of coronavirus in Italy, Italians have learned that other European Union member states do not always practice the beautiful words that they like to preach — especially solidarity.

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World How Turkey Lost a Battle of Wills, and Force, to Russia, by Scott Ritter

Posted on March 11, 2020 | Leave a comment

The ceasefire in Syria allows Turkey to save face, but make not mistake, Russia has won decisively. From Scott Ritter at theamericanconservative.com:

Erdogan talked tough, but in the end had to surrender gains to Moscow and Damascus.

President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) and President of Russia Vladimir Putin (R) shake hands at the end of a joint news conference following an inter-delegation meeting at Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Russia on March 5, 2020. (Photo by Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

When the history of the Syrian conflict is written, the fighting that took place between the Syrian Army and its allies on the one side, and the Turkish military and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels on the other, from early February through early March 2020 in and around the Syrian town of Saraqib, will go down as one of the decisive encounters of that war.

Representing more than a clash of arms between the Syrian and Turkish militaries, the Battle for Saraqib was a test of political will between Turkish President Recep Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. History will show Turkey lost on both accounts.

The Battle for Saraqib had its roots in fighting that began back in December 2019, in the form of an offensive carried out by the Syrian Army, supported by the Russian Air Force, against pro-Turkish opposition forces in and around Idlib province. The Syrian-Russian offensive represented the collapse of the so-called Sochi Agreement of September 17, 2018, which established what were known as “de-escalation zones” separating the Syrian Army from anti-government rebel forces in Idlib. As part of the Sochi Agreement, Turkey set up a dozen “observation posts”—in reality, fortified compounds housing several hundred troops and their equipment—throughout the Idlib de-escalation zone.

In exchange for legitimizing the existence of fortified Turkish observation posts, the Sochi Agreement mandated specific actions on Turkey’s part, including overseeing the establishment of a “demilitarized zone” within the de-escalation zone where tanks, artillery and multiple rocket launchers were to be excluded, and from which all “radical terrorist groups” would be removed by October 15, 2018. Moreover, Turkey was responsible for restoring transit traffic on two strategic highways linking the city of Aleppo with Latakia (the M4 highway) and Damascus (the M5 highway.)

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Migrant Crisis 2.0 Who’s to Blame and What’s to Be Done? by Tim Kirby

Posted on March 10, 2020 | 1 comment

Turkey is trying to use refugee flows into Europe as a lever to get European assistance for its war in Syria. From Tim Kirby at strategic-culture.org:

It now looks like Europe may be moving towards Migrant Crisis 2.0 as footage from the Greek border is pouring in over the Mainstream Media. However the key player to pay attention to is Turkey, they may have started the new migration problem and thus they may be the ones who can end it.

The original Migrant Crisis at the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011 was portrayed as an organic consequence of events that happened on their own. The Mainstream Media pushed hard to sell the idea of the migrants as victims of either circumstance or Assad, who deserved to get everything they want from the wealthy West. However, this time around the narrative is surprisingly different (at least for the moment) as Migrant Crisis 2.0 is not really getting much media push, in fact the opposite appears to be happening, possibly due to the fact that Erdogan made it so bluntly clear that with his decision to allow migrants to leave Turkey is directly connected to his failures in Syria. If he doesn’t get a piece of Syria, then Europe will.

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Strategic Remix for the Middle East, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on March 10, 2020 | Leave a comment

Alastair Crooke tries to make sense of the always confusing Middle East. From Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

The End of an Era. When the first World War came to its end, intimations of an end to the European Era were already evident in symptoms: aching diplomatic joints, straitened perceptual political vision and the general financial health of the patient about to turn acute, as the constipated monetary policies of the Central Banks ushered in the Great Depression. But ‘life’ went on: European men and women wildly danced the Cancan throughout the 1920s; It was Cabaret, party time. No one wanted to acknowledge the omens of what lay afore them.

Last month, an Israeli academic opined that the future shape of the Middle East lies in the hands of three ‘insider’ states: Iran, Turkey and Israel. It was an interesting observation. None are Arab; and it implied an incremental US disengagement, and a modest ‘king-maker’ role for Russia.

What makes this statement intriguing is the focus on just three states and the downplay of external intervention as the key ‘shaper’ of the future strategic ‘map’. Implicit here is that all three are flexing their military muscles. But diplomats and political analysts usually prefer to stay at the plane of politics and national interests. They dislike the fact that the outcome of military contestation, per se, can determine political outcomes, and thus validate or negate national interests. It is offensive to diplomacy. But often, it is just so. The region at this time is not really susceptible to a direct conceptual approach: So, the focus on the outcome of military contestation, trials of strength, and then on the other – quite different dynamic – of Covid-19 and its economic effects, makes more sense than traditional purely political calculus of interests.

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Moscow’s Difficult Decision on Idlib, by Patrick Lawrence

Posted on March 5, 2020 | 1 comment

How far will Russia go to help Syria liberate Idlib? From Patrick Lawrence at consortiumnews.com:

Turkey’s leader, who nurses dreams of some kind of neo–Ottoman restoration across the Middle East, is now on a reckless tear.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a press conference in Turkey, Dec. 1, 2014. (Russian government)

As Recip Tayyip Erdogan prosecutes his latest military intrusion southward into Syria, all the old mythologies about the Turkish president and the 9-year-old Syrian conflict are rehearsed once again, hopelessly threadbare as they are. The problem now is not the fog of war. The problem is the war of fog.

Let us be clear from the start, then, as to what has unfolded since last week and what will be the desired outcome. The Syrian Arab Army, a force for good, must not stop short of decisive victory in Idlib, the governorate in northwest Syria sheltering the last jihadist militias operating on Syrian soil. Russia, which is correctly (and legally) supporting the S.A.A.’s campaign, should try to avoid a direct conflict with a NATO member but should engage Turkish forces if there is no alternative.

NATO, breaking its own Article 5 covenant, will not come to the aid of a member nation engaged in so despicable an assault on another sovereign nation. I am not alone in holding this opinion. Don’t forget: Most NATO members are squeamish, mealy-mouthed Europeans who have given up the ghost in Syria.

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