Day by day, the western media cry wolf: “They are arriving, they are at three meters, two, one”. Cutting corners, Bloomberg, the top of the class, has already staged the invasion: why not anticipate the news? In reality, in Ukraine, we are as in the first image of Woody Allen’s 2005 movie Match Point where the shot remains frozen in the exact moment when the tennis ball is over the net. This suspension time, full of risks and opportunities, attracts some characters searching for a leadership role under the international spotlight and, of course, an image boost at home. Easy to guess we are speaking of the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In the last weeks, he succeeded in defending the sale of lethal Turkish drones to the Ukrainians that are using them to terrorise Donbas and, at the same time, proposing himself as a peace mediator between Moscow and Kiev. Erdogan’s political identity card is irregular enough to give him some room for manoeuvre. But Turkey’s unpredictability, the chance to see the country in a soft version of non-alignment, stems more from its weakness and contradictions than from a position of strength that could support its credibility.

Although Ankara is the second-largest military force in Nato, after the U.S., it is buying the S-400 air defence system from Russia, rejecting the American Patriot. A little bit over rhetorically, someone in the country hailed the choice as a “country’s liberation from the West”. The gas import from Russia is crucial, and the economic ties include industrial, construction investments and tourism. Russian President Vladimir Putin has just accepted President Erdogan’s invitation to visit his country. The Turkish are expecting that the Kremlin will announce the date of his visit this month, after his return from the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Therefore, the relations with Moscow aren’t always good; sometimes, they are horrible. In Syria, Turkey downed a Russian Su-24 bomber in November 2015. Turkish weapons (the drones again) helped Azerbaijan blitz to retake Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia in the 2020 war. A strategic area for Russia. Ali Akbar Velayati, the international affairs adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that Turkey is “adding fuel to the fire”. More recently, some reports suggested the Turkish secret services not so covert involvement in Kazaksthan’s violent upheaval on December’s beginning.

After many years of Bruxelles’ closed-door politics, the love and hate engagement with Europe is fading in resentment. So, in the last decade, the Asian soul of Turkey has grown dramatically at the expense of the European one.

The NATO links are still strong, but Ankara prefers to gather Asia’s Turkish populations under its Pan-Turkish flag than under America’s Global Police. The recent killing in Syria of the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, is also seen as an American message to its eastern NATO ally. In the words of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Turkey “turned the areas of northern Syria into a safe zone for Daesh leaders”.

Ankara disowned the statement of its sworn enemies but its initial choice to sit out the war against ISIS speaks volumes.

The relationship with Tel Aviv has seen the same zigzag. Israeli-Turkish relations have been tense, especially since the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident in which IDF’s fire killed nine Turkish nationals. In May 2018, Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador in Ankara after deadly clashes between the Israeli Army and Palestinians on the Gaza border. The Turkish diplomatic counterpart had to leave Israel. For the last two years, Turkey has been trying to reactivate its ties with Israel. A few days ago, Erdogan announced an official visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog for mid-March. Pushed by its economic difficulties, Turkey may see normalisation with Israel to improve its economy and, at the same time, its political status in the Middle East and with the US. Especially in the new climate, real or not is too early to say, produced by the Abraham Accords, Ankara is betting on an economic opening to the Gulf countries.

Erdogan’s regard for Turkey’s geopolitical stance is conditioned partially by the wishful thinking of the pan-Turkish-New Ottoman ideology. Still, his action is more substantially guided by the urge to exit the deep Turkish economy’s crisis. Turkey’s annual inflation has just risen at nearly 49%, hitting a near 20-year high and further eroding people’s ability to buy even basic things like food. The Turkish Statistical Institute stated that the consumer price index increased by just over 11% in January from the previous month. According to the data, the yearly increase in food prices was more than 55%.

The Turkish opposition parties have repeatedly questioned the Statistical Institute’s independence and data. The independent Inflation Research Group put Turkey’s actual annual inflation at a stunning 114.87%. As financial hardship has spread, the crisis has prompted criticism of the president’s recent accumulation of authority, from appointing bank policymakers to university rectors to high court judges.

Ankara’s so-called “drones diplomacy” is easier to understand in this context. Its first success was in Libya in 2020. The Bayraktar TB2, purchased by Qatar and operated by Turkish personnel, helped the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) stop Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s assault on Tripoli. The drones are manufactured by Istanbul-based Baykar, owned by Erdogan’s son-in-law Selcuk Bayraktar. Federico Borsari of the European Council on Foreign Relations noted that the Bayaktars had become a major asset: “Their most significant effects may be in the economic opportunities and political leverage they have provided Turkey”.

Further irritating Moscow, Turkey now is planning to build near Kiev a drones factory to produce the long-endurance Anka drone, made by Turkish Aerospace Industries.

Drones are not invincible; above all, their most significant advantage is comparatively low cost. Electronic countermeasures are one of the most used defences against them. Russia has the new Tor-M2 SAM; a lethal short-range air defence missile system developed expressly against drones. But in many cases, it is like “take a hammer to crack a nut”. General Oleg Salyukov, the commander of Russia’s ground forces, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta: “The cost of one guided air defence missile is way above the cost of a small-size drone. For this reason, a relatively inexpensive small missile is being developed for this system”.

President Erdogan’s peacekeeping attempt is welcome but challenging to pursue, not recognising the Russian incorporation of Crimea as legal (still, in 2008, he rushed to recognise Kosovo’s independence) and arming the Ukrainians to the teeth. More than everything, he seems not in a position to extract any concessions from NATO. His diplomatic stunts appear more aimed to protect his business while the ball is precisely over the net than an actual peace-building process.

Since the first assault on Turkey’s finances in 2018, which I wrote about multiple times (here, here, and here), I’ve been the lone voice telling everyone that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a lunatic but he’s a lunatic with a plan.

That plan is to de-dollarize the economy of a valuable member of NATO geostrategically.  Since the first shots across the bow by the Trump administration at Erdogan’s toying with those powers east of the Bosporus (Russia, China and Iran) the Turkish lira has been the primary mode of attack against Erdogan.

Erdogan has pursued what has been deemed unorthodox monetary policy since firing his Central Bank during the lira’s 2018 crisis. Then the Bank of Turkey wanted to raise interest rates to 30% to tame inflation. Erdogan, rightfully, in my opinion, stepped in and said no.

Earlier this year he went after Bitcoin exchanges to stem the tide against the lira and buddy back up to Davos a little, but they are more than wise to his game and Erdogan’s reckoning with them was always on the horizon. Today we’ve reached the horizon and the attack on the lira has him in his weakest state politically in all the years he’s been in power.

And with the lira blowing out to 18(!!) versus the dollar this week, Erdogan’s monetary policy has been all the news, especially with him promising to cut interest rates rather than raise them which is the conventional wisdom.

This blowout finally pushed Erodgan to unveil a new package of interventions to stabilize the lira.

The idea that monetary policy should only be conducted on the basis of creating ‘low inflation’ is nonsense, but that is what everyone focuses on with respect to interest rate policy.

It is certainly one factor, and as a committed Austrian in my thinking, I’d rather not even be talking about such things as central banks, monetary policy and what’s a sustainable rate of inflation, since that last part just sounds like a sustainable rate of theft.

But, I digress.

Erdogan was right to lower rates with the Fed raising rates in 2018 and 2019.  His central bank threatened to push rates to 30% and that would have broken the country.  He fired them and lowered rates, defying conventional wisdom.

Stop and think for a second. There is no reason why any currency should carry a 30% risk factor unless the the goal is to destroy it. Because nothing says you have no confidence in your own currency than someone paying 30% to borrow it.

At rational risk levels, where investment returns govern interest rates, yes there can be a somewhat linear relationship between central bank lending rates and price inflation. But to project that linearity, if it exists at all, out to positive and negative infinity is asinine.

I’d rather you think of the efficacy of interest rates vs. inflation as a sigmoid curve rather than a straight line.

If that wasn’t the case then the negative rates in Europe would have produced massive inflation by now and 20% rates in Turkey massive deflation by now.

But neither thing has come to pass because Keynesians, in their obsessions with aggregate demand, ignore both supply issues and marginal demand effects of policy.

In short, there comes a point where models break and the theory proves incorrect. So, with rates at 24% in 2018 not stemming inflation or the slide in the lira, what would be the point of going to 30%? If 30% didn’t work then 40%? 50%?

It’s this strict adherence to dogma which is the problem, as opposed to saying, “Hey, maybe at these rates other factors are more dominant than central bank lending?” That never enters into the thinking of even the most savvy analysts, preferring instead to parrot clearly broken models because it’s easier to throw shade at a lunatic with power (who may actually be right) than think through what’s actually happening.

There comes a point where one has to ask a series of important questions:

1. How did this crisis start?
2. Who benefits from it?
3. What would be the geostrategic goals of collapsing Turkey’s economy?

Because even the smartest, most savvy analysts always seem miss the bigger picture. Zerohedge has missed the boat in multiple articles, focusing on whether Erdogan’s new package of interventions will work or not, given the state of things.

But no one asked the question, “How does a country like Turkey see its currency with some of the highest interest rates in the world already, collapse over a five month period?”

How does something like this start? Without considering what prompted the slide you’re ignoring what causes it to end. Who has the motive to attack Erdogan through his currency?

Frankly everyone. Is there a limit to creating panic? And if that limit is reached what would it take to reverse it?

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

The key thing to remember about Erdogan is the following. Everything he’s done, including taking control of the Bank of Turkey, has been to call out the IMF and the banking institutions of Europe as ravagers of emerging markets like the one he runs.

He categorically ruled out ever taking another dollar in aid from the IMF during the last time the lira was attacked (2019). Remember, as well, he’s convinced (and I have no reason to disbelieve him) that the coup in 2016 against him was orchestrated by the U.S. and NATO, his nominal security partners.

So, there are a lot of powerful people who have a history of wanting Erdogan gone. Now, at the same time he’s done very little to secure friends. But, then again there are no friends in geopolitics, only temporarily aligned interests.

So, after that first attack on the lira which took it from around 1.8 to over 7.0 versus the US dollar and he made nice with Trump, goin on a rampage across the eastern Mediterranean acting as NATO’s spear to undermine Russia’s efforts to stabilize North Africa, most notably his excursions in Libya and continued betrayals of the Russians in Idlib province of Syria.

Last year he backed Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict while selling drones to the UAF in Ukraine which he was then likely framed for encouraging the use of to escalate the conflict there to drive a further wedge between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin, for his part, doesn’t care who rules Turkey as long as it isn’t a NATO satrap.  It’s why he’s put up with Erdogan’s nonsense.  He knows the situation on the ground would result in a Davos-backed ghoul coming to power.

With that in mind, the whys of getting rid of Erdogan are clear. Now let’s go one step further. What does getting control of Turkey mean geostrategically?

Clearly the 1936 treaty of Montreaux, which gives Turkey full control over what ships can pass through the Bosporus and Dardenelles, is the prize here.  Getting rid of Montreaux will allow NATO to bring ships into the Black Sea to ostensibly pressure Russia into giving up Sevastopol.

Good luck with that.

So, with the full court press on against Russia diplomatically by the U.S. with the EU doing its typical “Oh, woe are we, we have to go along with the evil Americans…” bullshit, it’s no surprise to me that Erdogan is under extreme pressure through Turkey’s biggest weakness, its currency, at the same time.

There are no coincidences in geopolitics.

Challenging the Orthodoxy

The collapse of the lira has been epic to behold.  And none of this is a defense of Erdogan per se. He’s a lunatic to be sure.

To create a collapse in a currency as weak as the lira was already takes a small net drop in marginal dollar inflow. Erdogan worked to reduce Turkey’s foreign-currency debt situation, but this was complicated by easy money from the Fed post Coronapocalypse.

De-dollarizing is hard if the country’s accounts are open and the Fed is at the zero-bound.

Once the Fed pulled back on foreign dollar liquidity in June the situation in Turkey was going to deteriorate.

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So, is the right response raising interest rates when they are already 1) stifling domestic investment in local currency and 2) retarding savings in that currency because of inflation?

NO. Raising interest rates is a statement by the Central Bank that it has lost the confidence of the market and it has low confidence in its ability to get things under control. Raising rates further only makes that perception that much more ingrained.

Truthfully, when has the IMF ever been right about ANYTHING!?

So, now let’s look at what Erdogan has done over the past three years, he’s run monetary policy exactly opposite of the Rest of the World (RoW).  He cut while the Fed was tightening. Then tightened while the Fed was easing and is now easing while the Fed is tightening (see Chart Above).

During all of this Turkey’s inflation has been crazy. But this is a consequence of zero-bound policies by the major central banks, flooding the world with dollars, euros, yen, etc. Remember, for us to not have inflation at home while printing trillions, the inflation has to be sent overseas.

Money printing leads to inflation always and without fail (Martin Armstrong’s lame protestations to the contrary). The question is where the inflation shows up and does the government include it in the CPI? Lies, damn lies, British Polling and Government Statistics, is how I think the saying goes.

But, back to Erdogan’s unorthodox methods. He actually rebuilt Turkey’s foreign exchange reserves, which no one gives him credit for and brought in more than 300 net tonnes of gold into the Turkish banking system.

Turkey’s current account deficit disappeared and by allowing the lira to properly fall because it was a mess in 2018, it improved Turkey’s trade balance.

Now, one could argue my embedded point above, that Turkey’s currency woes are a function of outside hot money flows pushing and pulling on the lira based on the geopolitics of the moment and say that once Erdogan was a good US lapdog, the pressure abated and nothing he did in 2019-2020 actually mattered.

Fair enough. But, then that begs the question what is he doing now?

And he’s made it clear that the goal is to de-dollarize the Turkish economy. That he’s going to take Turkey on the same path forced onto Russia and Iran in the last ten years — finding ways to be members of the global economic system of trade while using as few US dollars as possible.

Turkey has to do the same thing. And to do that you have to tell people you believe in both the lira and your ability to get things under control.

No Exit?

Erdogan has been fully cut loose by the West and they want him gone.  The polls in Turkey have moved against him and it’s now time for him to put up or shut up.

I said in 2019 there was no easy way out of Turkey’s predicament, that it would not be allowed to leave NATO without a major cost.  That cost will be a short-term hyperinflation of the lira and a radical reorganization of the country’s finances, trade partners and everything else.

European banks are still net short a lot of Turkish debt, blowing up the lira and potentially a bunch of Turkish banks would have big blowback effects on banks like Unicredit, BBVA and others.

That’s all the background stuff. Now let’s talk about what he’s actually doing. And the proof is in the details, which we only got on Wednesday.

The centerpiece of Erdogan’s de-dollarization strategy is a pledge to Turks that it was time to end their reliance on the U.S. dollar as the place to go in times of stress.  He would guarantee their savings in lira if it depreciates versus the rate of inflation.

Through the program, the government will compensate lira deposit holders if the currency’s value depreciates by more than the interest rate offered by banks on these deposits. The objective of the scheme is to stop retail demand for hard currencies like USD and EUR.

Now, many think this is just MMT(no!) or unbacked money printing (yes, but who cares in this world today?).

This is a bluff, ultimately, but given that all fiat currencies are bluffs then, again, so what? Turkish lira deposits are running double digit rates of return and U.S. rates are zero-bound, the question now is will this bluff be called?

Remember, the Fed is draining the world of dollars and has pledged to do so radically.

Erdogan has to do something to put reserves into Turkish banks, i.e. savings, and have that savings begin forming the pool of real capital for lending. And that pool of capital can’t come in from those hostile to Turkey. It has to come from Turks and those that still want to do honest business with them not subjugate them to the mercantilist machination of Malthusian fascists.

The conventional wisdom is that Turkey should be raising rates here to attract foreign capital.  But it is foreign capital that is the source of the lira’s weakness.  Why does a currency halve in 3 months?  Because foreign money pulls out en masse. 

Remember Question #2 above? Cui Bono?

The very people pulling their money out are the ones who run the IMF who then say, “Hey, we’ll give you a loan at reasonable rates to fix your short-term problems.” This is the standard Economic Hitman Playbook. Erdogan refuses to play that game.

The right move is to stiff-arm any foreign creditors dumb enough to think Erdogan won’t punish them, like what China is doing via Evergrande. Expect targeted defaults here by Turkish corporates. Expect favorable treatment by Erdogan for those that no longer have exposure to his enemies.

Because of Turkey’s importance, i.e. access to the Black Sea, he’ll be able to ask for help from Russia and China, who should be happy to help backstop Turkey in their quest to de-dollarize… for a price, of course.

And that price will be doing all trade between the three of them in lira, yuan and rubles… not dollars.  You wean the Turks off easy dollars by backstopping their savings, and cutting taxes on savings as well as investment taxes, which is also part of Erdogan’s package.

Here’s the full package thanks to Zerohedge:

1. A new Lira deposit instrument that will compensate depositors for losses from Lira depreciation. If the loss from Lira depreciation is higher than the interest gain on the deposit, the difference will be transferred to the depositor and will not be subject to withholding tax.

2. The TCMB will offer Lira forward rates to exporters having pricing difficulties due to the exchange rate volatility.

3. The withholding tax on returns from domestic government bonds will be removed. The withholding tax on corporate dividends will be reduced to 10%.

4. Exporters and industrialists will be given a corporate tax discount of 1pp.

5. The state contribution to the personal retirement system will be increased to 30%.

Yes, there are a lot of risks in this plan but only if there is more foreign money to pull out of the country. The reality is that people don’t run on the banks unless there has been an inciting incident to run the bank’s deposits.

And at some point you’ve pulled all the money out, at some point you reach peak panic and all it takes is someone having the confidence to put their ‘tuppence’ back in the bank’s hands. (You had to know I’d work a Mary Poppins reference in here somewhere.)

A Road to Somewhere New?

So, what if we’ve already seen the worst of the situation and the epic collapse both ZH and Goldman are betting on doesn’t materialize? Will someone finally figure out that central bank interest rates and inflation are something other than a linear relationship?

I heard this same crap in 2014-15 when Russia was going through the same blowup of the ruble. It fell alongside oil prices from 28 to 80 versus the dollar. The assault on oil prices was revenge on Putin for stopping the invasion of Syria by NATO. Russia was sanctioned to the point of forcing corporate debt re-denominations because there were corporate bond rollovers due.

This was the same issue that began the run on the Turkish lira in 2018.

Putin allowed the ruble to float freely, Nabullina at the Bank of Russia raised rates aggressively (to 15.5%), they liberalized a lot of the economy spurring new investment and accepted a yuan/ruble swap arrangement to get dollars into the country to assist in the paying out of the corporate debt.

It worked for Russia and I expect you’ll see the next pieces to the puzzle unveiled in due course as Turkey becomes the next node on the Asian anti-dollar currency bloc that’s forming.

Turkey’s debt to GDP ratio is low (39% in 2020). The government has plenty of room to take on the FX risk here and revalue a lot of the foreign currency debt which is the source of the trouble.

That Turkish banks can hold gold as a reserve asset directly means that as we move into a gold bull market thanks to the Fed finally admitting its lost control over inflation Turkish bank balance sheets will offset any lira weakness with gold now that the government has backstopped savings.

You’ll see more investment by both Russia and China in Turkey thanks to the devaluation, increasing tourism and local investment by their people.

There comes a point where you can only hurt a currency so much by pulling out foreign capital.  And once it’s all been pulled out all that’s left is people making do with what’s available.

Turkey is too valuable a piece of real estate and too valuable a partner geostrategically to let fall here. China needs it for OBOR; Russia for holding onto control of the Black Sea and Iran as a conduit through which it conducts trade while under extreme sanctions.

The West is taking a major shot at he Turks here. But the numbers we are talking to backstop the banking system there are peanuts versus the potential long-term benefits of cleaving Turkey from NATO for Russia and China.

I expect some of that newly-freed up capital within the Chinese banking system thanks to the PBoC easing will make its way through swaps into the Turkish system.

The thing is, with a strategy like this, you have to let things get so bad that the currency goes bidless.  Stocks go bidless etc.  It’s only then that you can attract the maximum amount of speculative money into the market as well as give your potential partners the best return on investment if they come to bail you out.

When there’s blood in the streets betting that it’ll become a river of blood is a bad bet. The better bet is that the madness of crowds is in the past and the immense opportunity to clean things up arrives.

This is what China did when they came in to stabilize the ruble in December 2014.  The announcement of a currency swap line arrangement between China and Russia is what marked the end of the ruble crisis.  Any Chinese money that flowed into Russian banks in 2015 did very very well as bond yields fell steadily until 2020 and the Coronapocalypse.

The same thing is going to happen here with Turkey.  And conventional wisdom will be wrong…. as always.

tomluongo.me

In his 7 October statement renewing US national emergency powers in Syria, US President Joe Biden said: “The situation in and in relation to Syria, and in particular the actions by the Government of Turkey to conduct a military offensive into northeast Syria, undermines the campaign to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, endangers civilians, and further threatens to undermine the peace, security, and stability in the region, and continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

The full statement obviously has several intended audiences, but then quite remarkably, veers to cast Turkey, a NATO ally, almost as an existential threat to the United States. Ankara understands that the exaggerated accusation may be a tactic to keep Turkey from carrying out military operations east of Euphrates River, currently controlled by US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) militias.

But whether Turkey aims to make this move is beside the point. What this harsh White House language seems to be communicating is a US red line whereby the Kurdish-controlled area in northeastern Syria is regarded as a federal district – as in Washington, DC or Puerto Rico. That is the crux of all that matters.

For years, US policymakers regarded Turkish misgivings over this issue as either paranoiac or conspiratorial. When Turkey and Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) signed a multi-billion-dollar energy package in 2013 by bypassing the central government in Baghdad, it was Washington that warned Ankara that such acts could only empower the Kurds’ drive for independence. To note, these contracts eventually did not yield any favorable results.

Fast forward to 2017, when Washington tamped down the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum quickly and decisively. The move made Ankara temporarily cool its concerns over the US’ stance on Kurdish nationhood, but found itself on alert again when the Pentagon began working closely with the YPG militia in Syria.

Turkey argues that the YPG is an extension of a group the US State Department classifies as a terrorist organization: the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The US maintains that its support of the YPG does not indicate hostility toward Turkey, its territorial integrity or national harmony; it merely needs non-US bodies on the ground to fight ISIS and, frankly, Syrian allied forces attempting to recover their resource-rich swathe of territory.

For years now, the American media has glorified the bravery of Kurdish fighters to generate sympathy, and cast Turkey as a racist state prepared to commit cross-border genocide against Kurdish populations. This simplistic approach in shaping people’s perception is one aspect of Washington’s policy agenda. The other part frames the US-YPG relationship as being merely transactional – the YPG maximizes its political and military power and the US scores gains against ISIS and the Syrian government.

The question is whether US-backed Kurdish forces are even an antidote to ISIS. Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford doesn’t think so. “The YPG militia cannot destroy ISIS,” he said in a recent webinar event. “An autonomous (Kurdish) administration is not going to resolve the ISIS problem.”

So then, why does Biden’s administration believe that Turkey undermines US counter-terrorism efforts enough to pose a national security threat? If one examines Washington’s own post-9/11 foreign policy track record in Turkey’s neighborhood, there’s vitually nothing resembling “peace, security, and stability in the region.”

Is Turkey single-handedly responsible for these American failures? No. Could the Kurdish militia pose a threat to Turkey’s national unity and peace? Yes. Does the YPG have a right under international law to defend itself? Let’s get honest here – these NATO allies no longer trust each other enough to look away. And frankly, neither Turkey, nor the US, nor the YPG have the right to invoke international law in their fights against each other inside Syrian territory.

The US-Turkey relationship has never been an easy one due to Ankara’s poor record of human rights and rule of law, and its 1974 Cyprus intervention. These differences have grown in recent years, and include Turkey’s expulsion from the F-35 program, its exposure to CAATSA sanctions, bitter fights over its acquisition of Russian S-400 anti-missile systems, and so forth. But no issue today is of more concern to the Turks than the Kurdish one, and Washington doesn’t want to hear it.

When then-Vice President Biden visited Ankara on August 24, 2016, Turkey launched its Operation Euphrates Shield in northeastern Syria. Whether Biden received prior notice remains a mystery; it was the first high-level US visit to Turkey after the failed 15 July putsch by the Turkish-banned Fethullah Gulen movement (Gulen enjoys asylum in the United States), and perhaps Ankara was feeling vindictive.

“We couldn’t understand if it was an internet game, if it was serious, when it happened,” Biden has said. The again, he also assured Turkey that the US would extradite Gulen if the evidence warranted a trial, and that it would cut support to the YPG if they did not withdraw to the east of the Euphrates river.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with Biden on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Rome later this month, but the way Washington is ignoring him after years of support is making him restless. The inner ranks of the Ankara beltway are still reeling from the speed at which Turkey went from downing a Russian fighter jet for its 8-second incursion into Turkish air space, to purchasing S-400s from Russia the next day.

Given Ankara’s chaotic past decade, nothing is taken at face value anymore. But the US is also no longer perceived as a respectful partner in building democracy and human rights. Today, it is regarded more as a cold-blooded, interest-driven power broker, with little loyalty. While Russia, China and Iran are also viewed as sanguine players, they at least appear to respect their alliances.

Neither of these rising regional powers can single-handedly shape the world order in the way the Americans have done for decades. But, together, they are jockeying to exert influence and maximize their benefits in the wake of Washington’s error-filled, foreign policy decline in influence. The more the US sidelines the interests of its NATO ally in favor of Kurdish militias, the more tectonic opportunities arise for Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran’s benefit.

Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin met privately for almost three hours in Sochi on 29 September. It is in Putin’s interest to exploit or magnify US-Turkish differences to wrench Turkey away from its Western alliance, where anti-Erdoganism creates unprecedented opportunities for Russia. For years, Washington supported Erdogan in power; now Moscow is playing the same game.

The YPG recently killed two Turkish special operations police officers in northern Syria. Since then both Erdogan and Turkey’s Minister of Defense Hulusi Akar have spoken cautiously about their next step. On Friday, the Turkish president promised a “different” kind of anti-terror response in Syria, and took a swipe at the Americans: “The terrorists of the PKK, YPG and PYD are running wild in entire Syria, not only in the northern part. The leading supporters of them are the international coalition and the US,” he said.

It is unclear what Erdogan intends to do next. It could be a limited operation targeting only the Tel Rifaat area – which is under the supervision of the Russians, who have promised to clear out YPG militia. But Moscow will want something in exchange – likely, the complete removal of Turkish-backed militants in Idlib.

However, if Erdogan and Putin reached a comprehensive agreement in their latest bilateral meeting, Turkey could also aim for the area (30 kilometers deep, from Manbij to al-Malikiyah) of Operation Peace Spring, which Biden would fiercely oppose. Or it could do nothing at all. For Ankara, these are not easy times to make hard decisions.

One direction will leave Erdogan stuck with uneasy allies who militarily support his most belligerent foes. The other direction will see him abandoning all hope of territorial gains in the Levant, highlight his decade-long failed investment in Syrian regime-change, and place him firmly back within Turkey’s borders.

President Biden has either misread the tea leaves in the region or actively wants Moscow to exert even more influence over Ankara. Either way, Erdogan may find himself outmatched in the duel between Moscow and Washington. The end game could be a new West Asian order.

thecradle.co

By MK BHADRAKUMAR

Less than 48 hours will separate US President Joe Biden’s meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Brussels from his summit with Vladimir Putin at Geneva on June 16. In between falls the shadow of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit. This is simply exquisite as far as planning of sequential activities go in diplomacy.

Biden’s meetings in Brussels and Geneva are, arguably, the most consequential “bilaterals” he’ll be having in this entire eight-day trip to Europe. The two events have variables, but their correlation is not in doubt.

Most of the issues that will figure in Biden’s meeting with Erdogan are related to Russia. Even when some US-Turkey issues do not directly concern Russia, they do affect Russia’s vital interests.

The advantage goes to Biden insofar as the personal chemistry between Erdogan and Putin is no longer what it used to be. Turkish-Russian relations are fraught with growing friction on several fronts.

On the other hand, Turkey’s importance as a “swing state” in the US regional strategy has increased dramatically, even as US-Russia tensions spiked in recent months. The Biden administration’s diplomatic overture to Turkey needs to be assessed from such a perspective.

Without doubt, there are major differences in the Turkey-US relationship. Both sides have a long list of problems. But the good part is that the two sides are realistic and willing to focus on areas where partnership is possible. Both have a sense of urgency to mend their relationship.

Biden and Erdogan know each other well and their private conversation can help turn a new page in the relationship. Conceivably, they will aim for a relatively achievable relationship. In sum, manage differences and revive the partnership – that is going to be the leitmotif of the Biden-Erdogan meeting on Monday.

The differences are of three categories: political, geopolitical and personal. On the political-personal part, the crux of the matter is that Erdogan deeply distrusts US intentions toward Turkey and him personally. The genesis of this estrangement is to be traced to former president Barack Obama’s administration, and Biden happens to be associated with it.

The manner in which the Obama administration coaxed Erdogan, who was a close family friend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to join the United States’ regime-change project in Syria and subsequently disengaged itself from the project, leaving Turkey in the lurch, profoundly upset Ankara.

Meanwhile, the US policy of assisting a faction of Syrian Kurds, the YPG, began under the Obama administration, in 2014, and inevitably it has been a ticking time bomb since then.

The strategic contradiction was simply far too much for Turkey to accept – that the US got directly linked to a terrorist organization that has long fought an insurgency against another NATO ally.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the failed coup attempt in 2016 to overthrow Erdogan dealt a body blow to the Turkish-American relationship. Turkey suspects that Obama was supportive of the coup attempt and blamed the US for harboring the Islamist preacher Fetullah Gulen. Washington simply stonewalled when Turks sought Gulen’s extradition.

Suffice to say, Erdogan’s efforts during the past five-year period to strengthen Turkey’s strategic autonomy, to develop relations with Russia and to work toward building up Turkey as one of the great powers in the region fall in perspective.

On the geopolitical plane, a whole lot of issues have cropped up stemming out of Erdogan’s independent foreign policies in recent years, but the issue that has driven a wedge between the US and Turkey is, principally, Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system.

Short of Turkey backing down on the S-400 missile deal with Russia, Washington and Ankara are discussing some sort of mutually acceptable formula such as the deployment of the missile system under US control at the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey, without any Russian involvement in their operation and maintenance.

Turkey has reportedly given a written assurance to the Biden administration that it will not activate the missile system. This ingenious compromise could open a pathway for the lifting of the US sanctions against Turkey under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which would revive Turkish participation in the manufacture of parts for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter and give gravitas to the overall relationship.

This reconciliation could well be a key outcome of the meeting in Brussels.

If the S-400 hurdle that bedeviled Turkish-American relations in recent years can be overcome, Russia will be suffering a major setback in its regional strategies all across the board – and, Putin personally risks a loss of face just before his summit with Biden, as the turnaround in Russia-Turkey relations through the past few years was Putin’s personal achievement.

No doubt, with the US backing, Turkey can be expected to revert to a role it adroitly performed in the Cold War era as the vanguard of Western strategies against Russia. Even more so, for the first time in its history, NATO can consolidate a presence in the Black Sea. Of course, with Turkish backing, Ukraine can push back at Russia with new confidence.

Overall, it will be a game changer for US regional diplomacy in Russia’s western and southwestern backyard. Interestingly, straight after the meeting with Biden, Erdogan, in a symbolic move, will be heading for the South Caucasus to visit the territories in Nagorno-Karabakh that Turkey helped Azerbaijan conquer in recent months.

Suffice to say, the geopolitics of the regions surrounding Turkey are at an inflection point. The US has an urgent need to get Turkey on board with its strategy to counter Russia in the entire region stretching from the Caucasus and the Black Sea to Ukraine and Poland, apart from West Asia proper. Turkey is potentially the best regional partner in the United States’ efforts to contain Russia and Iran.

Most important, Turkey’s cooperation is critical to counter Russia’s growing force projection in the Mediterranean where the US has been establishing new bases lately. Turkey and the US also have a congruence of interests in keeping Russia out of Libya (which NATO visualizes as the gateway for its future expansion plans into Africa).

Equally, Washington and Ankara are negotiating a deal for the deployment of Turkish troops to ensure that Kabul airport remains operational and accessible to the NATO countries even after the withdrawal of the US forces from Afghanistan, which is expected next month.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said last Monday that Turkey is willing to undertake the mission if it receives financial, logistical, and political support from its NATO allies. This promises to be a major step in confidence-building between the US and Turkey.

Again, what role Turkey can play in Central Asia to advance US interests remains to be seen. Interestingly, just before he leaves for Brussels, Erdogan is hosting the newly elected president of Kyrgyzstan, Sadyr Japarov, who has a reputation for being a staunch nationalist and authoritarian ruler. Kyrgyzstan is a poor country with few resources, but it borders China.

Evidently, Erdogan is also under pressure internally, as his party’s popularity dropped lately and the Turkish economy is in bad shape, and the public discontent is palpable. Turkey also has lost confidence among its traditional friends and allies. Its relations with the European Union are in stagnation and with Greece and France under strain.

All said, Erdogan simply cannot afford an inconclusive meeting with Biden. Erdogan’s strategy will be to promote Turkey as the United States’ best regional partner. He has shown a willingness to act against Russian interests. Erdogan hosted the leaders of Georgia, Poland and Ukraine – all at odds with Russia – in quick succession since April.

Erdogan has pledged full support for Georgia’s bid to join NATO, sealed a drone contract with Poland and voiced all-around support for Ukraine in its standoff with Russia. Also, Turkey took an active part in NATO’s Steadfast Defender exercises in Romania at the end of May.

Make no mistake, Erdogan is playing for time to extend his rule for another five years after the next election due in 2023. And he needs Biden’s support. Erdogan is an experienced leader, and so is Biden. It should not come as a surprise if they find common ground despite the many disagreements between Washington and Ankara.

Asia Times

April was quite a month for Ankara-based foreign correspondents who were kept busy with what seemed to be a never-ending stream of news stories about Turkey’s role in the world. After the dust has settled, many analysts might conclude that Turkey is now more isolated than ever. The new rogue state in the Middle East. The question is whether the region is better off and more stable and – critically – if the thawing of relations, as a consequence, with both Egypt and Saudi Arabia is sustainable.

From an analyst’s point of view, Turkey’s geopolitics was always a moving target which no one could entirely understand. The opaque nature of Mr Erdogan’s strategy even baffled Turkey’s own best hacks and at times made him look almost Trump like with his serendipity.

The geomilitary strategy of buying Russia’s S-400 missile system and imagining that the U.S. would allow Turkey to also have U.S.-made F-35s was always going to be a brain teaser.

Initially, Turkey pledged to purchase 100 F-35 fighter jets. In 2018, six were meant for Turkey with some conditions about pilot training, but the actual delivery of the jets was postponed after the start of the S-400 crisis between the U.S. and Turkey kicked off.

But by July 2020, things were looking increasingly shaky as eight jets initially intended for Turkey were instead purchased by the U.S. Air Force which was followed by the cancellation of the supply of parts for the jets, from Turkey.

U.S. empties both barrels at Turkey

The final communication which came from the Pentagon removing Turkey from the F-35 program came in late April and banged a final nail in the coffin of a military hardware sharing deal with the U.S. – forcing Turkey, a NATO member, out in the cold. Perhaps a final blow even to Ankara-Washington relations came days later when Joe Biden formally announced his acknowledgement of Turkey’s role in the Armenian genocide.

The reason the U.S. took this position was that there was a growing skittishness from military figures in the Pentagon over whether Turkey can be trusted not to share sensitive information about the jets with Russia. The timing of this decision is both curious and poignant though.

Relations with Russia in recent years have been at best lukewarm and barely cordial at best, but quite delicate at worse. President Putin on occasion has felt the need to issue veiled threats to Erdogan during tense talks over such incendiary subjects like Syria – where both countries are fighting on opposing sides in Idlib – and Erdogan has appeared to respect the lucid but polite warnings from the Russian leader.

Russia out in the cold

But Erdogan recently went over a line with regards to Ukraine making it very clear that his government would always be more sympathetic to siding with Kiev in any dispute with Russia in the Donbas region. On April 21^st, President Zelensky met with President Erdogan in Ankara where they underlined the importance of another defense contract which has also proved to be costly to the firebrand Turkish leader: Turkey’s sales of its own drone to Ukraine.

And this is where it gets complicated. If it were not for this deal and the coziness of Ankara and Kiev, Erdogan could have turned to the Russians when the F-35 deal dell flat on its face and struck a new deal over the Russian fighter jets currently making the headlines on the Ukrainian border itself.

The irony here is that Turkey was always the delinquent member of the NATO pack with generals of western countries always questioning whether it could be useful if the west ever had a conflict with Russia – as Turkey, they say, could be relied upon to ‘choke’ the Bosporus straits blocking Russia’s naval fleet to return to its Black Sea base for refueling. Or at least that’s the theory. With the Ukraine crisis in mid-April, and Turkey’s divided loyalties now after being snubbed by the NATO giants as well as Russia, this role is being more and more questioned.

Turkey has literally dug itself into a deeper and deeper hole entrenching itself increasingly with complicated geopolitical and geomilitary relations – and rows – that it is now stuck out in the cold with no partner for stealth fighters.

And yet, with recent shifting plates in the Middle East of old foes becoming friends, some might be forgiven for arguing that Turkey doesn’t need this grade of stealth fighter anyway, which would have been a huge drain on an economy already in the doldrums.

In recent months, we have seen relations with archenemy Saudi Arabia thaw, after King Salman held out an olive branch in November of last year and this theme was followed by the Saudi Crown Prince ‘MBS’ who recently took the decision to re-open the border between KSA and Qatar – its uber-adversary and partner with Turkey. This coincides with a new chapter of relations between Turkey and Egypt, where there was genuinely some bad blood geopolitically which needed tackling head on.

That’s a considerable shift, coming after a seven-year freeze in relations that started after Turkey’s backing of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who was elected in 2012 and affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Morsi was of course deposed in 2013, following uprisings and finally a military coup that led to Abdel Fattah al-Sisi becoming president in 2014, leading to what analysts called a “deep freeze” thereinafter.

But with these new chapters being turned, largely due to Joe Biden becoming U.S. president in December of 2020, a casual observer of Middle East politics might surmise that peace is breaking out in the region – especially with Iraq brokering talks between Iran and KSA presently.

Turkey still has though an ace to play with its largely victorious role in Libya, where in recent weeks we have seen a new attitude from the UAE (also previously an enemy) which is warming to a new political leadership in Tripoli raising many questions as to whether now the “warlord” General Haftar can be trusted to adhere himself to the new mood which his nemesis Ankara can take credit for.

But Ankara still has this enfant terrible role with the European Union. Erdogan creating headlines over a chair incident, which denied EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen the seat next to his when she and the European Council president both visited Ankara, has only soured relations with Brussels to a new low point. With relations also with both the U.S. and NATO at an all-time low, matched only by a new stand-off with Russia, one might be forgiven for thinking that the Turkish president is more comfortable out in the cold and, like a fairground conjurer, he prefers to keep everyone guessing as to what his next move might be. Surely, we won’t have to wait long before the next debacle grabs the media spotlight.

Ankara is quickly showing that a new attitude towards human rights and liberties is the only way forward to work with Joe Biden’s administration – one more nail in the coffin of EU plans to be a superpower.

The Biden effect is already proving to be seismic across the world, in how regions deal with their own human rights (Middle East) and how the EU goes about its business with its self-induced fantasy of being a superpower. Wannabee superpowers talk the talk. Real superpowers walk the walk.

And this is very much the case of the EU itself which is already caving in to last minute negotiations with the UK over a post-Brexit trade deal, with the European Commission president herself rolling her sleeves up and trying to find a compromise with the UK over fishing rights. Clearly, the real powers in Europe – Germany and France – are leaning on the EU itself in Brussels and warning of consequences which will affect them politically if the UK crashes out of the EU. In other words, higher tariffs on French and German goods in the UK market, which will mean job losses in both those countries. But the EU itself, as an entity, will take a massive blow if a no deal Brexit actually happens on January 1st – which will send a chilling signal to all the potential Eurosceptic countries in the EU that “you too can do a Brexit”. The obvious ones who will be receptive to this are of course Spain and Italy. The less obvious countries who might be envious of the UK – The Netherlands and Denmark – will no doubt receive a boost to their eurosceptic groups.

Either of these two scenarios would spell the end of the EU as we know it which explains why a certain new level of panic is being felt in the corridors of Brussels. And that desperation is contagious. Indeed, was it because of a new level of insecurity within the EU itself which prompted Hungary and Poland to block a near 2 trillion dollars Covid rescue plan which EU leaders had proposed to be part of the next 2021-2027 six year budget? Both countries on November 18th derailed the unprecedented plan as their leaders were afraid that signing up to it would give Brussels the upper hand and forcing new immigration measures onto them.

Whether this is the real reason or not is not relevant. What is important is that the move by these two member states will send a shockwave both to the EU itself and to its two giants who run it, Germany and France. The no-confidence vote is significant as the EU believed that it had finally overcome resistance from countries like the Netherlands about how exactly the money would be given to Spain and Italy and the terms of a payback. No one saw the Poland-Hungary Exocet missile on the horizon and this move will only intensify panic in Brussels over the EU’s ability to keep itself relevant and stay in the game before the next European elections in 2024 where all-time new levels of low voter turnout will swell even further the hard right bloc in the European parliament.

The idea of this pan-European populist group one day actually holding a majority in the European parliament is considered a nightmare scenario which could mean the EU project having to reinvent itself altogether. Or it falling apart altogether.

And nobody is watching the slow implosion of the European Union more than its fake friend on the periphery of its borders, Turkey. In fact, it will be Turkey which will deliver the final blow to the 27-nation bloc when it goes ahead with its plans to overhaul its own human rights record.

Yes, you read correctly. Remarkably, since Joe Biden’s victory in the U.S. presidential elections, Turkey’s firebrand leader Recep Erdogan, has pulled a rabbit out of the hat and shocked the entire region with this latest stunt. If the plan is serious – to radically overhaul Turkey’s judiciary and to turn off the heat on independent media and zealous journalists in general – then this suddenly puts Turkey at the front of the line for rich pickings from the Biden administration and sets an example to its regional foe, Saudi Arabia, to follow suit.

Imagine though the crushing message this sends to the European Union though, which has been trying to keep alive a dream for nearly two decades that it – and only it alone – can reform Turkey, to put it in line with what is expected of an “accession state” as they are called! Erdogan is no fool. He knows that the carrot and stick of the EU was designed only to serve the EU’s interests in controlling this important NATO member, while appeasing France and Germany who would never sign off on Turkey becoming an EU member state anyway. But Erdogan’s approach – “it’s all about the money” – is both clever and well-timed. The valuable foreign investment which could come from the U.S. companies which might prefer Turkey as the perfect base outside of the EU, but perched on the Middle East’s peninsular is what Turkey badly needs now to tame its runaway economy. It really is all about the money at the end of the day and the EU couldn’t deliver here. But the U.S. can. This poignant message will reverberate all around the MENA region and be seen by the ‘bad boys’ on the bloc, as perceived by Biden’s new secretary of State Antony Blinken – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – and will almost certainly be replicated. This, in turn, will place the U.S. as the main player, once again, in the region, and the EU as more or less an observer, which will need to come up with a lot more money to buy manufactured hegemony if it is to keep the lights switched on and the actors paid.

On July 10th, the BBC bannered “Hagia Sophia: Turkey turns iconic Istanbul museum into mosque” and reported that the biggest, oldest, and the most important, cathedral in all of Orthodox Christendom — and the world’s most important Byzantine building, which was constructed as the Saint Sophia Cathedral by the Byzantine Roman Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the year 537, and which stands on the site that had been consecrated in the year 325 by the Roman Emperor Constantine (and which cathedral was relabelled the Hagia Sophia “museum” in 1935 by Turkey’s Constitutionally secularist Government) — has now become, officially, at last, designated, by the restored Islamic Government of Turkey, a Muslim house of worship, a mosque, a Muslim house of worship.

This signals the end of Turkey’s being ruled by a secular Government, which it had been, ever since 1923. It is the end of Turkey’s secular Government and the restoration of the Islamic Mehmed the Conqueror’s 1453 order that it be a mosque. That ended the Byzantine Roman Catholic Empire, and started Islamic-ruled Turkey. It ended Constantinople and started Istanbul. Mehmet, however, allowed Christianity to continue, in the Islamic Ottoman Empire, but only as an accepted part of the Greek East (“Orthodox”), not as part of the Roman West (imperialistic), Christianity (which he had just then conquered with the fall of Constantinople on that same date, 29 May 1453). And now, even the Orthodox Christians are being marginalized in Turkey, because the Hagia Sophia had been “for almost 1,000 years the most important Orthodox cathedral.”

This is an act with huge international implications. It is an important event in human history.

Turkey’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose entire actual education was only in Islamic schools though he lies about it and claims to have received a degree from a non-Islamic university, is in the process of transforming Turkey back again into a specifically Islamic type of dictatorship, a Sharia-law-ruled state. The secularist Turkish Republic that was instituted in 1923 by the Enlightenment-inspired Kemal Attaturk has now decisively ended. The widespread speculations that Erdogan has been aiming to restore Turkey to being the imperial nation and ruler of a restored Islamic Ottoman Empire are now decisively confirmed by this brazen act of insult to Orthodox Christians, and even to Roman Christians, because — as Wikipedia notes — “Justinian has sometimes been known as the ‘Last Roman’ in mid-20th century historiography.” The Orthodox Church in America titles him as “Saint Justinian The Emperor”. However, Wikipedia also notes that Constantine XI Palaiologos, who was killed by Mehmet’s forces on that date, 29 May 1453, was actually the last Roman Emperor. That ended the Roman Empire.

In other words: the Turkish Government’s official change of Saint Sophia Cathedral, which Justinian had created in 537, into now and henceforth a mosque, is a taking ownership of, and a Turkish-Muslim declaration of supremacy over, a different religion’s main house of worship. It’s a historical dagger into the heart of Orthodox Christianity, as well as being an insult to Roman Christianity.

This is not merely an isolated act, either; it is, instead, something to which Erdogan has long been building. Erdogan’s grab of land from secularist-ruled (committedly anti-sectarian) Syria, and his recent sending of troops to help conquer the formerly secularist Libya, which land had been turned into a hellish civil war by a U.S.-and-allied invasion in 2011 and which chaos there continues to this day, all are consistent with an understanding of Erdogan in which his foremost objective is a restoration of the Ottoman Empire. And the U.S. Government has supported this objective of his (but only as Turkey being a branch of the U.S. empire), and tried to get the EU to accept it.

The question now — since the United States Government has been pushing against European resistance to accepting a military alliance with an Islamic dictatorship — is whether continuation of the NATO alliance will be ended because of the path that Erdogan and the United States Government have jointly been taking to re-impose a decidedly Sunni Islamic dictatorship upon Turkey (by means of which, Turkey will serve as a wedge against both Shiite controlled Iran, and an increasingly Orthodox-dominated Russia). However, there has been a split between Erdogan and the U.S. regime, because he does not intend his restored Ottoman empire to be a part of the U.S. or any other empire. Erdogan’s independent streak is what now threatens to break-up the Western Alliance — the U.S. empire (which is actually the Rhodesist UK-U.S. empire).

The United States Government has been preferring Erdogan’s former political partner but now enemy, Erdogan’s fellow Sunni Islamist Fethullah Gulen, who cooperates with the U.S. and is a CIA protégé (including rabidly against Shiite Iran and against Iran’s main ally Russia). Gulen is passionately endorsed by America’s aristocracy. The U.S. regime has been preferring Gulen to impose this transformation of Turkey into an Islamic U.S. satellite, because Gulen models his operation (and he has even described it in remarkable detail) upon U.S. and UK ‘intelligence’ practices (CIA & MI6), whereas Erdogan has insisted upon an independent Turkey with its own nationalistic ‘intelligence’ organization — a nationalistically transformed version of Turkey’s existing MIT or National Intelligence Organization — an ‘intelligence’ organization that’s cleansed of what the CIA praises as “Gulen is interested in slow and deep social change, including secular higher education; Erdogan as a party leader is first and foremost interested in preserving his party’s power, operating in a populist manner, trying to raise the general welfare.” (The CIA actually knows that this has nothing whatsoever to do with “trying to raise the general welfare” — the U.S. regime’s goal is to extend everywhere the U.S. empire, and Erdogan’s Turkish regime has that same goal for the Turkish empire, which doesn’t yet even exist, though it once did as the Ottoman Empire, and he wants to restore it.) Erdogan insists upon Turkey’s not being merely a vassal-state or colony within a foreign-led empire, but instead the leading nation of its own empire, starting perhaps with gobbling up Syria and Libya, but extending ultimately more globally. There is a soundly documented article titled “Why Are Gulenists Hostile Toward Iran?” and it provides much of the reason why the CIA supports Gulen (they do largely because Erdogan isn’t so obsessive against Iran — which country America’s aristocracy crave to conquer again, as they had done in 1953, and Erdogan doesn’t support that as passionately as they require).

The question now for Europe is whether it wants to be again a participant in various aristocracies’, and clergies’, imperialistic designs, or instead to declare itself finally non-aligned and to lead thereby a new global non-aligned movement, not militaristically, but instead by providing, to the entire world, an anti-imperialistic and truly democratic model, a re-start and replacement of today’s United Nations, and one that will reflect what had been Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s anti-imperialist intention, and not Harry S. Truman’s American-imperialist intention — a start from scratch that has FDR’s statements to guide it, and not Truman’s actions to guide it (such as has been the case). Perhaps even the U.S., NYC-based, U.N. would ultimately sign onto that new international global federation; but the only basis upon which nations in the old U.N. should be accepted into its successor would be if the old U.N. were gradually to dissolve itself as its individual nations would, each on its own, sign onto the new one. Ultimately, this option must be made available to all Governments, to choose to either continue in Truman’s U.N., or else join instead a new, and authentically FDR-based, authentically anti-imperialistic, replacement of it.

That is what this dictatorial Islamization of Turkey is really all about, and only Europe can make the decision — no other land can. However, such a decision will only fail if any such organization as a new U.N. is to be at all involved in the particular national issues that now are so clearly coming to the fore in the transformation of Turkey into a Sunni Islamist dictatorship.

The “international community” should have no say in Turkey’s intranational (or “domestic”) affairs — regardless of whether Turkey is in or out of Europe. Sectarian and nationalistic concerns cannot rule in the formation of any authentically democratic new international order — an authentically non-imperialistic international order. All such concerns, domestic concerns, must be strictly the domain of the authority and power of each one of the individual constituent units, each individual national Government itself controlling its own internal affairs. FDR was adamant about that. He was insistent that the U.N. not get involved in individual nations’ internal affairs. The profoundly anti-FDR, “Responsibility to Protect” idea (which now has even acquired the status of being represented by an acronym “R2P” catch-phrase), has increasingly arisen recently to become a guiding principle of international relations, and must be soundly and uncompromisingly rejected in the formulation and formation of any replacement-organization — any authentically democratic international federation of nations. Otherwise, everything would be futile, and there will be a WWIII. We are heading in exactly the opposite direction from that which FDR had intended — which was to prevent any Third World War.

This decision will be made by the individual nations of Europe. Only they collectively hold this power. They will be able to exercise it only if they will terminate their alliances outside of Europe, and proceed forward no longer bound by external alliances, but instead become a free and independent European federation of European states. Only they, collectively, will be able to make this decision, as Europeans, for the entire world, regarding what the world’s future will be. And only they will hold the ultimate responsibility — and it’s NOT the “responsibility to protect”. It is instead the responsibility to protect the future of the entire world. It’s the responsibility to protect a future for the world. And if Europe fails it, then the world will inevitably move forward to WWIII, as it is doing. A new international order is needed, and only Europe can lead it, if Europe will.

In order for Europe to do that, Europe must first define itself. Is Turkey part of Europe? Is Russia? What is Europe? If Europeans won’t be able to agree on that, then the world will continue to move forward towards WWIII, because the world will then have no center, it will continue to have only contending empires — exactly what FDR had aimed to prevent.

Europe is the key. But will Europe’s leaders place the key in the lock, and open, finally, the door to a non-imperialistic world? The present, U.S.-empire-aligned, Europe, won’t do that. Turkey’s action on the Hagia Sophia, which is an insult to all Christians, and especially to Orthodox ones, might finally force the issue — and its solution.

Other than that, however, the official designation of the Hagia Sophia as being a mosque is entirely a domestic, Turkish, matter.