Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been placed into a difficult position by recent events and yet he hardly deserves sympathy. As he has specifically sought to exploit Turkey's Eurasian identity and potential role as a kind mediating power – then he should have expected this, being in a situation where he has the power to deal but few friends. His recent diplomatic attempt to bring the forces of the Ukraine War together has been interesting. It was also noteworthy that his recent summit attempt had little support from the United States which clearly (and despite its official rhetoric) doesn't want the war to end.
A NATO member, Turkey is functionally an American satrapy in
revolt. The American Empire has overthrown its government more than once as a
corrective to political forces that sought do away with the legacy of Kemalism
and its Western-oriented secularism. The Islamism of Erdogan's AKP and his
ambivalence to NATO and American geopolitical goals turned him quickly into an
enemy and Washington has been trying to remove him for more than twenty years. The
traditional tools of coup and assassination haven't worked. These mechanisms
allow the pretense of democracy and international law to be maintained through
the cover of plausible deniability and a quick diplomatic acknowledgement of
the coup regime. In other cases the US might have launched some form of war but
Turkey is a member of NATO and fills an important position. With its hands
tied, Washington has pursued other courses, most recently in the realm of
economics.
At first the plot to remove Erdogan followed the old tried
and true pattern of working through the Turkish military. This was thwarted and
Erdogan so aggressively purged the ranks that America was left with few
options. This led to the seemingly desperate attempt to overthrow and
assassinate him in 2016.
Erdogan had already been flirting with Moscow and though
their alliance is fraught with difficulties and plagued by historical conflict,
the realities of American imperialism in the 2010's allowed it to function and
perpetuate.
Turkey then angered NATO by purchasing Russian missiles and
while it facilitated NATO with regard to refugees out of Syria and the other lands
of Washington's bloody wars, the alliance is little more than ink on paper and
in many respects Ankara has pursued its own policies with regard to Syria, the
larger Levant, and the Mediterranean. These policies and projects have put it
at odds with America and its other regional allies.
While doing business with Moscow, Erdogan has also been
selling weapons to Ukraine – and the US has in recent days been trying to get
Ankara to sell its Russian missiles to Ukraine in exchange for a new F-35 deal.
Turkey's cultural and economic interests in Ukraine (and particularly Crimea)
are actually at odds with Moscow but due to the personalities of Putin and
Erdogan, they have been able to work past these differences.
But now with the war, Erdogan is caught in the middle of all
these forces. Urged to close the Bosphorus he made a move sure to anger
everyone and closed it to all military vessels. Time will tell if that has been
faithfully adhered to. His own economy in shambles, Erdogan has sought to
facilitate peace between Kyiv and Russia. A paralyzed Black Sea is the last
thing he needs right now. As NATO drifts toward war with Moscow, Erdogan may
find himself in an impossible situation being bound to both parties and
increasingly in a volatile domestic dilemma.
The sanctions will further tie Turkey's hands and limit its
ability to do business with Moscow and so Erdogan faces a choice. If he
abandons NATO for Moscow – which if a break with NATO is his ultimate goal, this
would be the time to do it – then he'll be economically ruined. If he re-aligns
with NATO, he will destroy his own foreign policy goals and re-invigorate
elements of the Turkish bureaucracy that he has sought to subdue. In every way
he's in a bind and he as much as anyone wants to see the fighting stop.
It's also worth mentioning that he's using this multi-faceted
crisis to reach out to the UAE and to re-establish the nation's historic ties
with Tel Aviv – a relationship that was all but destroyed by the clash in 2010
over the Gaza Flotilla and the hostility that developed between Erdogan and Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
I'm sure his efforts at ending the Ukraine War were not
appreciated in Washington and yet it would seem they have failed – at least so
far. Erdogan has been forced to face the grim reality that in these troubled
days his nation has few friends. And so we expect that he will continue to
reach out and seek a middling path. But in the meantime I'm sure he's in
anguish over Ukraine – all the more as hawkish elements in NATO are pushing for
a greater conflict and one that will quickly envelop Turkey and perhaps the
globe.
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