Where Ya Gonna Go with this Recep?

Stratfor.com

     I have tried several times to write about the popular and enigmatic President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. I did get one decent piece out two years ago, July 2016: Turkey.
     My opinion of Erdoğan has not changed much since then. I thought he was a bad actor then, I am even more firm about it now. Most of the Turks I know in the country feel the same way. They are adherents of Attaturk and devoted one of his principle tenets: the secular state. Erdoğan is an Islamist and envisions himself as an Ottoman Sultan. I really question if he didn’t stage the coup attempt in 2016 just so he could crackdown on his opponents and move his Islamist agenda ahead at a faster pace. It seems to be well documented that corruption in his governments has made him an incredibly wealthy man. The extravagances of the palace that he built are well documented. His thuggish bodyguards attacked Armenian and Kurdish protesters on May 16, 2017 in Washington, DC.
     Most of the time, Turkey seems to get their way with the US. Seriously, there were no repercussions for the attack of US citizens protesting in Washington, DC… we let them off the hook. The Turkish government blocked the making of The 40 Days of Musa Dagh in the 1930s. So much for freedom of expression. We were fighting ISIS in Syria and our allies were both Turkey and the Kurds. The Turks probably attacked the Kurds more than they did ISIS… and again we never reacted the way most Americans thought we should have reacted. When Erdoğan’s poll numbers dip and it looks like an upstart party might gain influence, there are miraculous act of terrorism attributed, of course, to the Kurds which allows him to crack down on them while stoking the flames of national fervor so that he wins the election and keeps his grip on power. I tend to believe the terrorism is was staged and the elections were rigged. Since the coup, he changed the constitution a la Russia and Venezuela to suit his holding onto power.
     Yet, they were our ally. They have been since Admiral Mark Bristol shunned the Armenians in favor of Attaturk and the Republic of Turkey. We talk about the Incirlik Air Base like it the global lynchpin in our military strategy. And yet, we needed it to attack enemies in the Middle East, Turkey has been quite resistant in letting us use Incirlik for those purposes. We seem to be an ally when it suits Erdoğan.
     After all of the US Presidents, it is President Trump that has finally taken Turkey to task for only being an ally when it favors them. The issue with the ongoing detention of Pastor Andrew Brunson triggered President Trump into action. Erdoğan, naturally, is claiming this is a conspiracy of the West, fake news, and whatever else might play well to his support base in Turkey.
     An article in today’s Wall Street Journal, Debt Powered Turkey, Until it Backfired, took a different stance. It claims that Erdoğan, in essence, “decided to turn Turkey into something resembling China on a smaller scale, a world-class economy under one man’s firm control.” To facilitate a faster recovery from the Great Recession, he eased the access to foreign loans. It worked but, according the WSJ, the amount of loans were exorbitantly out of hand. The problem is that Turkey is not China. It did not have the economic clout, the home market, nor was it able to become an exporting juggernaut like China.  President Trump’s actions may have only hastened what was inevitable. There might not be a quick fix to this.
     So, the US relationship with Turkey is fading. Turkey may quit or be dropped from NATO. They may move more into Russia’s or China’s sphere of influence. Their relations with Israel have soured. They may look to be a stronger independent power in the Middle East. They might even go so far as to annex the Kurdish parts of Syria and Iraq simply because they can. More so, they might do it because they could then “solve” the Kurdish question and taking over the Iraqi oil fields would bolster their economy. How would the US to react to such moves? It wouldn’t surprise me to see some acts of terrorism in Turkey to divert attention from the crisis to the Kurds.
     Of course, my views and prognostications are those of an arm chair analyst. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds moving forward.
     I only wish our President had mentioned the treatment of Armenians, Kurds, and other minorities in Turkey.