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ISTANBUL The unpredictable roller coaster that has become Turkish politics was on full display this past week after 104 retired admirals publicly challenged President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an open letter and 10 of them ended up in jail, accused of plotting a coup.

It was no accident that the episode came as Mr. Erdogan finds himself in the midst one of the most intense political passages of his career, as the worsening pandemic and economy have left the president sliding in the opinion polls even as he amasses more powers.

To inspire the party faithful, Mr. Erdogan has returned again to herald one of his favorite grand ideas: to carve a canal, through Istanbul, from the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea to open a new shipping route parallel to the narrow Bosporus.

For now, the use of those natural waterways is governed by the Montreux Convention, an international treaty forged in 1936, between the two World Wars, in an attempt to eliminate volatile tensions over one of the worlds most vital maritime choke points.

Alongside his support for the canal construction project, Mr. Erdogan has signaled that he could dispense with the treaty. A spokesman for the Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., told a television presenter last month that the president had the power to do so if he wanted.

Alarm was not long in following.

Under the treaty, Turkey agreed to free passage of civilian and trade vessels but a strict control of warships, especially of outside powers, which has held the peace in the region. While analysts say that reneging on the agreement is both unlikely and dangerous for Turkey, the mere suggestion threatens to send ripples of anxiety throughout the region and beyond.

Among the first to object strongly were Turkeys own retired admirals, who last weekend put their names to an open letter on a nationalist website warning that the Montreux Convention was an important founding document for Turkeys security and sovereignty and should not be put up for debate.

On Monday, Mr. Erdogan confirmed Turkeys commitment to the treaty but denounced the admirals. On Wednesday, he came out roaring and combative with a speech to A.K.P. lawmakers, blaming the main opposition party, the Republican Peoples Party, for the whole episode.

The issue, the political columnist Murat Yetkin wrote on his blog, the Yetkinreport, shifts the current agenda from the pandemic and the economy to fields that the A.K.P. likes.

The pandemics toll is now worse than ever in Turkey, with more than 50,000 new cases recorded daily. An increasingly sharp economic crunch looms, too, as the governments pandemic support for businesses is scheduled to end and inflation and unemployment remain alarmingly high.

In the midst of the troubles, Mr. Erdogans party has slipped to below 30 percent in a recent opinion poll, and his political ally, the Nationalist Movement Party, has fallen as low as 6 percent, making his re-election to the presidency in 2023 seem increasingly difficult.

Even his own supporters recognize that a bruising fight lies ahead. We have entered the long two-year election process leading to the 2023 elections, Burhanettin Duran, the director of SETA, a pro-government research organization, wrote in a column in the Daily Sabah newspaper this past week.

Due to the recent declaration, he said, referring to the admirals letter, now there is a possibility that the process will be painful. He predicted a combined domestic and international campaign against Mr. Erdogans government.

Mr. Erdogan has promised that his multibillion-dollar canal plan would create a construction and real estate boom and bring in revenue from an increase in shipping traffic.

Opposition parties have denounced the project as a corrupt, moneymaking scheme, warning that the canal would be financially unsustainable and would destroy Istanbul with uncontrolled urban sprawl.

Investigative journalists have exposed real estate deals in which prospectors from the Middle East have bought up much of the land along where the canal will be built.

Yet Mr. Erdogan said at a regional party congress in Istanbul in February that the project would go ahead, despite opposition.

They dont like it, do they? They are trying to prevent it, arent they? he said in his keynote speech. Despite them, we will build the Istanbul Canal.

The admirals are far from the only opponents of the canal. Others include the popular mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, along with environmentalists, ecologists and urban planners.

But the admirals raised particular ire from Mr. Erdogan and his fellow Islamists by including in their letter criticism of a currently serving admiral who was caught on video attending prayers with a religious sect.

The retired admirals made a point of reaffirming their adherence to the secular ideals of the Turkish republics founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

The government machinery pounced swiftly.

Ten of the signatories were detained on Monday, and another four were ordered to report to the police but were not jailed in view of their advanced years. Mr. Erdogan accused them of plotting a coup, a toxic allegation after four years of thousands of detentions and purges since the last failed coup. Some saw that as a warning to serving officers who might have similar thoughts.

Mr. Erdogan had got his groove back Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, wrote in an analysis.

The admirals letter did not come out of the blue. A year earlier, 126 retired Turkish diplomats had penned an open letter warning against withdrawing from the convention. The debate reveals the deep divisions between secularists and Islamists that have been tearing Turkey apart since Mr. Erdogans rise to power in 2002.

Caught up in their own dislike of the secular republic that replaced the Ottoman Empire, the Islamists distrust the Montreux Convention, said Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations. That was an erroneous reading of history, she added, but Mr. Erdogan feels that the convention needs to be modernized to meet Turkeys new coveted role as a regional heavyweight.

Secularists, as well as most Turkish diplomats and foreign policy experts, see the Montreux Convention as a win for Turkey and fundamental to Turkish independence and to stability in the region.

Russia would have most to lose from a change in the treaty, said Serhat Guvenc, a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, although any alteration or break up of the convention seems inconceivable, since it would demand consensus from the multiple signatories.

Russia would resent it and be provoked, he said. The United States and China would gain, since neither currently is allowed to move large warships or aircraft carriers into the Black Sea.

Most analysts said that Mr. Erdogan and his advisers knew the impossibility of changing the Montreux Convention, but that the veteran politician is using the issue to kick up a storm.

It is the governments way of lobbying for the canal, Ms. Aydintasbas said. Erdogan is adamant about building a channel parallel to the Bosporus, and one of the governments arguments will likely be that this new strait allows Turkey to have full sovereignty as opposed to the free passage of Montreux.

That interpretation is both inaccurate and dangerous, she said. Inaccurate because as long as Montreux is there, no vessel is obliged to use the new canal. Dangerous because it could aggravate the Russians and the international community.

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Sliding in the Polls, Erdogan Kicks Up a New Storm Over the Bosporus - The New York Times

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has slammed the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprusfor its court decision allegedly restricting Quran courses, threatening the allied statewith unspecified steps if the judgment is not overturned.

The Constitutional Court must first learn secularism. Northern Cyprus is not France, he said of the decision. They should carry Turkey's habits into practice. [They] should quickly correct this mistake, otherwise our next steps will be different.

Earlier this week, the court ruled that every course, including the Quran course, must be regulated and provided by the island's Ministry of Education rather than a religious commission.

Yildiz Camii: Istanbul's last sultanic mosque

The decision has misled many into believing that Northern Cyprus has banned Quran courses altogether. The court sources, speaking to local Cypriot Turkish media, have denied that their judgment bans Quran courses. Northern CyprusPrime Minister Ersan Saner alsosaid on Friday that Quran teachings werestill being provided in the country.

"The courses will continue after we finalise the legal amendments on the issue," he said.

Erdogan, however, insisted that the decision must be overturned, and he instructed Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to carry the message toTurkish Cypriot officials in a visit on Friday.

We will not allow steps that could disrupt the youths Quranic training, Erdogan added.

The tiny Mediterranean island has been split along ethnic lines between an internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government in the south and a breakaway northern region since the 1974 Turkish invasion. The north was occupied by Turkey in reaction to a coup that aimed to annex Cyprus to Greece.

Since unilaterally declaring independence in 1983, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is financially supported by Turkey, is only recognised by Ankara.

Turkey has increasingly intervenedin Northern Cyprus's domestic affairs since last years presidential elections, which was won by close Turkey ally Ersin Tatar, who supports a two-statesolution for the split island rather than a federated system.

Ankara, during the electioncampaign, lent support to Tatar against his rival, former president Mustafa Akinci, by repairing a water pipeline and the partial reopening of the off-limits Varosha riviera before the elections.

Pro-Turkish government media also heavily depicted Akinci as a Greek agent and a traitor.

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Turkey's Erdogan issues warning to Northern Cyprus over Quran courses - Middle East Eye

"Where is the $128 billion?" asked posters on billboards around Istanbul intended by Turkey's main opposition to embarrass and annoy President Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling AK Party (AKP).

The gambit seems to have worked. Police took the posters down, using cranes in some instances, according to videos shared online by the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), which said it would keep putting them back up.

The question has also trended on social media, while the AKP on Tuesday blocked a CHP call to debate the missing funds in parliament.

The sum refers to the dollars sold by state banks to support the Turkish lira in foreign exchange markets. The unorthodox policy began around the 2019 municipal elections and was ramped up in 2020, when the pandemic laid bare the lira's vulnerability and Turkey's reliance on external funding.

Bankers have calculated that the sales totalled $128.3 billion in 2019-20.

Erdogan says the sales helped to support the economy, but they sharply depleted Turkey's buffer of foreign reserves, leaving it more exposed to crisis, and opposition politicians want to know more.

"(Erdogan) says 'you cannot even ask me questions'," CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu told party members on Tuesday, accusing the AKP of stifling debate. "Those leading the country must give an account to the people."

Kilicdaroglu said a prosecutor had ruled that some posters that bore a silhouette of the presidential palace were an insult to Erdogan. Insulting the president is a crime in Turkey.

WEAKENING LIRA

The lira, which has lost more than 50% of its value since end-2017, held around 6.85 versus the dollar between May and August 2020, which economists attributed to the forex sales. It later weakened to a record low of 8.58 by November, after the sales stopped. The lira traded at 8.08 on Wednesday.

The CHP first posed the question about the sales in February, prompting Erdogan to defend the legacy of his son-in-law, former finance minister Berat Albayrak, who had oversseen the policy. read more

Albayrak abruptly resigned in November when Erdogan named Naci Agbal as governor of the central bank, which had backed the dollar sales with swaps.

Agbal was in turn fired last month, partly, Reuters reported, because Erdogan was uncomfortable with the bank's investigation into the sales, which cut its net FX reserves by 75% last year. read more

The net buffer was $10.7 billion on April 2, the lowest in at least 18 years, central bank data shows. Excluding $41.1 billion in outstanding swaps, the reserves are deeply negative.

AKP lawmaker Mustafa Savas said the sales helped Turkey avoid raising interest rates or seeking International Monetary Fund support.

The CHP has asked how the sales were conducted and at what rate. AKP lawmaker Nurettin Canikli said they were all conducted at market rates.

Canan Kaftancioglu, the CHP's Istanbul organisation head, said just a fraction of the $128 billion could have supported Turks through a 28-day coronavirus lockdown that the party has urged in the face of a surge in infections.

"They will never prevent us from asking these questions," she said, adding the posters would hang outside CHP buildings until an answer was provided.

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Show us the money: Erdogan pressed over $128 billion used to support lira - Reuters

Turkish mafia boss Alaattin akc has spent decades terrorizing rivals and those holding different political views than his own. As one of the leading figures of a right-wing extremist group called the Grey Wolves, which has focused its ire in the past on leftists, Kurds and Alawites, akc is thought to be responsible for at least 41 political murders. In 2004, a court sentenced him to 19 years in prison, in part for having his ex-wife murdered in front of their son.

A lot of people breathed a sigh of relief when he was locked up. One of the most dangerous enemies of Turkish democracy had been removed from public life for an extended period.

Now, though, akc is back. Last April, he was released from high-security Sincan Prison as part of an amnesty related to the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, he has increasingly become a voice in Turkish politics.

Shortly after his release, akc visited his ally Devlet Baheli, head of the right-wing extremist party MHP and President Recep Tayyip Erdoan's coalition partner. In November, he issued a death threat to opposition leader Kemal Kldarolu. "Watch your step," he wrote on Twitter. And when thousands of students took to the streets of Istanbul at the beginning of the year to protest the appointment of an Erdoan confidant to the position of rector of the renowned Bosporus University, he branded the demonstrators terrorists.

akc's newly expanded public profile is the expression of a fundamental power shift in Turkey. For many years, Erdoan pursued a religious agenda. But following the 2016 putsch attempt involving followers of the Islamist cleric Fethullah Glen, he has turned to the ultra-nationalists. Since the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2018, he has governed in a coalition with Baheli's secular, right-wing extremist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

The party is the political arm of the Grey Wolves. It may only attract around 7 percent support in political surveys, but its importance has increased massively in recent months as has the influence of Grey Wolves veterans like akc. Whether it is a conflict over natural gas with Greece, the fight against terrorism or Ankara's approach to minorities, government policy is increasingly influenced by the MHP.

Just how extensive the influence of the right-wing extremists has become could be seen in mid-March, when the chief public prosecutor, at Baheli's insistence, submitted an application to the country's highest court to ban Turkey's second-largest opposition party, the left-wing, pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

Erdoan has been consistent in his efforts to avoid party bans. His own party, the Muslim-conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP), was almost prohibited in 2008. Ultimately, though, he succumbed to Baheli's pressure, say observers in Ankara. "Baheli has taken the most powerful man in Turkey as his hostage," says Turkish journalist Can Dndar. "Erdoan carries the drum, but Baheli pounds out the beat."

Many Europeans see the Turkish president as a kind of modern-day sultan, who can do whatever he likes in Turkey. In fact, though, Erdoan has never been strong enough to govern the country on his own.

Early on in his tenure, Erdoan cooperated with the liberals, taking steps to prepare his country for accession to the European Union and opening Turkey up to foreign investors. Later, he formed a coalition with the Islamist Glen movement, which shares Erdoan's disdain for the secular elite. Together, Erdoan and Glen locked away hundreds of opposition activists, condemning them as terrorists in a series of show trials. When the Glen movement became too powerful, he tried to strike a balance with the Kurds, with whom he introduced an historic peace process. Following the success of the HDP in 2015 parliamentary elections, though, he turned his back on them, too. The only partners left for him were the ultra-nationalists.

Presidential confidantes report that Erdoan and Baheli actually can't stand each other. Erdoan's roots are in the Islamist Milli-Gr movement, which was oppressed in the 1980s and '90s by right-wing extremists and Kemalists in the state apparatus. He, himself, is hardly a passionate nationalist, with the community of Muslims, the umma, consistently more important to him than the nation. When he rose to power in 2003, he pledged to break with the right-wing extremist networks in the military, police and judiciary, the so-called "deep state."

Now, though, the "deep state" is more powerful than ever before. Because Erdoan doesn't have enough loyalists of his own, he replaced Glen movement followers in the judiciary, police and military with loyalists from the Grey Wolves following the 2016 putsch attempt, says parliamentarian Mustafa Yenerolu, a former member of the AKP leadership who has since switched allegiances to the liberal-conservative Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA). "Erdoan has made precisely those powers that have fought against us for years into the covert rulers of the country," he says.

The right-wing extremists are no longer particularly shy about leveraging their grip on power. Those who dare criticize the MHP are threatened or, like the opposition politician Seluk zda, even attacked.

The deputy head of the Mulism-conservative Future Party of former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutolu, zda had the temerity to point out inconsistencies in Baheli's political platform. In January, he was attacked by several club-wielding men in front of his home in Ankara, beaten so badly that he wound up in the hospital.

zda isn't the only government critic who has been the victim of presumably right-wing attacks in recent weeks. In early March, journalist Levent Gltekin was beaten by 25 men in front of his Istanbul office after he referred to the MHP ideology on air as an "illness."

According to zda, the situation in Turkey today is similar to how it was in the 1980s and '90s, when right-wing extremist groups, especially the Grey Wolves, hunted down their opponents. Thousands of leftists, Kurds and Alawites were murdered back then, frequently at the behest of the state.

Erdoan tolerates the right-wing extremists. Even as tens of thousands of opposition activists have been arrested in Turkey over the past several years, the attacks on parliamentarians and journalists have gone unpunished. Mafia boss Alaattin akc has also been allowed to spread his message of hate with no consequences.

Erdoan apparently can't afford to offend the MHP. The Turkish economy is mired in crisis, with the coronavirus pandemic having made the situation even worse. Meanwhile, Erdoan's AKP has slipped in the polls to just 30 percent. His re-election to the presidency is entirely dependent on support from the right-wing extremists.

And re-election is all that the president cares about, with all of his other political goals coming second particularly reconciliation with the Kurds. At one point, Erdoan granted more rights to the Kurds than any Turkish president before him. He loosened the ban on the Kurdish language and invested billions in the infrastructure of southeastern Turkey, where the Kurds are in the majority. In 2013, he was on the brink of finding a political solution to the conflict with the Kurdish terrorist organization PKK.

Driven by the ultra-nationalists, though, the president has now returned to the bellicose policies of the 1990s. The former co-leader of the HDP, Selahattin Demirta, has been in prison since 2016, along with thousands of other HDP members. More than 50 Kurdish mayors were removed from office.

With the move to ban the HDP, Erdoan and the right-wing extremist Baheli are taking the next step. They are trying to push the entire Kurdish movement out of Turkish politics. "It is our honorable duty to close the HDP on behalf of future generations so that they cannot return under a different name," says Baheli. The Constitutional Court may have sent the application back to state prosecutors two weeks ago due to formal errors, but hardly anybody in Turkey doubts that legal proceedings will be opened sooner or later.

The next presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2023. Observers believe that Erdoan and Baheli could, though, call snap elections for as early as this fall in order to avoid the possibility of further economic deterioration. Just three days after prosecutors submitted their application for the ban of HDP, Erdoan fired the head of the Turkish central bank and decreed his country's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, aimed at preventing violence against women.

Indeed, it looks as though Erdoan is again pursuing the same strategy that has brought him victory in past elections: The radical polarization of Turkish society.

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Joining the Wolves: Erdogan's Pact with the Ultra-Nationalists - DER SPIEGEL International Edition

CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi inaugurated Egypts Gypto Pharma City, the largest pharmaceutical city in the Middle East.

Gypto Pharma, also known as Medicine City, has been set up to produce safe and effective medicines at reasonable prices, and will manufacture coronavirus remedies and drugs for chronic diseases. Production of some vitamins will also be given priority.

The new city in Al-Khankah aims to increase cooperation between the state and the private sector in order to transform Egypt into a regional center for the pharmaceutical industry in the Middle East.

Gypto Pharma uses the latest technologies and automated machines to ensure production is of the highest quality.

Devices are self-cleaning so that the production process can continue without interruption.

President El-Sisi stressed the necessity of the city to produce high quality products, starting with the packaging.

The medicine package produced by the new city must be distinct so that the citys mark on its products cannot be tampered with, he added.

We started thinking about this project almost seven years ago.

It took a lot of time to create the most efficient factories using scientific methods so that the medicines produced in the city follow the European standards or the World Health Organization (WHO) standards, the president said.

The medicine city on an area of 180,000 square meters is the largest of its kind in the Middle East

It is set to become a regional center that attracts major international pharmaceutical companies.

We must have the ability to produce medicine at the highest levels. The antibiotic produced in the medicine city will be as efficient as its counterparts in the most prestigious countries in the world, El-Sisi added.

Presidency spokesman Bassam Rady said that Egypt produces 97 percent of its medicine needs.

Rady said that the city is a huge national project that aims to produce medicines scientifically in accordance with WHO standards.

The project comes in line with the series of initiatives in the field of health and medical care. The aim is to provide medicines to citizens at the highest possible level with upgraded facilities.

Rady added that medicine production is among one of the most important national projects that the state implemented to possess modern technological and industrial capacity in the field.

The project allows citizens to obtain high-quality and safe treatments, preventing any monopoliztic practices and controlling drug prices. It boosts the efforts undertaken by the state in the field of various medical and health initiatives.

He stated that the project places Egypt in the ranks of the countries producing medicine at the highest level.

The city works according to the latest and most accurate operating standards.

It applies the highest international quality standards, with a focus on human resources especially a young workforce capable of dealing with modern technology.

The city includes a regional center for manufacturing medicine in cooperation with foreign companies, and has plans to export to African, foreign and Arab countries. This is in addition to research and development laboratories.

The second phase will include entering into the field of specialized medicines, such as cancer treatments, to be offered at affordable prices to Egyptian citizens.

The city will include 160 lines to manufacture 150 types of medicines.

The first phase will also include manufacturing 150 million packages of medicine annually.

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EU chiefs to see Erdogan in Turkey next week - Arab News