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The show which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan is playing now with the migrant crisis is, to a great extent, the result of the green light he got from Trump last October when the US troops withdrew from Syria.

Iveta Cherneva writes about security, politics, human rights and sustainability. She recently published the book Trump, European security and Turkey (2020).

Writing from Bulgaria the EUs external border with Turkey I remember that when the White House delivered its statement of 6 October that the US military forces would be moving out of Turkeys way, many of my compatriots realised that nothing good will come out of this.

Erdoan entered Syria like a king and started running the show. Several days ago, he even proclaimed to his party that the Syrian province Idlib was Turkish territory now. We are the hosts now, he said.

The 33 killed Turkish soldiers in Syria were a big blow but it was a small price to pay for the gains Erdoan has made.

Erdoans ambitions to continue expecting help from NATO in Syria are arrogant, as is his countrys veto on the Alliances defence plan for the Baltic States and Poland in NATO, unless the Syrian Kurdish YPG is recognised as a terrorist organisation. These are just blackmailing tactics.

Turkey will never get direct military help by NATO in Syria. And forget about Article 5 in the Turkey-Syria case. In the end, it is Turkey that entered Syria, not the other way around. This is why Article 4 and consultations are the most that Turkey can hope for, and they already used that option last week.

A Turkish government spokesman announced that 100,000 refugees are now headed towards the EU. When all other leverage fails for Erdoan, it is the refugees turn. This is the show we are watching. I wont even mention the refugee deal that Turkey struck with the EU that is pretty irrelevant right now, from where I am sitting.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov will try to serve as a mediator between the EU and Turkey he did so on Monday and will continue over the following days.

My thought is for those that did not pay attention to Turkeys incursion into the Kurdish parts of Syria. In the end, it was only about the Kurds, right? In the EU, who cares about the Kurds?

When we look at the new migrant crisis unfolding at our doorstep, we should not forget about Erdoans motivation and the fact that Trump gave him the green light. By the way, the US President promised in a phone call more support to Erdoan.

The chiefs of the three EU institutions are meeting the Greek leadership on Tuesday in Greece but that will be no more than a symbolic meeting. The real breakdown of dialogue is not between EU institutions and Greece. It is elsewhere.

Erdoans plans, however, are to see many more dramatic scenes at the EU border. Unavoidably, there will be human suffering. Turkeys propaganda will make the most of it.

The last refugee episode tells Europe that the show will end when Erdoan says so. Today, the Turkish leader said that millions of refugees will enter Europe. It doesnt take millions, however. Several thousand refugees and several fatalities will be more than enough to accomplish what Erdoan intends humiliate the EU.

Read more from the original source:
Erdogan is bullying Europe because Trump gave him the green light - EURACTIV

There is little mystery about Erbil Gunastis perspective on U.S.-Turkey relations. His new book, GameChanger: Trump Card: Turkey & Erdogan, is a typo-ridden, rambling work arguing that only President Recep Tayyip Erdoans Turkey can ensure the United States is successful in its foreign policy objectives.

Gunasti, who was then-Prime Minister Erdoans press officer from 2002 to 2007, and his life partner, Daphne Barak, are long-time supporters of President Donald Trump, representing him as delegates at the 2016 Republican Party Convention.

In the books preface, Gunasti writes that he will have joined [Trumps] administration by the time this book is published. So far, he has not been appointed to any U.S. government position.

It is hard, however, to take Gunastis proclaimed expertise on the books content seriously given it contains more than a whiff of plagiarism. Whole pages of GameChanger are copied and pasted directly from articles published in outlets including Reuters, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Guardian and many more without any credit given to the authors of these direct quotes.

Locating the duplicated quotes is easy given Gunasti does provide the web links to the articles in footnotes, but in most cases he does not even bother to use quotation marks or indents when he copies entire paragraphs of other individuals writing. The books content holds up no better than the poor quality of its writing.

With Trump and his supporters as the target audience for the book, Gunasti plays on fears of Muslim migration, blames President Barak Obama and his predecessors for all of the United States travails, both real and imagined, and touts Turkeys big things: Istanbuls huge airport, the countrys thousands of railway miles, its growing defence industry, and the millions of tourists it attracts.

GameChanger shifts back and forth between boasting of Turkeys strengths and incanting the Erdoan administrations litany of grievances with the West. The book either omits Ankaras own transgressions, or paints them as legitimate, and even beneficial.

It asserts that Turkeys geopolitical attributes and steadfast political will make it a domineering regional power with leverage over its neighbours in the Middle East, the eastern Mediterranean, and Central Asia, as well as Russia and China.

Gunasti is right that Turkey is endowed with a unique geostrategic location that it can use to its advantage. Russia has been eager to send natural gas to Europe via Turkey, China has incorporated Turkey into its Belt and Road Initiative, and the United States has long sought Turkeys cooperation on counterterrorism and stability operations in the Middle East.

Beyond these oversimplified facts, however, much of Gunastis halting narrative distorts reality and parrots Erdoan talking points. Even when addressing problems that Turkey can legitimately argue the West does not fully appreciate, he fails to illuminate reality.

On issues like the U.S. support for Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Turkeys stalled EU accession process, Gunasti bashes the United States and the EU for their stupidity without bothering to outline the actual facts that explain why Turkey has genuine grievances with their actions.

Much of the rest of the book discards serious discussion entirely to traffic in conspiracy theories. On the subject of the Middle East, Gunasti employs fierce criticisms of globalists including the last three U.S. presidents. He writes repeatedly that Obamas decision to deploy U.S. troops as a part of the global coalition to fight ISIS was a political hit job designed to weaponise Syria against Trump.

Leading the global coalition, the U.S.s Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) was initiated in 2014 to achieve the territorial defeat of ISIS, long before Trump announced his candidacy for President. That goal was not achieved until March 2019 and OIR continues to this day to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS, despite the partial withdrawal ordered by Trump last October on the eve of Turkeys invasion of northeastern Syria.

Turning to the eastern Mediterranean, Gunasti repeatedly asserts the Erdoan talking point that Turkey controls and has legal rights to much of the seas natural resources. He criticises the Republic of Cyprus for unilaterally declaring oil and gas exploration zones and calls the UN hypocritical for not recognising the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which he brags Turkey was able to single-handedly create.

However, the idea that Cyprus has acted unilaterally in contravention of international law is farcical. Cyprus, which is an internationally recognised member of the UN, has treaties with Egypt, Israel, and Lebanon delineating their maritime borders and the support of the EU for its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claims under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

None of that really matters though according to Gunasti, because Turkeys massive naval military exercises prove it has laid claim to much of the seas around it and the West is in no position to oppose Turkish dictates in the region. In fact, Turkey is largely isolated in regional affairs.

To evidence Turkeys preponderance of power, Gunasti claims that of the 200 surface warships that are present in this semi-closed sea, 90 percent of them, including half that belong to the Western European powers, are in contention with the U.S. Navy.

He goes on to write that The European Union started to build its own navy under PETCO. To many its main adversary is a NATO that is under U.S. leadership, rather than any of the Eastern powers. Among the books many typos, PETCO refers to the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), which is a part of the EUs security and defence policy.

It is true that renewed interest among EU states in pursuing structural integration of their military capabilities is somewhat prompted by uncertainty over the future of NATO, inspired in no small part by Trumps ambivalent stance on the alliance.

However, security problems in the EU neighbourhood, including the Syrian and Libyan civil wars and their ensuing migration crises, are the primary motivations behind the activation of PESCO by 25 of the EUs now 27 members in 2017.

Gunasti fixates often on the threat of migration to Europe. He asserts that Turkey has saved Europe twice from a total annihilation by stemming the flow of millions of refugees.

Painting Erdoan as the leader of the Muslim ummah, Gunasti says Turkey can be a pressure valve to the immediate benefit of Christian white Western Europeans whose civilisation could be destroyed by the avalanche of illegal refugees headed for Europe.

Tapping into xenophobic fears among Trumps base and similar ultra-nationalist movements in Europe, Gunasti suggests Turkey can either be the saviour of Western civilisation or it can use its geostrategic position to open the floodgates of destabilizing migration.

To undergird his claim that Turkey is a major power that the United States and EU need more than it needs them, Gunasti write repeatedly that by 2030 the United States will only be the third largest economy in the world and Turkey will rise to become the fifth largest, eclipsing Germany, Britain and France.

A study by PwC Global does project that the United States will be the third largest economy by 2050, but does not even place Turkey in the top 10. It does project Turkey will overtake France, but not Germany or Britain.

Overall, PwC does concur with Gunastis broader claim that emerging economies will reshuffle the G7s economic power, but it cautions that for this to occur, emerging economies need to enhance their institutions and their infrastructure significantly if they are to realise their long-term growth potential.

Furthermore, Gunasti claims Turkey is already essentially a top five military power, but the 2020 Military Strength Ranking places Turkey outside the top ten globally, with regional rival Egypt ranked higher in ninth place.

Paul Iddons reporting for Ahval demonstrates that although Turkey has developed its indigenous military-industrial sector with some success, in key power projection areas including its navy and advanced fighter jets progress has been limited.

What GameChanger makes most clear are the roots of Trumps affinity for Erdoan, underpinned by authoritarian impulses on a wide range of issues. The pair may be predisposed to cooperate on many consequential matters, but if left free to impose their shared visions this cooperation would chiefly benefit them politically at the expense of their countries security and economic interests.

There are far better books available that provide nuanced explanations of Turkeys legitimate grievances with the Western powers, accurate depictions of Turkeys strengths and weaknesses, and balanced interrogation of the calamities Ankara is responsible for. GameChanger provides no such forthright analysis.

View original post here:
A self-proclaimed Trump and Erdoan insider tells a tale of fear and falsehood - Ahval

The latest installment of the interminable Syria tragedy could be interpreted as Greece barely blocking a European invasion by Syrian refugees. The invasion was threatened by President Erdogan even as he refused the EUs puny offer you can refuse bribe of only one billion euros.

Well, its more complicated than that. What Erdogan is in fact weaponizing is mostly economic migrants from Afghanistan to the Sahel and not Syrian refugees.

Informed observers in Brussels know that interlocking mafias Iraqi, Afghan, Egyptian, Tunisian, Moroccan have been active for quite a long time smuggling everyone and his neighbor from the Sahel via Turkey, as the Greek route towards the EU Holy Grail is much safer than the Central Mediterranean.

The EU sending a last-minute emissary to Ankara will yield no new facts on the ground even as some in Brussels, in bad faith, continue to carp that the one million refugees trying to leave Idlib could double and that, if Turkey does not open its borders with Syria, there will be a massacre.

Those in Brussels spinning the Turkey as victim scenario list three conditions for a possible solution. The first is a ceasefire which in fact already exists, via the Sochi agreement, and was not respected by Ankara. The second is a political process which, once again, does exist: the Astana process involving Russia, Turkey and Iran. And the third is humanitarian aid a euphemism that means, in fact, a NATO intervention of the Libya humanitarian imperialism kind.

As it stands, two facts are inescapable. Number one: the Greek military dont have what it takes to resist, in practice, Ankaras weaponizing of the so-called refugees.

Number two is the kind of stuff that makes NATO fanatics recoil in horror: Since the Ottoman siege of Vienna, this is the first time in four centuries that a Muslim invasion of Europe is being prevented by, who else, Russia.

Fed up with sultan

This past Sunday, Ankara launched yet another Pentagon-style military adventure, baptized as Spring Shield. All decisions are centralized by a triumvirate: Erdogan, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and the head of MIT (Turkish intel) Hakan Fidan. John Helmer has memorably called them the SUV (Sultan and the Ugly Viziers).

Behlul Ozkan, from the University of Marmara, a respected Kemalist scholar, frames the whole tragedy as having been played since the 1980s, now back on the stage on a much larger scale since the start of the so-called Syrian chapter of the Arab Spring in 2011.

Ozkan charges Erdogan with creating conquering troops out of five unlikely fundamentalist groups and naming the armed groups after Ottoman sultans, claiming they are a sort of national salvation army. But this time, argues Ozkan, the results are much worse from millions of refugees to the terrible destruction in Syria, and the emergence of our political and military structures affecting national security in a dangerous way.

To say that the Russian General Staff are absolutely fed up with the SUVs shenanigans is the ultimate understatement. Thats the background for the meeting this Thursday in Moscow between Putin and Erdogan. Methodically, the Russians are disrupting Turk operations to an unsustainable level ranging from renewed air cover to the Syrian Arab Army to electronic countermeasures totally smashing all Turkish drones.

Russian diplomatic sources confirm that no one in Moscow believes any word, promise or cajoling emanating from Erdogan anymore. So its useless to ask him to respect the Sochi agreement. Imagine a Sun Tzu-style meeting with the Russian side displaying the very picture of self-restraint while scrutinizing Erdogan on how much he is willing to suffer before desisting from his Idlib adventure.

Those non-nonsense proto-Mongols

What ghosts from the past evolve in Erdogans unconscious? Let history be our guide and lets go for a ride among the empires of the steppes.

In the 5th century, the Juan Juan people, proto-Mongols as much as their cousins the White Huns (who lived in todays Afghanistan), were the first to give their princes the title of khan afterwards used by the Turks as well as the Mongols.

A vast Eurasian Turco-Mongol linguistic spectrum studied in detail by crack French experts such as J.P. Roux evolved via conquering migrations, more or less ephemeral imperial states, and aggregating diverse ethnic groups around rival Turkish or Mongol dynasties. We can talk about an Eurasian Turk space from Central Asia to the Mediterranean for no less than a millennium and a half but only, crucially, for 900 years in Asia Minor (todays Anatolia).

These were highly hierarchical and militarized societies, unstable, but still capable, given the right conditions, such as the emergence of a charismatic personality, to engage in a strong collective project of building political constructions. So the charismatic Erdogan Khan mindset is not much different from what happened centuries ago.

The first form of this socio-cultural tradition appeared even before the conversion to Islam which happened after the battle of Talas in 751, won by the Arabs against the Chinese. But most of all it all crystallized around Central Asia from the 10th and 11th centuries onwards.

Unlike Greece in the Aegean, unlike India or Han China, there was never a central focus in terms of a cultural berth or supreme identity organizing this process. Today this role in Turkey is played by Anatolia but thats a 20th century phenomenon.

What history has shown is an east-west Eurasian axis across the steppes, from Central Asia to Anatolia, through which nomad tribes, Turk and Turkmen, then the Ottoman Turks, migrated and progressed, as conquerors, between the 7th and the 17th centuries: a whole millennium building an array of sultanates, emirates and empires. No wonder the Turkish president pictures himself as Erdogan Khan or Sultan Erdogan.

Idlib is mine

So there is a link between the turcophone tribes of Central Asia from the 5th and 6th centuries and the current Turkish nation. From the 6th to the 11th centuries they were set up as a confederation of big tribes. Then, going southwest, they founded states. Chinese sources document the first turkut (Turkish empires) as eastern Turks in Mongolia and western Turks in Turkestan.

They were followed by more or less ephemeral empires of the steppes such as the Uighurs in the 8th century (who, by the way, were originally Buddhists). Its interesting that this original past of the Turks in Central Asia, before Islam, was somewhat elevated to mythic status by the Kemalists.

This universe was always enriched by outside elements such as Arab-Persian Islam and its institutions inherited from the Sassanids, as well as the Byzantine empire, whose structural elements were adapted by the Ottomans. The end of the Ottoman empire and multiple convulsions (the Balkan wars, WWI, the Greek-Turkish war) ended up with a Turkish nation-state whose sanctuary is Asia Minor (or Anatolia) and eastern Thrace, conformed into a national territory thats exclusively Turk and denies every minority presence that is non-Sunni and non-turcophone.

Evidently thats not enough for Erdogan Khan.

Even Hatay province, which joined Turkey in 1939, is not enough. Home to the historic Antioch and Alexandretta, Hatay was then re-baptized as Antakya and Iskenderun.

Under the Treaty of Lausanne, Hatay was included in the French mandate of Syria and Lebanon. The Turkish version is that Hatay declared its independence in 1938 when Ataturk was still alive and then decided to join Turkey. The Syrian version is that Hatay was acquired via a rigged referendum ordered by France to bypass the Treaty of Lausanne.

Erdogan Khan has proclaimed, Idlib is mine. Syria and Russia are responding, No, its not. Those were the days, when turcophone empires of the steppes could just advance and capture their prey.

Read more here:
Empires of the steppes fuel Erdogan Khans dreams - Asia Times

President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump administration eyes proposal to block jet engine sales to China: report Trump takes track to open Daytona 500 Brazile 'extremely dismayed' by Bloomberg record MORE spoke with Turkey's president on Saturday just days after U.S. forces clashed with Syrian government forces near an area where Turkish forces are attempting to resettle thousands of Syrian refugees.

Deputy White House press secretary Judd Deere told pool reporters Sunday evening that Trump had spoken withRecep Tayyip Erdoan a day earlier and "expressed concern over the violence in Idlib, Syria," referring to recent clashes between Turkish and Syrian government forces in the region.

Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump spoke with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. President Trump expressed concern over the violence in Idlib, Syria, and thanked President Erdogan for Turkeys efforts to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe," Deere said.

"President Trump conveyed the United States desire to see an end to Russias support for the Assad regimes atrocities and for a political resolution to the Syrian conflict. President Trump also reiterated that continued foreign interference in Libya would only serve to worsen the situation.

Clashes occurred earlier this month between pro-government forces and Turkish military units in northeastern Syria, the site of a military assault by Turkish forces last year as part of an operation by Turkey's government to resettle more than one million Syrian refugees.

Days ago the region was subject to further violence as U.S. forces fired on pro-government militantswho were allegedly throwing rocks at them, killing one Syrian.

After Coalition troops issued a series of warnings and de-escalation attempts, the patrol came under small arms fire from unknown individuals. In self-defense, Coalition troops returned fire, said a coalition forces spokesman.

Original post:
Trump speaks with Turkey's Erdogan amid growing tensions in Syria | TheHill - The Hill

President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Friday to claim he has a legal right to interfere in Justice Department cases, but insisted that he has so far chosen not to. Anyone following Trumps social media presence knows that not to be the case. He regularly tweets about business before the Justice Department and only last week praised Attorney General William Barr for softening the departments sentencing guidance for Roger Stone, a Trump ally who was convicted of lying to Congress and obstruction of justice last year.

On Saturday, CNN turned up an egregious example of Barr running interference for Trump at DOJ, reporting that he personally spearheaded an effort last year to save Halkbank, a state-owned Turkish bank, from being indicted after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressedTrump in a bid to avoid charges. Erdogans personal involvement complemented a months-long lobbying campaign by Turkey to avoid prosecution. As my colleague Dan Friedman has reported, Turkey spent millions of dollars pressing the White House, the State Department, and Congress to ask the Justice Department not to prosecute the Turkish bank. The top lobbyist working on that case, Brian Ballard, extensively contacted Trumps lawyer Jay Sekulow during that time.

Despite the immense lobbying effort, CNN reported that Geoffrey Berman, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, wanted a criminal prosecution anyway and Halkbank was eventually indicted on October 15 as part of a scheme to evade US sanctions on Iran.

Earlier that month, Trumps friendly relationship with Erdogan briefly eroded after the White House issued a statement giving Turkey a green light to invade northeastern Syria, all but ensuring the destruction of Kurdish fighters there who had been allies with US troops against the Islamic State. Trumps decision was widely criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike, forcing him to adopt a much harsher position toward Turkey. A day later, he threatened to totally destroy and obliterate Turkeys economy if it does anything off limits in Syria.

The indictment against Halkbank came soon after. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who had been investigating Trumps role in the Halkbank investigation, tweeted that CNNs story confirmed his suspicions about Barr was trying to orchestrate a sweetheart deal to please President Erdogan.

News of Barr intervening on Trumps behalf yet again is notable because, only yesterday, Barr told ABC News that Trumps tweets about DOJ make it impossible for me to do my job. It was possibly the sharpest reprisal Barr has had for his boss since joining the Cabinet last year, but given how Barr has interceded on Trumps behalf before, its not clear what this means for their relationship. On Saturday morning, Trump defied Barrs request and tweeted more harsh words for the Justice Department, this time for dropping the case against former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.

Originally posted here:
Report: Barr Protected Turkish Bank From Prosecution to Appease Erdogan - Mother Jones