What if Turkey blocks Finland and Sweden NATO bids?

 

Source: Responsible Statecraft
By Mark Episkopos
January 18 2023


Many believe Ankara can be mollified — at a cost — but rejection of the Nordic countries’ ascension remains a real possibility.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is set to meet his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken in Washington this week. There are scant expectations among observers that the visit will resolve any of the outstanding issues in what has been an increasingly troubled bilateral relationship, with the Biden administration keeping its distance from Ankara over allegations of human rights abuses and the Eurasian country’s increasingly warm ties with Moscow.

Turkey has reaffirmed its uncompromising stance on the fraught NATO bids of Sweden and Finland, setting the stage for a showdown with serious long-term implications for both Ankara and the alliance.

Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said on Saturday that Ankara is “not in a position” to approve Sweden’s NATO bid until all of Turkey’s concerns have been addressed. “We have a time issue if they want to join NATO before the NATO summit in June,” he added, noting that Sweden’s judicial system must change its legal definition of terrorism for Turkey to lift its opposition to Stockholm’s accession, which requires the unanimous approval of all member states.

Stockholm and Helsinki simultaneously submitted applications to join the alliance in May 2022, citing the new security realities brought on by Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. Their accession process, which NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg assured last summer will be the fastest in the alliance’s history, has been delayed indefinitely amid unresolved Turkish objections.

Ankara officials said the two Nordic countries have continued to shelter Kurdish militants, with President Erdogan insisting their accession bids cannot move forward until they agree to extradite persons sought by Turkish authorities on terrorism charges. Yet Swedish and Finnish courts have denied several extradition requests, including one reportedly pertaining to exiled dissident journalist Bulent Kenes. Cavusoglu decried the rejection as a “very negative” development, insisting that the two Nordic countries have not taken sufficient steps to satisfy Turkey’s strict conditions for clearing its objection to their accession. “We no longer want to hear good words from Sweden and Finland, we want to see concrete steps,” Cavusoglu said.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said early in the new year that his country has done all it could to address Ankara’s concerns even as Turkish officials continue to insist Stockholm has not done nearly enough. Tensions over Sweden’s NATO bid reached a fevered pitch after footage emerged last week of an Erdogan effigy hanging from a lamppost in Stockholm, prompting a furious response from Turkish officials. “Unless the activities of terrorist organizations are halted, it is not possible for the NATO membership process to progress,” said Kalin, according to Al Jazeera.

The Nordic applicants appear no closer to sealing an accession deal with Turkey today than they were over half a year ago when talks began. Turkish experts contend Ankara is unlikely to drop its opposition to NATO enlargement until after the June election cycle in Turkey, with Erdogan facing a stiff re-election challenge against a six-party opposition coalition. Others have suggested Turkey’s extradition demands from the two applicants are a facade for larger concessions it is seeking to extract from the United States — namely, a $20 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets. Though the Biden administration has signaled it intends to greenlight the deal, at least one top senate Democrat — Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — has already vowed to block it.

It is generally consistent with Erdogan’s modus operandi to levy ambitious demands vis-a-vis his interlocutors only to settle for a more modest set of concessions when all is said and done. Yet there is also a clear precedent for the Turkish leader doubling down in response to international pressure. Erdogan proceeded in 2018 with plans to purchase the Russian S-400 missile system despite U.S. warnings that there will be significant consequences and refused to reverse his decision even in the face of CAATSA sanctions and Turkey’s costly removal from the F-35 partner program.

The current impasse over NATO enlargement could play out in several ways over the coming months. Anxious to bring the matter to a close, Washington and its allies may become progressively more heavy-handed in pressuring Ankara to back down through public and private channels. Erdogan, who is well-known for his eristic tendencies even in dealing with leaders of allied nations, may very well respond by lashing out in unpredictable ways.

Though it remains unlikely that a confrontation along these lines would lead to Turkey leaving or being expelled from NATO, it would shake the unity of the alliance at a dangerous moment for European security. Further still, an aggrieved Erdogan bent on undermining the organization from within could prove just as corrosive to NATO in the long run as a formal divorce between Turkey and the alliance.

Then there is the not-insignificant possibility — one that appears to have grown more likely in recent weeks and months — that Turkey could end up torpedoing the NATO bids of Finland and Sweden altogether, leaving the applicants and the alliance in uncharted waters. But regardless of how the accession drama plays out, the standoff has exposed what has become a foundational challenge for NATO in the post-Cold War world: the principle of limitless horizontal expansion has heightened the risk of internal contradictions among NATO’s increasingly diverse membership, making it more difficult over time to distill common geopolitical goals and to maintain the credibility of the Article V commitment that is at the heart of the alliance.

This dynamic poses a serious and growing liability for an organization that must make every major decision on a consensus basis.

Turkey’s actions in holding up NATO enlargement come as part of Erdogan’s larger effort to chart what he sees as an independent foreign policy course between Russia and the West. Ankara rejected the maximum pressure strategy against the Kremlin adopted by NATO’s leadership and most member states in response to Russia’s invasion, instead positioning itself as a neutral broker between Moscow and Kyiv.

Ankara’s neutrality has yielded some success in the form of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the only significant international treaty involving both Russia and Ukraine since the war’s outbreak. Erdogan has been able to carve out this niche in a unique wartime context: none of the major Western powers have been willing to engage Russia in direct talks, giving outside players opportunities to fill the void.

The conflict poses something of a paradox for Ankara. Erdogan is committed to facilitating a negotiated end to the war and came much closer than anyone else to doing so, according to reports from the failed Antalya summit in March. Yet it is precisely the war that has empowered Turkey with a degree of international clout that would otherwise have been unattainable. It remains to be seen to what extent Erdogan’s successor — regardless of whether they enter office as a result of this year’s election or at a later point — will seek to carry on his ambitious vision, nor is it clear how exactly the inevitable transition to a post-Ukraine War landscape will alter the strategic imperatives confronting Turkey.

The war has been a catalyst for geopolitical change, prompting both NATO and Turkey to pursue policies unthinkable in peacetime. The story of these transformations, closely tied as they are to the war’s course and its eventual outcome, is still being written.

A Clash with Turkey Is Becoming Inevitable

Source: The National Interest
Oct 10 2020
By Michael Rubin


Turkey has essentially become like Iraq in early 1990: Erdoğan, like Saddam, sees his economy collapsing and recognizes that he will not be able to deflect blame from his own mismanagement and choices. That means trouble is brewing.

ate last month, Mike Pompeo became the first secretary of State to visit Greece twice. While his initial remarks sought de-escalation, the reality is only one side is responsible for the conflict that now looms: In recent months, Turkey has not only encroached on Cyprus’ internationally-recognized exclusive economic zone and Greek waters but, in recent days, reportedly Israel’s exclusive economic zone as well. Whereas compartmentalized analysts might see Turkish president Recep Erdoğan backing down in the face of diplomatic pushback and military mobilizations, a more holistic view is that Erdoğan is determined to lash out for reasons both ideological and populist and will continue to do so until he determines where a small military investment could bring the greatest gains.

One possible flashpoint to watch is Famagusta. After Cypriot independence, Famagusta—and especially its southern Varosha quarter—became a major tourist hub that attracted European and Western glitterati to its pristine beaches and resorts. That all ended when Turkey invaded in 1974. It first bombed the city forcing many residents to flee and then occupied it. Famagusta’s residents expected to return upon the ceasefire but never did. Varosha became a ghost town with billions of dollars of real estate fenced off and empty, its former residents permanently displaced.

Generations of diplomats have expected Famagusta—and the return of its residents—to be key to any negotiated peace on Cyprus. That Turkey left Varosha fallow gave Cypriots, Western Europe, and UN diplomats hope that Ankara was still interested in a resolution to the Cypriot conflict. Now, however, Erdoğan signals that Turkey may act unilaterally to populate and develop Varosha. Not only does Erdoğan want to signal his toughness after backing down in his recent maritime dispute with Greece, but he and his key supporters also stand to gain billions of dollars as they use Turkish state funds and perhaps the proceeds of resources looted by Turkey to reconstruct the apartment buildings and hotels which after five decades must be razed and replaced. Consider it Turkey’s version of China’s salami-slicing strategy. Erdoğan has long argued that the treaties determining Turkey’s borders should be revised; populating Varosha would allow him to put his rhetoric into action.

The problem is not only in Cyprus or the Eastern Mediterranean, however. Turkey has troops in Syria and Iraq, and has also intervened in Libya and, most recently, Azerbaijan. Troublingly, Turkey’s new modus operandi is to use Syrian proxies, many of whom are veterans of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda affiliates. In effect, Turkey now uses its Syrian militiamen the way that Iran utilizes Lebanese Hezbollah or its parallel Afghan and Pakistani militias. That Turkey is so rapidly inserting its Syrian proxies into various conflicts signals Turkey’s simultaneous desire to broaden its interventions overseas and its efforts to maintain plausible deniability.

Beyond its military posturing, Turkey has also grown more aggressive toward dissidents abroad. Earlier this year, a Turkish intelligent agent entered an Austrian police station and stated that Turkey’s intelligence service had ordered him to assassinate a former Austrian parliamentarian, also of Kurdish descent.

On September 25, three unidentified individuals in Stockholm, Sweden attacked Abdullah Bozkurt, perhaps Turkey’s most prominent dissident journalist who previously worked for Fethullah Gülen’s flagship Zaman prior to Erdoğan’s crackdown on Gülen’s movement. While Turkey has instigated attacks on dissidents and opposition—including in Washington, DC—assassinating European politicians and attacking journalists as prominent as Bozkurt suggests that Erdoğan is ratcheting up aggression to a new level.

The U.S. and European response is restrained, which only encourages Erdoğan’s aggression. Like Vladimir Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China, he believes the West is weak and he get away with dictating to it. He has nowhere near the power of his political peers, but he is right to detect European and U.S. weakness.

The major problem Europe—and by extension the United States—faces is Germany. Angela Merkel is reluctant to apply meaningful sanctions against Turkey because her country fears three things. Diplomats say privately that Merkel’s bigger fears are that Turkey might utilize refugees as cover to precipitate violence inside Germany, or that Erdoğan might incite Germany’s large ethnic Turkish population.

This plays into the hands of those within the State Department who seek to undermine efforts to hold Turkey to account. Rather than impose sanctions unilaterally on Turkish officials and companies complicit in violating Cypriot or Greek waters, mid-level U.S. diplomats argue they want only to impose sanctions in conjunction with the European Union knowing that Germany will effectively block their implementation. Pompeo, therefore, may talk a robust game with regard to Turkey’s regional aggression from the seventh floor of the State Department but, in practice, his Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs slow-rolls any cost to Turkey to the point that Erdoğan believes he will face no pushback for his aggression.

The Eastern Mediterranean is a tinderbox. Wars are seldom caused by a desire for resources alone, but rather by overconfidence. Turkey has essentially become like Iraq in early 1990: Erdoğan, like Saddam, sees his economy collapsing and recognizes that he will not be able to deflect blame from his own mismanagement and choices. Like Saddam, he sees neighbors possessing valuable resources and believes the international community to be paper tigers. In 1990, Saddam had April Glaspie equivocate and turn a blind eye to his ambitions; in 2020, Erdoğan has equally credulous envoy James Jeffrey. Turkey’s recent escalations in the region show that Erdoğan’s ambitions are out-of-control. The question for Washington, Berlin, and Brussels is whether the United States and Europe are willing to stand up and shut down those ambitions before Erdoğan pulls the trigger, or whether they will instead wait until a resolution is far more costly to Turks and everyone in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Erdogan Has Hidden an Economic Disaster Deep in Turkish Banks

 

Source: FP

August 11 2020

By Chris Miller

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not usually known as an economic innovator. But for the past year, his government has been running a high-stakes economic experiment. The test: How long can Turkey hide the fact that it is spending far beyond its means? Normally when governments spend more than they tax, the difference appears as a budget deficit. They fund that deficit by issuing bonds, which are traded on international markets and so are easy to track. If the debt load grows too large, and if borrowing costs spike, then then country must default or seek a bailout. This type of debt crisis isn’t pleasant, as Argentina or Greece or Pakistan could attest, but it is at least straightforward and familiar.

Turkey has also spent well more than it should, but it has done so in way that hid the costs deep in its financial system, leaving them invisible to all but the most committed financial sleuths. There’s relatively little sovereign debt—the type usually funded by international bonds—to be found, though its overall value is ticking up somewhat. The big borrowing has been by the country’s banks, including both private and state-owned banks—and that is where Turkey’s trouble has built up.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. Federal Reserve has kept interest rates low, hoping to spur an economic recovery in the United States. This had the side effect of making it cheap to borrow dollars, for both Americans and for anyone else looking for credit. Turkish banks took note and binged on cheap dollar loans.

And so Turkey’s banks came to have lots of dollars. What to do with them? First, they lent the dollars to Turkish firms, in industries such as tourism, energy, infrastructure, and real estate, which preferred loans in dollars rather than lira due to the cheap interest rates on offer. Sectors like infrastructure and real estate sell primarily to Turks, so their revenues are priced in Turkish lira. But their loan repayments were still in dollars. The problem is that, if the lira fell against the dollar—and it has fallen substantially over the past few years—it would become harder for Turkish firms to repay their dollar loans. And that, in turn, could lead to a banking crisis.

Not all the dollars that Turkish banks borrowed from abroad were given out to Turkey’s companies. Individual Turks mostly take out loans to buy houses or cars in lira, not dollars. So Turkey’s banks needed lira to lend them. The banks took the dollars they had accumulated and swapped them into lira on financial markets, paying a fee linked to the lira interest rate set by the Turkish central bank. This created a second risk burrowed deep in the country’s banking system: If interest rates rise, the cost of banks’ lira borrowing would shoot upward, cutting into bank profits.

Fast forward to the past few months. As COVID-19 slammed into the global economy, emerging markets such as Turkey were hard hit. The lira lost 10 percent of its value in March and April alone. When the lira falls, the price of imported goods rises, and Turks’ living standards fall. Fearing a backlash, Turkey’s government decided to stop the lira from falling further. It used a standard tactic, selling dollars to buy up lira on the open market, bolstering the value of Turkey’s currency. For most of the summer, this trick worked: The lira was steady at around 6.85 to the dollar for almost all of June and July.

But spending dollar reserves to defend the value of your currency only works so long as you have dollars to spend. The government started the year with far fewer reserves than it should have, and it soon faced demand for more spending, as Erdogan insisted that the currency be defended. Where to find more dollars?

This is where Turkey’s banks come back in. They had an excess, having borrowed billions from abroad in previous years. So Turkey’s central bank began borrowing dollars from the country’s own banks, too. The central bank owes $54 billion—dollars, not lira—to Turkey’s banks. But it spent even more than that, around $65 billion already this year, according to estimates from Goldman Sachs, on top of an additional $40 billion in 2019. So according to the most recent data released by Turkey’s government, the central bank is facing a shortfall of around $25 billion, once you subtract the funds they hold in gold and Qatari riyal.

A big hole is not what you want in your central bank’s balance sheet, but this it is the reality that Turkey faces. It is no longer possible to defend the lira at its level of earlier this summer. It has already slipped by several percent in value, and a steeper fall seems only a matter of time.

What options does Erdogan have? The path ahead is strewn with risks. Let the lira fall, and Turkish companies with dollar debts will struggle to pay them bank. A steep decline in the lira could even make Turkey’s banks go bust. Hike interest rates, and currency might stabilize, but the economy would be thrown into a deeper recession, exacerbating the coronavirus slump and denting Erdogan’s popularity. Both options are dangerous. But doing nothing is probably worse: The lira will fall anyway, and the economy will sink into a prolonged recession, too. Erdogan’s economic experiment was interesting while it lasted, generating a false sense of stability. But hiding the country’s economic problems deep in the banking system was never more than a temporary cover-up.

'TAIK': Trump - Erdogan deal to quadruple the volume of bilateral trade

The Turkish-US Business Council (TAIK) by its chairman Mehmet Ali Yalcindag stated that on a phone call in July 15 between US president Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan it was agreed that the volume of the bilateral trade will increase from $25 billion per year to $100 billion.

"As Turkey's oldest business council, we believe stronger integration of the Turkish and US

economies will strengthen this longstanding alliance that is critical to world stability and will

foster prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic. Sectors such as LNG, textiles, agriculture,

white goods and many more are ripe for growth and are crucial to helping us achieve the

ambitious target laid out by the Presidents and reiterated in yesterday's call", Yalcindag said. 

Recently, Turkey increased the volume of  US imported LNG, while significantly lowered its imports from Russia.

Trump’s Dangerous Diplomacy with Erdoğan

Source: BESA

July 26 2020

By Shay Attias

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: America’s reputation as a credible actor is an essential matter for US foreign policy, but it has weakened significantly throughout this century. George Bush’s war on the “axis of evil” failed, and Barack Obama’s “red line” speech proved empty. Today, Donald Trump is abandoning allies and conducting dangerous diplomacy with anti-democratic tyrants.

Former US president Barack Obama promised that if evidence emerged proving that Bashar Assad had used chemical weapons on the Syrian people, the US would put together a coalition and attack Assad as retribution. America’s allies, its enemies, Arab governments, and Muslim citizens all looked to Obama to see if he would follow through on this warning.

In August 2013, a year after Obama’s promise, Assad did indeed unleash chemical weapons on his people, killing more than 1,500 men, women, and children. Obama did nothing in response—no coalition, no attack. He failed to keep his word, handing the US a serious diplomatic failure and severely damaging its credibility.

The American War on Terror doctrine (2001-2020), which has continued from Bush through Trump, has had some notable successes, including the killings of Osama bin Laden, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, and Qassem Soleimani. For a short time, ISIS, the last potent global terror threat, was defeated, with many of its troops killed or captured.

But in December 2019, President Trump decided to hand Syria to the Turks. During a phone conversation with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Trump said, “You know what? It‘s yours.” He also reportedly said regarding Syria, “I’m leaving.”

Later, an official White House spokesperson said that “Turkey will soon move on with its long-planned action in northern Syria,” adding that the US, which had succeeded in defeating ISIS, “will no longer be in the immediate area.”

Criticism of the decision was swift and harsh. Brett McGurk, a special envoy for the coalition to defeat ISIS, resigned, saying: “Bottom line: Trump tonight after one call with a foreign leader provided a gift to Russia, Iran, and ISIS.”

Trump’s decision brought the Syrian War into a new phase: Turkey and Russia are now dominant in Syria while America is almost completely absent. This shift works in Ankara’s favor and against Syria’s Kurds, who had been supported by the US Army in northern Syria and had successfully helped the US fight ISIS.

Erdoğan’s priority is preventing the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish area in Syria on Turkey’s borders. There is deep-seated hostility between the Turkish state and the Kurds, who constitute 15% to 20% of the Turkish population. The Kurds have suffered terrible treatment at the hands of the Turkish authorities for generations, starting in the 1920s. Many Kurds were killed, the Kurdish legacy and Kurdish last names were banned, and the use of the Kurdish language was restricted.

In one phone call, Trump handed Syria to Ankara and abandoned the Kurds, who had fought alongside the Americans to defeat ISIS. This gravely undermined the credibility of the US. He abandoned an ally to cozy up to Erdoğan, a dictator who openly mocks Western values, buys Russian military equipment, jails journalists, intimidates political opponents, and supports Hamas, giving its leaders safe haven within Turkey’s borders. Some say Erdoğan is allowing his Syrian proxies to commit war crimes, and he has alluded to nuclear aspirations.

The absurd part is that Turkey wants to be seen as a strategic partner of NATO and “a real ally to the United States around the world,” as Trump put it when he thanked Erdoğan for his efforts “to uphold a cease-fire in northeastern Syria” (though the fighting hadn’t stopped). On another occasion, Trump said Turkey has made “vital contributions” to operations in Afghanistan, a claim without any substantiation. Despite ample evidence indicating that Erdoğan is no friend to the US, Trump declared, “I am a big fan of the president (Erdoğan).”

Erdoğan keeps threatening to veto NATO’s defense plan for the Baltics, which runs directly contrary to Trump’s foreign policy in Syria. Erdoğan’s position has pushed the European leadership (led by the president of France) to clash with Turkey—and now, Trump as well—over NATO agreements. Even more distance is being created between the US and Europe, distance that had already reached unprecedented heights during Trump’s presidency.

Russia, the only superpower remaining in Syria, might try to build a stronghold there and retain control on the ground. At the same time, ISIS is trying to get back on its feet and has carried out attacks on Syrian Army positions. These occurred in towns near the Syria-Iraq border and at army bases around southeastern Syria.

ISIS is thus taking advantage of the chaos following the American withdrawal. It had been reduced to a few cells in abandoned mountainous and desert villages, but is now regenerating itself. By using communications apps like Telegram, ISIS supporters are donating and helping to rebuild the network of terror. Secret chatrooms continue to spread the cause of jihad.

Turkey’s Erdoğan secretly planned Morsi’s election, brokered deal with Muslim Brotherhood’s Shater

On June 18, 2019, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended funeral service held in Turkey for ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi who had a heart attack during a trial hearing.

Source: Nordic Monitor

By Abdullah Bozkurt

June 11 2020

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan personally involved himself in domestic politics in Egypt in a last-ditch effort to shore up support for embattled President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, a secret wiretap has revealed.

According to the wiretap, obtained by Nordic Monitor, Erdoğan was talking on the phone about how he planned to send aid to make Morsi look good before a possible election. He also praised the approval of the Egyptian constitution, which was backed by Morsi but disputed by the opposition over claims of fraud.

The tape, recorded on April 22, 2013 at 13:53 hours, showed Mustafa Latif Topbaş, a corrupt businessman and long-time family friend of Erdoğan, called then-Prime Minister Erdoğan to talk about developments in Egypt. Topbaş said he had met with Saudi businessman Yasin al-Qadi, at one time listed as an al-Qaeda financier by the UN and the US, and that the two had talked about what was going on in Egypt. Al-Qadi was conducting secret business deals with Topbaş, Erdoğan’s son Bilal and other associates in violation of Turkish laws, and all were under criminal investigation by the Istanbul prosecutor.

“He is going back today … he brought you Zamzam [holy water from Mecca] that I will send to your home … and he said Salam to you,” Topbaş said of his conversation with al-Qadi. Erdoğan returned al-Qadi’s greetings. Then the conversation between Topbaş and Erdoğan turned to Egypt, where the resentment of Morsi’s increasingly authoritarian rule had started to gain strength. A campaign called Tamarod was launched in April, with activists calling for Morsi’s resignation, an early presidential election and a new constitution.

“It is not Morsi but Shater who is actually running the government,” Topbaş quoted al-Qadi as saying in his conversation with Erdoğan. He was referring to Mohammed Khairat Saad el-Shater, a senior figure of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) who was disqualified from running as a candidate for the MB’s Freedom and Justice Party in the 2012 presidential election. Erdoğan said there were some problems there (among the Muslim Brotherhood leadership) and added, “I told them to avoid any resentment among themselves.” Erdoğan was apparently concerned about the internal feud between Morsi and el-Shater, both of whom had privately maintained close ties to Erdoğan, the Turkish equivalent of a Muslim Brotherhood politician.

Erdoğan recalled how he had advised Morsi and other MB leaders to do some work in Cairo to convince Egyptians to vote for them. “[The city of] Cairo is mired in filth, and I said to him [Morsi]: Look, Cairo is filthy, especially the ancient tomb cities, let’s do something like that … outrageous [scenery], there are leather shops there that smell quite bad, filth all over the place … I said I would dispatch a [Turkish] company that would work [in Cairo] until the elections, we’ll give you 100-150 [garbage] trucks that can compress trash.” He was apparently trying to prop up Morsi in anticipation of an early presidential election, which was being called for by the political opposition, clearly in violation of Egyptian laws that bar foreign interference in domestic affairs.

Erdoğan lamented, however, that the Morsi government had yet to send a minister to talk about his plans for Cairo and said he reminded Morsi about it the other night again when he talked to him on the phone. Erdoğan was very happy to see that Morsi managed to secure votes for the new constitution, according to the transcript of the conversation.

Turkish President Erdoğan’s ruling party mobilized rallies and held a funeral service for Morsi on June 18, 2019.

Referring to the Spanish company FCC, which had a contract for waste management in Cairo, Erdoğan told Morsi and his people that the Spaniards could not handle the cleanup of the city. “These Spaniards won’t clean up these places,” he had said and conveyed his thoughts to Morsi on the matter.

However, Erdoğan’s ally Morsi was ousted from power amid popular protests on July 3, 2013, backed by the Egyptian military. In a major blow to Turkey’s important ties to Egypt, a major Arab nation, Erdoğan aligned himself with the Muslim Brotherhood and refused to recognize Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his government as legitimate. He offered sanctuary for the MB leadership and turned Turkey into a regional hub for the Brotherhood’s international network.

The Turkish president has even made a habit of using the Rabia sign he borrowed from the MB to demonstrate solidarity with the Brotherhood at almost every opportunity. He has nationalized the four-finger Rabia, with each finger representing one of his “new Turkey” principles: one nation, one flag, one state and one homeland.

In August 2013 Turkey and Egypt recalled their ambassadors after Erdoğan’s clear stand in favor of the Brotherhood. Turkey’s ambassador returned weeks later, but Egypt declined to have its envoy return to Ankara. In November 2013 Egypt declared Turkish Ambassador Hüseyin Avni Botsalı persona non grata and ordered him to leave the country because of what it described as Ankara’s continued interference in Egyptian affairs, and it scaled back its diplomatic relations with Turkey to the level of chargé d’affaires. Turkey reciprocated within hours by declaring Egyptian Ambassador Abderahman Salah El-Din persona non grata.

Al-Qadi, Topbaş, Erdoğan’s son Bilal and son-in-law Berat Albayrak were all leading suspects in an organized crime investigation pursued by prosecutors in Istanbul and were the subjects of detention warrants issued on December 25, 2013 by prosecutors. However, Erdoğan stepped in, illegally preventing the execution of the warrants by ordering the police to not follow the prosecutor’s orders. After the removal of the prosecutors and police chiefs who were involved in their investigation, Erdoğan managed to whitewash the crimes of his associates and family members.

Mustafa Latif Topbaş, chairman of the board of Birleşik Mağazalar A.Ş (BİM).

Transcript of the wiretapped conversation between then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his business associate M. Latif Topbaş:

Erdogan Is Libya’s Man Without a Plan

Source: FP

By Steven Cook

July 10 2020

Turkey is standing in the wreckage of a foreign-policy adventure with no discernable strategy.

To a group of supporters in London in late 2019, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared: “Today, Turkey can launch an operation to protect its national security without seeking permission from anyone.” It was stock-and-trade late Erdogan-era theatrics—grievance interlaced with ambition. In the past, this kind of breast-beating might have been dismissed as politics, but this time the Turkish leader is not posturing.

It has been an unusually active and assertive moment in Turkish foreign policy, even by the standards set by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in its almost 18 years in power. Yet unlike the “zero problems” principle of yore, which relied on Turkey’s power as a trading state and its good relations with all the players in the Middle East, Ankara has increasingly militarized its approach to the region in addition to its longer-term aggressive policies in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. In each of these areas, the Turks have raised the ire of some combination of the European Union, members of NATO, the United Nations, and the United States, but the response from each has been little more than hand-wringing, proving Erdogan correct that Turkey can shape its foreign-policy environment. Ankara is no longer content to be just an asset to the trans-Atlantic alliance or an aspiring member of Europe but a power in its own right. This is an achievement—but only a partial one. For all the power and military swagger that Ankara has acquired, it is untethered from a coherent strategy, which may very well be Turkey’s undoing.

Nowhere has Turkey’s securitized foreign policy gained more recent attention than in Libya. Last November, the Turks and Libya’s internationally recognized government agreed to demarcate their respective maritime jurisdictions. The memorandum of understanding was expansive and had no basis in fact or international law—akin to drawing arbitrary lines on a map that split the Mediterranean. The next month, the Government of National Accord in Tripoli requested Turkish military help to beat back the Libyan National Army under the command of Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who has sought to overthrow the Tripoli government. Soon Turkish forces arrived, along with thousands of Syrian militia fighters who had been promised cash and Turkish citizenship to join the fight.

It is clear what is in the relationship for leaders in Tripoli, but it is less immediately apparent why Erdogan—who is struggling with economic problems and the attendant challenges of the coronavirus pandemic—would embark on a military adventure 1,200 miles from Ankara. What Turkish interest could it possibly serve? Setting aside potential lucrative rebuilding contracts for Turkish firms, a combination of Turkish politics and three related geopolitical interests is behind Turkey’s willingness to wade into Libya’s civil war.

First, Erdogan has long sought to highlight that principle drives Turkish foreign policy during the AKP era. Like Ankara’s advocacy for Palestinian rights, its insistence that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad must go, and its opposition to Egypt’s July 2013 coup, support for the U.N.-recognized government in Libya was consistent with the idea that Erdogan has sought to cultivate that Ankara stands apart from international actors in its effort to uphold norms and standards. Of course it is a self-serving narrative, but that is the point. It is good for the ruling party’s base and allows Turkey’s supine press to laud their leader. This is important as Erdogan looks ahead to 2023 elections with a persistently weak economy.

Second, Ankara’s moves in Libya are actually countermoves to the burgeoning ties among Greece, Egypt, Cyprus, and Israel. Officially, there is no security component to what is intended to be a consortium to exploit gas deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean, but given each of these countries’ strained—at best—relations with Turkey, it is hard not to see in these ties what international relations scholars call “bandwagoning.” In addition, when the Turks looked at the combination of these growing ties, which have American support, and the interlocking nature of Greek, Egyptian, Cypriot, and Israeli exclusive economic zones, they could reasonably conclude that their freedom of navigation in the area could be choked off.

Third, Libya is a place where Turkey can challenge its two most ardent regional foes—Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. The issues that divide Turkey and Egypt are well known. The two countries are on opposite sides of the major issues roiling the Middle East including Syria, Gaza, and the blockade of Qatar. Turkey is also a leading supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, permitting its Egyptian members to set up shop in Istanbul and beam anti-Egyptian regime propaganda around the world. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Erdogan evince such disdain for each other that it has become somewhat of a spectator sport for analysts to observe the two leaders trolling each other at the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly every September. Libya is, of course, Egypt’s backyard, and because it believes that Islamists are part of the government in Tripoli, it has thrown its support behind Haftar.

In this, the Egyptians have had a partner in the UAE, which has played a major role in supporting Sisi and whose leader shares the Egyptian president’s antipathy for the Brotherhood, earning the ire of Erdogan. The Turkish government and its mouthpieces in the press accuse the Emiratis of supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara considers a terrorist organization; backing al-Shabab in Somalia; propping up Assad; helping to destroy Yemen; playing a role in the attempted 2016 coup in Turkey; and generally sowing chaos around the Middle East. A late May column in the (very) pro-Erdogan tribune Daily Sabah warned the Emiratis of unspecified revenge for these transgressions. Apparently, there were few better places for the Turks to extract a pound of flesh from the Emiratis than in Libya.

For all the success the Turks have had so far in Libya, it is hard to detect how rendering Tripoli a client of Ankara fits into an overall foreign and security policy strategy. It is a statement of Turkey’s prowess and power, but it is not connected to a clear larger purpose other than national aggrandizement and revenge. What makes the Libya adventure so striking is how far it deviates from a broader (and more important) set of Turkish foreign-policy and national security concerns that actually do make sense. Whatever one thinks of Ankara’s military operations in Syria and Iraq, Turkey’s goals are clear and entirely rational—destroy the PKK and ensure that the Syrian civil war does not yield a Kurdish state along Turkey’s southern border that could threaten the country. Similarly in the Aegean and in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Turks have been needlessly aggressive, but keeping Greece off balance, especially as its relations with the United States warm, and establishing a claim to Eastern Mediterranean gas are definable and, from the perspective of the presidential palace, entirely defensible goals.

Without a strategy to guide them in Libya, the Turks may find themselves exposed and overwhelmed. It is not clear what makes Erdogan believe that he can discipline Libyan politics in a way that will end the country’s fragmentation and violence. Even if Haftar waves the white flag, the Turks are setting themselves up to be the wards of a failing state. Add to this the Egyptian and Emirati factors. The Egyptians have a stake in Libya that it is going to make it hard for them to accommodate a robust Turkish presence next door. And while Egypt’s military may not have the same kind of technical proficiency as its Turkish counterpart, the Egyptians can bring a lot of force in terms of sheer numbers to bear in Libya. Sisi’s late June warning about Egyptian red lines in Libya may be a bluff, but there is little doubt that they, along with the Emiratis, would be willing to use proxies to disrupt the Turks and their allies in Libya. If it does not work with Haftar, they will find others.

Turkey has been buzzing recently with talk of a new security strategy called “Blue Homeland,” which emerged from an anti-Western, fiercely nationalist, but pro-Russian worldview of a number of senior-ranking naval officers. This toxic and confused brew is supposedly the guiding principle for Turkey’s more aggressive posture in the region, especially in the Mediterranean and Libya. It is interesting—but only because it offers insight into the thinking of Turkey’s senior political and military leadership. As a national strategy, it is mostly reactive and bound up in a combination of grievances and romance about Turkish power. This isn’t to suggest that Turkish leaders are incapable of strategic thinking—just that Blue Homeland isn’t it.

So it should come as no surprise to anyone in Ankara that regional alliances have solidified against Turkey and that the Turkish military is engaged in an open-ended mission in Libya. Having power is important, but what a country does with it is what matters.

Steven A. Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His latest book is False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East.

Turkey Vows More Support to Secure Gains in Libya Conflict

Source: The New York Times

June 4 2020

By Reuters

ANKARA — President Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Thursday to ramp up Turkey's support for its ally in Libya to lock in recent military gains, and promised joint exploration for oil at sea following talks in Ankara ahead of a potential ceasefire push.

Fayez al Serraj, leader of Libya's internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), met Erdogan for talks hours after his forces - backed by Turkey - said they regained full control of the capital Tripoli.

Turkey threw its support behind the GNA in November after signing a military cooperation pact alongside a maritime demarcation deal, which gives Ankara exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean that Greece and others reject.

Turkey's intervention in the conflict has pushed back Khalifa Haftar's eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) - backed by the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Egypt - which had been attacking the GNA in Tripoli since April 2019.

The GNA's latest advance could hasten steps toward a potential truce, underlining Turkey's growing influence in the resource-rich region where Erdogan has few close allies.

Turkey's support for the GNA "will increasingly continue," Erdogan said alongside Serraj, adding that Hafter and his backers "will be judged by history." A solution can only come under United Nations' auspices, he said.

"We aim to expand our cooperation including exploration and drilling operations to take advantage of natural resources in the eastern Mediterranean," including Libyan territory, Erdogan added.

NEGOTIATIONS

On Monday, the United Nations said both sides had agreed to resume ceasefire talks and warned that weapons and fighters being flown into Libya threatened a new escalation.

Several peacemaking efforts in Libya have collapsed or stalled since clashes began in 2014.

Serraj's visit to Turkey came after weeks of GNA gains that upended the conflict and drove Haftar from his foothold in the northwest. A senior Turkish official said the advances were critical ahead of any truce talks.

"The territory you hold strengthens your positions at the table," the official said. Erdogan said Haftar had "no representative capacity" to negotiate what should be a "legitimate and fair" solution.

In a flurry of diplomacy, Serraj's deputy was in Moscow and Haftar was in Egypt this week. A second Turkish official said Ankara expected Haftar's backers to contribute to political talks.

An increased presence in Libya would give Turkey strategic positioning near Egypt, with which ties are strained.

It would also serve as another foothold in the Mediterranean, where Turkey has been at odds with several neighbouring states. Greece and Cyprus called last year's maritime deal with Serraj illegal, an accusation Ankara denied.

Turkey's plans for what Erdogan called "new cooperation on maritime agreements" with the GNA could stoke those frictions. The Turkish leader also said Haftar's "putschist" forces will no longer be allowed to illegally sell Libya's oil.

Athens says Ankara's maritime deal infringes on Crete's continental shelf. Turkey - which has also been criticised by Israel and the European Union - says the deal abides by international law and rejects the notion islands can have such shelves.

Turkey has said it could begin exploration and drilling in the eastern Mediterranean under the GNA deal within three or four months.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer and Daren Butler in Istanbul; Editing by Giles Elgood, Timothy Heritage and Andrew Cawthorne)

'Blue Homeland': The Heated Politics Behind Turkey's New Maritime Strategy

Source: War on the Rocks

June 2 2020

By Ryan Gingeras

“Mavi vatan,” or “blue homeland,” has become a common phrase in Turkish political life. It is most often used as a shorthand expression for Ankara’s maritime claims in the eastern Mediterranean. Central to these interests is the presence of large deposits of natural gas off the coast of the island of Cyprus. For Turkey, the lion’s share of these deposits lies within what Turkey interprets is its exclusive economic zone. Such a stance, however, is at odds with claims made by Greece and the Republic of Cyprus. Both governments have argued that Ankara ignores Greek and Cypriot sovereignty as well as key statutes of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (a treaty Turkey has never ratified). Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has remained steadfast in spite of threats of sanctions and increased diplomatic isolation. “While performing our duties,” he has stated, “we are proud to wave our glorious Turkish banner in all our seas. I submit that we are ready to protect every swath of our 462 thousand square meter blue homeland with great determination and undertake every possible duty that may come.”

The coining of the term “blue homeland” ultimately represents more than an act of political branding. To a large extent, it signals a somewhat dramatic shift in doctrine within Turkish political and military circles. It was not too long ago that changes in Turkish strategic thinking were associated with transitions in administration (particularly transitions between more secular leaders to more religiously conservative ones). Until recently, the emergence of Turkey’s “blue homeland” rhetoric has generally been associated with the navy’s former chief of staff, Cihat Yaycı. Yet with Yaycı’s recent demotion and resignation, commentators have assumed a new appreciation for the concept’s author and chief promoter, former Turkish Rear Adm. Cem Gürdeniz. His presence in popular Turkish media has done more than transform the concept of the “blue homeland” into a contemporary watchword. His writings and television appearances suggest the ascendency of a more aggressive and antagonistic strain of thought within Turkish security circles.

As an adherent of Turkey’s nationalist left, Gürdeniz appears to represent a growing contingent of influential figures, including several former flag officers. Binding this group together is a shared disdain for the United States and what they often term the “Atlantic framework.” On the whole, it is not clear what this developing consensus means for the future of Turkish relations with its neighbors, let alone for Ankara’s ties with NATO, the United States, or Russia. At the very least, the preeminence of an increasingly doctrinaire approach toward Turkey’s “blue homeland” suggests greater amounts of tension within the eastern Mediterranean lie ahead.

Doctrinaire politics is not a particularly recent innovation within Turkish political life. During the first decade of Erdoğan’s rule, Turkish foreign policy tended to follow the ideological dictates of the country’s celebrity foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu. For much of his tenure, Davutoğlu touted Turkey’s inherent strength as a state lying at the cultural and historical crossroads of Europe, Africa, and Asia. This “strategic depth,” or stratejik derinlik as he termed it, allowed Ankara unique advantages in forging a new political, economic, and social order within the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. In advancing this broad geostrategic vision for Turkey’s future, Davutoğlu was at the forefront of promoting an overarching agenda of strategic cooperation, increased trade, and solidarity among the country’s neighbors (an effort he heralded as Turkey’s “zero problem” policy). By 2012, however, many of the earlier successes of this doctrine had given way to failure. Turkey’s presumed “strategic depth” offered little in the way of leverage in dealing with a myriad of crises, be it Syria’s civil war, the siege of Gaza, or the overthrow of Egypt’s former President Mohammed Morsi. While Davutoğlu’s own political career has suffered since his dismissal from government service in 2016, elements of his “strategic depth” thinking live on. To this day, Erdoğan still touts Turkey’s unique role as a leader within the Islamic world and a pivotal state within the Middle East.

Davutoğlu’s marginalization does not mean that Turkey now lacks presumptive visionaries when it comes to matters of foreign policy. A scan of the country’s popular editorial writers offers indications that there are several individuals who aspire to assume Davutoğlu’s place. Most leading commentators, however, have yet to offer a comprehensive strategic vision for the country’s future. The most glaring exception to this trend can be found in the writings of Gürdeniz, a retired rear admiral of the Turkish navy. On his own, Gürdeniz stands somewhat out of step with most retired members of Turkey’s military. Though former generals do offer commentary from time to time in print and on television, Gürdeniz is arguably the most visible and prolific former flag officer in Turkish media today. This is an especially striking fact given the degree to which the Turkish navy resides within the shadow of the army, the country’s largest and most prestigious branch of service. By his own account, this is among the factors that inspire Gürdeniz’s engagement with the public. Turkey, he argues, historically lacks an appreciation of its maritime traditions and achievements. Defending the country’s territorial waters, its “blue homeland,” is every bit as important as protecting Turkish soil.

Gürdeniz’s life story bears a strong resemblance to that of other senior military leaders. He is almost entirely the product of military education from high school forward (with the exception of a master’s degree attained at a university in Brussels). In addition to service on multiple warships and a tour at NATO headquarters, Gürdeniz received the honor of running the Turkish navy’s policy-planning division between 2009 and 2011. He spent long stints of time in his career working closely with the United States (including two years in residence at the Naval Postgraduate School). He is a prolific writer, having authored multiple books on various subjects related to the military. Three years after attaining the rank of rear admiral (upper half), he was arrested along with scores of other senior officers as a part of the broader Sledgehammer trials of 2011. Though convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison, he was released from custody in 2015.

Since the summer of 2016, Gürdeniz, now retired, has maintained a consistent presence in Turkish media. Many of his early interviews and opinion pieces demonized the 2016 coup attempt, blaming it on a vast conspiracy that included the United States and its European allies. The role of pro-Fethullah Gülen supporters in the coup, in his opinion, masked a broader effort by what he has referred to as the Atlantic framework or front (Atlantik yapı/cephe). A critical aim of this Atlantic front was not simply to remove Erdoğan but to punish Turkey for getting closer to Russia. His enmity toward the United States and Western Europe has not faded with time. In his weekly column for the newspaper Aydınlık, he regularly accuses Washington of seeking to undermine Turkish interests (an intention, he argues, that is undergirded by the desire to prevent Turkey’s ascension as a global power). While not going so far as to condemn Ankara’s membership in NATO, he has consistently maintained that the alliance is a manifestation of what he still euphemistically terms the “Atlantic front.” Turkey’s political destiny, Gürdeniz counters, lies broadly with the states of Eurasia (most notably Russia). In his interviews and writings, he has maintained that building deeper ties with Russia and China would not only help further Turkish interests but would also serve as a bulwark against what he has termed the “imperialist powers” of the West.

Several factors make Gürdeniz and his views especially relevant in today’s political environment. Unlike Davutoğlu, Gürdeniz appears to reflect an institutional frame of mind more in keeping with the times. His political opinions, as well as his association with key publications, place him solidly among the followers of Doğu Perinçek and the Vatan Party. As a group defined by its affection for Russia and its categorical opposition to the United States, Perinçek’s Vatan Party is suspected of sustaining considerable support among parts of the Turkish military at large. News reports have also suggested that Erdoğan’s administration has deliberately sought to protect and promote pro-Perinçek officers after the 2016 coup. Such an effort, it is argued, has helped re-center the military under the leadership of officers with strong secularist credentials but avowedly anti-Gülenist, anti-Kurdish, and anti-Western sympathies. Like Perinçek, Gürdeniz asserts that Washington intends to undermine Turkey’s sovereignty in coalition with other regional powers. Central to this emerging alliance is Greece, a state he charges with a long history of allying itself with Western imperial powers. For this reason, Gürdeniz has called upon Ankara to take a firm line toward Greece and its counterclaims in the Aegean and Mediterranean. Waters bordering Greece’s islands, in his view, do not allow Athens the right to tap the region’s natural gas deposits. In the absence of military strength, Greece instead relies upon the United States and Europe to act on its behalf. “Greece,” Gürdeniz argues, “can live inside the dream world of its past and build endless fantasies. But it should not impose these things upon Turkey’s sovereignty and interests in the Aegean, Mediterranean, [and] Black Sea. They should know their place.”

Turkey’s Blue Homeland

There is significant evidence that suggests that Gürdeniz’s views have had a profound impact. The most obvious sign of his influence is the now-pervasive use of the phrase “mavi vatan,” or “blue homeland.” In March 2019, the Turkish navy undertook large-scale exercises under the operational name “Blue Homeland 2019.” The official journal sponsored by Turkey’s Naval War College also bears the name Mavi Vatan. More revealing signs of this trend can be found in the statements and publications of likeminded former flag officers. Like Gürdeniz, several former admirals, such as Rear Adm. Soner Polat, Adm. Özden Örnek, and Rear Adm. Mustafa Özbey, have written or spoken glowingly of his ideas (most often in newspapers and television programs aligned with Perinçek’s Vatan Party). Arguably the most striking demonstration of this worldview can be seen in Turkey’s evolving policy toward Libya. In December 2019, Ankara signed a memorandum of understanding with representatives of Tripoli’s government. The agreement, which charted a mutually expansive maritime border between the two states, has been heralded across Turkey’s political spectrum as a triumph in the name of the country’s blue homeland.

Recent events, however, suggest that the ideological influence of Gürdeniz and others associated with the ultranationalist left may possess certain limits. On May 16 of this year, the architect of Turkey’s agreement with Libya, Rear Adm. Cihat Yaycı, was officially demoted in accordance with a presidential decree. Erdoğan’s endorsement of the demotion whipped up a firestorm of speculation across Turkish media. As the navy’s chief of staff, Yaycı was generally seen as an emerging strategic visionary who championed many of the assertive policies proposed by Gürdeniz. In his recent books, Yaycı has gone so far as to openly challenge Greece’s possession of islands in the Aegean. His decision to resign rather than to accept his demotion has provided fodder to commentators who see this affair as a power struggle within the armed forces as a whole. As early as January of this year, the Turkish press was rife with speculation that Minister of Defense Hulusi Akar saw Yaycı as a rival for Erdoğan’s favor and was seeking his dismissal. Others have supposed that Erdoğan and Akar were forced into removing him by conspirators aligned with the presumed mastermind of the 2016 coup, Fethullah Gülen. Still others have suggested that Erdoğan and Akar sought to marginalize Yaycı as a way of mollifying American and European concerns over Turkey’s maritime policy. Regardless of the reason, commentators associated with Vatan Party news outlets have responded to these events with dismay and confusion. In his most recent column, Gürdeniz largely derided Yaycı’s removal as a Gülenist plot backed by Greece and the wider “Atlantic front.” He declared his hope, however, that the state would continue “to make the best use of Admiral Yaycı’s advanced knowledge and experience.” In contrast, Perinçek issued a starkly public rebuke of Yaycı’s refusal to accept his demotion. “In a time when our navy is face to face with threats in the eastern Mediterranean and Cyprus, and the army is at war from within and without, one does not resign.” After making these comments, Cem Gürdeniz announced he was parting ways with Perinçek’s newspaper Aydınlık and resume publishing with another ardently Kemalist media outlet, Odatv.

The significance of Yaycı’s demotion and resignation indeed appears open to interpretation. On the one hand, the affair seems to affirm the fact that Erdoğan remains willing to distance himself from powerful allies and surrogates when it politically suits him. Whether it was an act meant to appease Washington or maintain the loyalty of his defense minister, Hulusi Akar, it is hard not to see Erdoğan’s decision to remove Yaycı as one grounded in his desire to hold onto his unparalleled authority. On the other hand, it is likely that this change in command does not constitute a complete repudiation of the assertive policies championed by Yaycı and others. So far, nothing seems to suggest that Ankara plans to switch course with respect to Libya or the eastern Mediterranean. Yaycı’s replacement, Adm. Yankı Bağcıoğlu, has received considerable media recognition as the chief orchestrator of the “Blue Homeland 2019” naval exercises. More recently, he assumed prominence in declaring to a French naval delegation that Turkey would “continue unremittingly in its blue homeland operations” alongside its NATO commitments.

What the “blue homeland” turn means for the future of Turkey’s participation in NATO, or Ankara’s relationship with its Western partners, is far from clear. Many signs points to rough waters ahead. Athens has repeatedly voiced apprehension at what it characterizes as a broad range of provocative Turkish behavior in the Aegean and Mediterranean. Washington’s increasingly warm relations with Greece, as well the U.S. Congress’ vote to lift a decades-old arms embargo against Cyprus, have been equally greeted with revulsion in Turkey. And yet there is nothing within Turkey’s official posturing that casts doubt upon its ties with NATO or the United States in particular. The Turkish navy’s official strategy paper, published in 2015, makes no mention of a “blue homeland” (although it does state that maritime rights, particularly with respect to “economic wealth contained” close to its borders, are indeed “one of the most important issues influencing our relations with countries [close] to our littoral maritime environment”). A casual perusal of the navy’s main webpage presents visitors with multiple images, media clips, and reports outlining its collaborative efforts with NATO partners.

Whatever does happen, Turkey’s present commitment to its “blue homeland” policies appears contingent upon two critical factors. Firstly, Turkey’s maritime posturing, as conjured up by Gürdeniz, Yaycı, and others, has captured the imagination of a broad swath of the Turkish political establishment. Calls for a determined defense of the country’s expansive “mavi vatan” echoes the combative, independent spirit of Ankara’s contemporary foreign policy. At present, there is little incentive for Turkey to deviate course. The second, and most important, factor is Erdoğan’s tacit approval of this overall strategic direction. Although individuals like Cihat Yaycı may succumb to political infighting, Turkey’s president, thus far, has made good use of the blue homeland’s larger significance. Yet with continued financial strains and the country’s increased isolation, it may well be the case that Erdoğan’s enthusiasm for a “greater” maritime Turkey fades with the passage of time.

Ryan Gingeras is a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and is an expert on Turkish, Balkan, and Middle East history. He is the author of five books, including most recently, Eternal Dawn: Turkey in the Age of Atatürk. His Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire received short-list distinctions for the Rothschild Book Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies and the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize. The views expressed here are not those of the Naval Postgraduate School, the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.

Turkey’s intervention in Libya turns tide to Erdogan’s advantage, for now

Source: Al-Monitor

May 15 2020

By Semih Idiz

The consensus among Libya watchers is that Turkey’s involvement in the North African country has tipped the military balance in favor of the UN-recognized Government of National Accord headed by Prime Minister Fayez al Sarraj.

Reports that the renegade general Khalifa Hifter is on the defensive, after months of speculation regarding what some saw as his imminent grab of power over the whole of Libya, are encouraging for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on multiple levels.

This development comes at a time when his successes on the foreign policy front have been few and far between in recent years. Developments in Libya also tie in with Erdogan’s Islamist ideological ambitions.

Ever since the 2013 coup in Egypt against President Mohammed Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected president, Erdogan has seen the Muslim Brotherhood being rolled back across the Middle East.

Erdogan stands close to the Brotherhood and is providing strong political support and shelter for its beleaguered members. Turkey’s intervention in Libya promises to prevent further losses by the Brotherhood in the region. 

The Brotherhood-backed Justice and Construction Party in Libya, whose name closely resembles that of Erdogan’s own Islamist Justice and Development Party, maintains a strong position within the Government of National Accord.

With the military backing it got from Turkey, under a memorandum of understanding arrived at between the sides in November, the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord gained a major boost against Hifter’s self-styled Libyan National Army based in Tobruk. 

These gains also score points for Erdogan against Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which are the main regional supporters of Hifter and the Libyan National Army.

All three countries vehemently oppose the Brotherhood, which they have listed as a terrorist organization. 

Turkey’s support for the Brotherhood is one of the main driving forces behind the growing cold war Ankara has with these countries as the sides vie for regional influence.

Ankara decries as “illegal” the military support these countries are providing Hifter. 

Turkey argues that its military support for the Government of National Accord is legal as the entity, which asked for Ankara's support, is recognized by the UN Security Council as the “legitimate executive authority in Libya.”

Political and military analyst Nihat Ali Ozcan said the biggest advantage Turkey has had for its overt and covert operations in Libya has been the “legitimacy” provided to the Sarraj government by the UN.

“Following the weight that Turkey brought to bear in the game, Hifter not only felt the absence of such legitimacy but also started losing his military and psychological edge,” Ozcan argued in his column for the Turkish daily Milliyet. 

Military successes by the Government of National Accord also enabled Ankara to score “brownie points” against France, which is supporting Hifter politically, and against Russia, which is backing the Libyan National Army indirectly by means of the Wagner group, a Russian mercenary outfit with links to the Kremlin.

Erdogan is still smarting over the loss of face he suffered in Moscow in March, when he was forced by President Vladimir Putin into accepting a cease-fire agreement in Idlib that fell far short of Ankara’s expectations.

Putting these factors aside, what is equally if not more important for Erdogan is the fact that successes by the Government of National Accord on the battlefield also bolster the demarcation accord Ankara arrived at with Tripoli for the eastern Mediterranean in the memorandum of understanding signed in November.

Under the “shore to shore” accord, Turkey and the Government of National Accord have delimited a large swath of the eastern Mediterranean as their exclusive economic zones. 

The accord cuts right through the region where Cyprus, Egypt and Israel are cooperating for energy exploration and exploitation.

Ankara says these countries are disregarding the rights that Turkey and the Turkish north of the divided Island of Cyprus have over the natural resources of the region. 

Turkey has vowed to stymie the efforts of Cyprus, Egypt and Israel by any means, including military ones.

Ankara’s demarcation pact with the Government of National Accord has been condemned by the European Union and the United States, which have declared it invalid under international law, as have Egypt, Cyprus and Israel.

Turkey has disregarded these warnings and continues with its own exploration activities in the region under the protection of its navy. 

The EU has imposed some minor and ultimately insignificant sanctions on Ankara, which — to the annoyance of EU members Greece and Cyprus — amount to less than a slap on the hand.

The demarcation agreement with the Government of National Accord also strengthens Erdogan’s hand against domestic critics who have criticized Turkey’s military engagement in Libya.

Meanwhile, this engagement has also provided Ankara another opportunity to showcase its military technology, especially its domestically made drones that also have been used by the Turkish military to great effect against President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria. 

Nevertheless, these relative successes for Erdogan have to be qualified with some important caveats regarding the long haul in Libya.

If and when international efforts for a political settlement kick in, Ankara could find itself losing the advantages it gained on the battlefield, given that its hand in Libya is unlikely to be as politically strong as its military hand appears to be today.

Ankara’s advantages in Libya are contingent on the fact that no other country is prepared to engage in that country militarily in the overt manner that Turkey has.

“Another difficulty for Hifter is his awareness that it is hard for the countries supporting him, namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Russia and France, to engage directly in the military conflict,” Ozcan wrote.

However, these countries, as well as others in the West and the region, are not enamored of the idea of seeing oil-rich Libya fall into the hands of Islamists.

There is the distinct risk for Ankara, therefore, that a secular government of national reconciliation negotiated for Libya under UN auspices could easily annul Turkey's shaky memorandum of understanding with the Sarraj government.

Turkey can still try to manipulate such negotiations through its strong influence over Sarraj and his supporters, but in doing so it will become a “spoiler” rather than a proactive player that contributes to regional stability.

Such a position could undermine Turkey’s long-term interests, whatever gains it may appear to be securing in Libya today unilaterally.

Consequently, it is imperative for the Sarraj government to remain at the helm in Libya if Ankara is to maintain the advantages it secured with the memorandum of understanding it signed with Tripoli.

The only thing Erdogan can rely on in this respect, at least for the time being, is the fact that a political settlement for Libya is nowhere in sight due to the clashing interests of outside powers with a finger in the Libyan pie.

A far more immediate threat to Erdogan’s ambitions in Libya is the possibility that the country will be divided into two — or even three — now that Hifter appears to be having difficulties with domestic groups that have supported him.

Mehmet Ali Guller, a foreign policy commentator for the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, believes developments on the ground are pointing at a division. “Such an outcome will effectively annul the demarcation accord Turkey arrived at with the Sarraj government,” Guller wrote in reference to the division of the Mediterranean. 

“The reason is that the line of demarcation that has been drawn does not fall on the Sarraj side but on the other side [which is controlled by Hifter]. This is why the unity of Libya is important mostly for Turkey,” Guller added.

To help maintain this unity, however, Turkey has to be an impartial player in Libya. It has, however, thrown in its lot with the Government of National Accord for reasons that have more to do with its own interests than Libya’s.

This could be the rock that Erdogan’s plans and expectations in Libya founder on in the end.