Rowson on Erdoğan the Bouncer

Far too long since I featured Martin Rowson's genius here methinks.

Our Allies and Enemies

From an article in the Graun. on the continuing disarray (never mind possible first step towards dissolution) of the European Union over the 'refugee crisis'.*

Merkel singled out Turkey as the key to a crisis management strategy and Juncker said the fund-raising would include a billion euros for Ankara.

But Tusk, just returned from Turkey, said money “is not the big problem. It is not as easy as expected.”

Ahmet Davutoğlu, the Turkish prime minister, wrote to the EU leaders on Wednesday demanding bold concessions from the Europeans as the price for Turkey’s possible cooperation. He proposed EU and US support for a buffer and no-fly zone in northern Syria by the Turkish border, measuring 80km by 40km.

This would stymy the Kurdish militias fighting Islamic State in northern Syria and would also enable Ankara to start repatriating some of the estimated 2 million Syrian refugees it is hosting. The militias are allied with the Kurdistan workers’ party (PKK) guerrillas at war with the Turkish state for most of the past 30 years. Ankara reignited the conflict in July after the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in a general election.

“There are many people who doubt the sincerity of their motives,” said a senior EU official. “They’re not offering too much.”

Ah, our good friends in Turkey.  Not ones they to let a crisis go to waste.  Why not use the situation with the refugees as an excuse to further their military-campaign against the Kurds, to date, one of our few effective allies in the fight against ISIS ?  It's not as if the warzone in question were the source of most of the refugees in the first place, after all...Not as if undermining the Kurds would strengthen ISIS and help prolong the fucking war.  And a chance to bully the members of the union they so desperately want to one day join themselves into the bargain ?  Genius.

Er, we did check with the Russians didn't we about where they are operating in the country ?**  Might be good to know before we start trying to enforce a no-fly zone.  Oh, that's right.  We're not talking with Russia...or Iran...or Assad.  'Cos we don't like them.  They not nice.

Fucking grow up already.  Okay, so we have to work with Turkey, because they're 'our ally'...supposedly...not that that should extend to militarily supporting their ongoing efforts to deny the Kurds an independent state.  But just how many countries and factions are fighting in Syria now ?  Just how much more complicated is this likely to become ?  And whilst we are flinging bombs back and forth with abandon, then feigning surprise when vast swaths of the country become depopulated, who are the players on the ground here ?

• Pro-government forces ('Our Enemy')
• ISIS & related jihadist groups ('Our Enemy')
• Iran ('Our Enemy')
• Russia ('Our Enemy')
• The Kurds (Would-be allies, except that we'll sell them out to Turkey)
• Some random rag-tag non-jihadi anti-govt. forces.

No-one see a problem here ?  Not even a little bit ?

Psst...Kerry & Co...So this strategy of yours of not talking to forces we don't like...I'm not sure it's working out so well.  I'm not sure in the context of the current conflict that it isn't in fact totally fucking insane.

Ask yourself these questions: Is getting rid of Assad more important than defeating ISIS ?  Is constraining Russian or Iranian influence more important than defeating ISIS ?  What are our priorities here amidst the rise of this incredibly radical violent group that wants to establish an Islamic Caliphate, and amidst the biggest refugee-crisis since the Second World War ?  And would you not acknowledge that an end to this bloody war in which somehow you a) Limit Iranian & Russian influence in the region, b) Forcibly remove Assad, and c) Defeat ISIS, whilst d) Avoiding US so-called 'boots on the ground' is ever so slightly un-fucking-likely ?

Never mind the inherent lunacy of having the US & Russia acting in the same theatre of war without the strictest cooperation, without clear shared goals.

Admit you fucked up already.  Then get over it...and get serious.  We need pragmatism here, not pride.

* Not to say that there isn't a refugee-crisis, just that what European countries refer to with that phrase, is more to do with the hundreds of thousands crossing European borders, as opposed to the overall crisis to which everyone simply turned a blind eye, so long as it was occurring somewhere else.

** Rhetorical question

*** Feel obligated to include an image of some kind, if only for the mobile version of Blogger.  And that 'toon is Rall at his edgiest best.

Our Friends in the Near East

In fight against Islamic State, Turkey's Erdogan sees chance to battle Kurds

ISTANBUL, July 27 (Reuters) - Forced into battle against Islamic State as it presses on Turkey's borders, President Tayyip Erdogan is seizing the chance to keep another foe in check, bombing Kurdish militants he sees as a threat to the integrity of the Turkish state.

Casting the operations as a war on terrorist groups "without distinction", Turkey launched air strikes against Islamic State in Syria for the first time last week and granted the U.S.-led coalition access to its air bases after years of reluctance.

It also bombed camps in northern Iraq belonging to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the first time in at least three years. Hundreds of suspected Islamic State and PKK members have been rounded up in raids across Turkey.

Launching wars on two fronts is a high-risk strategy for the NATO member, leaving it dangerously exposed to the threat of reprisals by jihadists and at risk of reigniting a Kurdish insurgency that has cost 40,000 lives over three decades.

Turkey has been a conduit for foreign jihadists, with thousands thought to have crossed its borders to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, many concealed among the millions of tourists who flock to Turkey's shores each year.

They have often been aided by Turkish smugglers linked to the Islamist insurgents; a network Turkey has been trying to dismantle but which could retain capacity to launch attacks on Turkish soil after the fashion of last week's suicide bombing, blamed by Ankara on the militants, that killed 32 people.

Western diplomats have long feared that Istanbul, one of the world's most visited cities, or Turkey's Aegean or Mediterranean coastal resorts could be soft targets. Attacks that killed dozens of foreign tourists in Tunisia earlier this year served only as a reminder of the risks.

"Ankara's recent adoption of aggressive policies towards both the PKK and the Islamic State has considerably raised the risk of terrorist attacks and sustained civil unrest inside the country," Wolfango Piccoli of risk research firm Teneo Intelligence said in a note.

Yet on both fronts, Erdogan looks to be hoping to seize opportunity out of crisis. He is reviving Turkey's international standing with the more robust stance on Islamic State, but also undermining the pro-Kurdish opposition and bolstering nationalist support at home with the attacks on the PKK.

I'm so glad Turkey is finally joining the fight against ISIS (ISIL, IS, Daesh, whatever).  The last year or so, others in the West (I suppose we sorta consider Turkey the West these days, rather than the Near East as was) have been fighting a potential existential threat to Turkey and the entire region south of Turkey's border, whilst Turkey let fighters, weapons, and money cross the border, seemingly with impunity.

And now, Turkey generously agrees to join in the fight, so long as they get to also bomb the Kurds, the only remotely stable or militarily proven ally we have on the ground, because they're so terrified of the possibility that 'their own' Kurds might not continue to be denied the statehood that the Turks have bloodily denied them for generations.

Our great ally in NATO, Turkey.  Our would-be future member of the EU.  The same Turkey that has been exploiting the economic frailty of neighbour and member of both the EU & NATO, Greece, by testing their sovereign airspace, to the point of inviting dogfights between the two countries' airforces.

The country that used to be the very model of secular western Islam, but is currently run by Islamist strongman Tayyip Erdoğan, he of Ak Saray-fame, who felt it necessary to squander vast quantities of the people's money on a massive new palatial complex for himself, one of the very largest in the world, on what was previously protected forest-land, so large in order presumably to be able to hold his incredible ego.

The West, in particular the Europeans, seem to have assumed that Turkey made the choice between the values of the liberal west, and the values of mediaeval Arabia long ago*.  But clearly, that choice is still very much up in the air.

The UK, which, still within my lifetime, was facing the bloody aftermath of the Irish partition, just last year, allowed the people of Scotland, home of the UK's sole nuclear deterrent (and now sole shipbuilder -- Thanks DC !) and North Sea oil-fields, a peaceful democratic vote on independence.  It's not surprising that such a similar opportunity would be inconceivable for the Kurds in Iran, in Iraq, in Syria.  But then there's also western-allied NATO-member and future EU-candidate Turkey, which had seemingly made a sort of peace with the PKK, but can't wait to start bombing the Kurds again, the moment it gets the chance, even when they're key allies in a fight that threatens Turkey itself.

Here's Turkey's chance and Tayyip Erdoğan's to define themselves, and what they truly stand for.  Hopefully they're aware of the significance of the moment, and, hopefully those fools in the EU are paying attention, either way.


* We made a similar assumption, multiple times as it happens, about Russia.

War Is Peace, Freedom is Slavery

These two sentences piqued my interest in this piece about Jeb Bush.


Bush advisers say Poland is an economic success story, a home to outsourced labor of German manufacturers that's warily watching Russia's aggression toward former Eastern bloc states. 

&

"Both the United States and the European Union are confronted by legitimate security concerns and middle-class concerns, including lack of wage growth," said Kristen Silverberg, a Bush adviser and former ambassador to the European Union during President George W. Bush's second term. 


Yes, the United States and the European Union are very concerned about 'middle-class concerns' such as 'lack of wage growth.'  So much so that they consistently pursue policies that will inevitably keep wages low.

Such as new mass trade-deals.  Such as the United States looking the other way during the first decade of the new century, whilst millions and millions of illegal immigrants flooded across the southern border, providing cheap and compliant labour on the low-end of the labour-market (and whilst also using visas and outsourcing agreements on the higher end).  And such, as the European Union expanding ever further eastwards in the pursuit of amongst other things, cheap labour.

Those Polish workers can work for less than the Germans they displaced, in part because of a lower cost of living.  But inevitably they are going to want a higher standard of living, are going to be more choosy in what work they do and under what conditions.  And as their standard of living equalises with the likes of Deutschland, there's inevitably pressure for new frontiers in cheap labour.

And there, right to the east of Poland is Ukraine.  What is the Western interest in Ukraine ?  Well, four things really*:

1. Containment of Russia (all ridiculous claims to the contrary aside)
2. New markets for Western goods
3. Natural resources, and...
4. Cheap labour.

For the West, Ukraine must join the EU.  Turkey must join the EU.  Georgia, which doesn't even have a foothold on the European sub-continent, must join the EU.  Why ?  Because, profit.  Even more so than the desire to contain Russia, profit.  Always profit über alles.

And one of the biggest drags on profits is always those pesky workers with their whining about wanting living wages, whining about wanting time off because they had babies, then wanting time off to spend with their children, wanting healthcare for their families, education for their children, wanting to be able to one day retire without having to live in a freezing apartment in winter subsiding on catfood.  Damn greedy workers !

And so the European Union is seemingly willing to risk everything, even possibly nuclear war, over adding the largest possible prize in the subcontinent into its mix.  A union that was created in the aftermath of the Second World War explicitly as an attempt to prevent further war.  But...profit.


* You may note that there is no mention on this list of Ukrainian aspirations for freedom, for more democracy, for a better life.  That is because the West frankly does not give a shit.

An Odd Sentence

From 'The Guardian view on Turkey':

Turkey is a crucial country. In spite of its recent drift toward authoritarianism, in spite of the increasing intemperance of its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and in spite of the loss of the sure touch in foreign policy its government once possessed, it is still a rock amid the sea of troubles that is the Middle East today. Although growth is slowing and unemployment and inflation rising, Turkey is still among the world’s stronger economies, and aspires to join the top 10 within the next decade. And, while there must be serious concern about the government’s rough treatment of the media, its bullying of lawyers, and its general readiness to bend rules for political advantage, it is still a relatively free and democratic polity, one of only a handful such in the Muslim world.

So it is hard for outsiders to know what to wish for in the Turkish general election next Sunday.

Uh, no.  No, it really isn't.  And nothing in the remainder of your piece suggests any doubt, so why say that ?  (Concerns about NATO ?)  Not that the West has any say here, but, if it did, the choice of further autocracy and further Islamisation of what was once a staunchly secular state under Erdoğan would be the choice of a lunatic, certainly if we were still seriously considering membership for Turkey in the EU.  And are we ?

Will we still be if Erdoğan continues to take the country in its current direction ?  Can we make a rational case for Erdoğan's Turkey in the European club ?  Or will we at some point admit the EU to be/have become an economic playground for our elites with little basis in shared values, other than those of the worst form of vulture-capitalism ?  Cheap resources, cheaper labour, open markets, and do with the local populations as you will.

Maybe at some point we could even resurrect the dream of Russia joining.  But, that being, not as once we might have not altogether unreasonably have hoped via a newly democratised and liberal Russia rising to the standards of Western Europe as was, but rather via a Europe whose standards had eventually fallen to meet those of Russia under Putin.