Turkey's Confused Geopolitics

 November 27, 2015

The downing of a Russian jet over Syria by the Turkish military brings to a sad conclusion a hitherto promising international relations agenda, whose author was none other than Ahmet Davutoglu, the current Turkish prime minister.

Only a few years ago, Davutoglu as Turkey’s foreign minister advanced a “zero problems with the neighbours” diplomatic agenda. Turkey’s economic and diplomatic relations with Moscow, meanwhile, had evolved from fair to excellent, as one would expect from two major Eurasian powers with similar development objectives and interests in the region spanning from Central Asia to the Middle East.

The two countries – Russia and Turkey – are neither European nor entirely Asian. They are neither rich nor poor and both have experienced problems with Islamic radicalism or outright terrorism. For a while, even in military terms, Turkey has tried a few years back to leave the Cold War-era NATO structures and seek admission within the SCO, the new up-and-coming security organization designed specifically for dealing with the challenges of the Eurasian region.

Not anymore. Since the war in Syria, the Turkish leadership’s geopolitical agenda got confused. Ankara’s ambition of exporting its Islamic brand of democracy to the Arab world, from Tunisia to Egypt or Syria, is now in shambles.

Internally, Turkey is nowadays a divided country as a result of the November 1st parliamentary elections that gave, nevertheless, the AK Party another mandate to stay in power a few years longer.

The 2002 victory of political Islam was a direct consequence of the failure of the Turkish brand of secularism to build a truly democratic and inclusive society. Subsequent efforts by the AKP to give Kurds more autonomy and recognize the rights of the Alevi religious minority have similarly failed, transforming Turkey into a reluctant and erratic NATO ally, a menacing neighbour for Greece and the European Union as a whole and, as of a few days ago, an enemy of Russia.

Undaunted, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has failed to see the error of his ways and is blindly pushing for a re-write of the Turkish constitution that would change the country from a parliamentary to a presidential republic which nobody seems to want, not even some leading figures within the AKP.

Since the war in Kosovo and the invasion of Iraq, the world has slowly abandoned globalization as a universal objective of economic and political development. What we are currently witnessing is the onset of the age of geopolitics, characterized by a plethora of civil wars, like in Syria, Iraq or Libya, and of proxy wars between military blocs, such as the one in Georgia (in 2008) or the present-day war in Ukraine, not to mention the conflict in Yemen and beyond in the Middle East.

In such troubled times, it is imperative for large countries like Turkey to articulate a revamped geopolitical agenda for its leadership. The further Islamization of Turkish society is definitely not the answer to its current predicament, while economic and military conflict with its much larger and much more powerful Eurasian neighbour Russia should have been avoided at all costs.

Moreover, being soft on ISIS, selling weapons and buying oil from them – a fact uncovered by both the American and the Russian intelligence establishments – will not bring about a quick demise of the Assad regime, as Ankara expected. As Vladimir Putin correctly observed, the military situation in Syria cannot change by bombing campaigns alone. Since all interested countries in the Syrian developments are reluctant to provide boots on the ground, Assad’s army, with its Hezbollah associates, is the only force involved in large-scale ground operations against ISIS and other terrorist groups.

Last but not least, Turkey would be well-advised to reverse its current practice of allowing waves of Syrian migrants to cross to Europe in their hundreds of thousands. The recent approach adopted by the AKP in their negotiations with the EU has an important blackmail component and could turn decisively the entire European Union, Germans included, against Turkey. Already it stands to lose tens of billions of dollars in lost tourism revenue from Russia, as well as from exports and projects in that country. If German tourists were likewise of a mind to punish Ankara for allowing the migrant exodus towards Europe, then the entire Turkish economy would nosedive and growth would evaporate altogether.

One can only hope that sanity will prevail in the end, that Turkey will apologize to Russia and start to live up to its responsibilities when it comes to stopping the current wave of Syrians en route for Europe. After all, Turkey – and not the EU – was the most enthusiastic and vocal supporter of the anti-Assad rebellion in Syria…

The EU and China: Geo-economic Agendas Compared

 November 22, 2015

The wave of blowback terrorism currently sweeping Western European capitals is likely to obscure a major event due to take place on November 24th and 25th in China: I am referring to the annual meeting of the leaders of 16 Central and Eastern European countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia) with the Chinese leadership in Suzhou. Following immediately after this weekend’s ASEAN summit in Malaysia, the meeting provides an extremely useful glimpse of China’s geo-economic agenda from the Balkans to Poland and Hungary.

An even more useful exercise, however, would be to compare the EU’s geo-economic agenda, with that of China and Russia in our parts of Europe.

The leading exponent of the West’s geo-economic agenda has to be considered Pascal Lorot, the founder of geo-economics. In the 1990s he published a booklet, suggestively titled “La conquête de l’Est”. The book contains the main tenets of the West’s economic expansion in the ex-Soviet bloc states from Central and Eastern Europe. Although NATO expansion has preceded that of the European Union, the main actors of the West’s geo-economic agenda in the region are the global corporations headquartered in France, the US or other participating Western countries.

While financial transfers from the EU to new member states from Central and Eastern Europe have diminished significantly over the years, having contributed only marginally to upgrading their infrastructure to EU standards, Western global corporations have taken over even the water supply or gas distribution in countries like Romania.

The results of the economic penetration in the area are, in some cases, nothing short of disastrous. Thus, companies like Vivendi or Gaz de France have succeeded in imposing to consumers at least ten tariff increases for water and gas in the last four years alone, contributing heavily to further impoverishing Romania’s population whose income levels, however, were already well below the EU average. To top it all off, Brussels is about to stunt Romania’s economic growth by imposing an EC-backed premier, unelected and undesired by the locals.

Moreover, throughout the region, Western global corporations have systematically deprived all the governments of much needed taxation income via transfer pricing and other accounting gimmicks.

Sure enough, there are a few success stories of Western economic expansion in the region, like that of German, American and French auto-makers in countries like Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Romania, but these are the exception rather than the rule.

At the time of their EU accession in 2007, citizens of predominantly Orthodox countries like Romania and Bulgaria were hoping that this would put an end to their countries’ economic plight. The ensuing cultural shock suffered during the latest drive of Western expansionism has instead reopened old wounds. The 1204 ransacking of Constantinople by the crusaders is still alive in the collective memory of the Balkans. On that occasion, Western military “assistance” morphed into full-blown pillage and plunder, followed by the occupation of the Byzantine capital.

By contrast, since 2012 when the first China-CEE meeting took place in Warsaw, China has proven more willing than the EU to invest heavily in these countries’ infrastructure and manufacturing sector. In 2013, the first direct rail link between southwest China and the Polish city of Lodz was inaugurated, greatly facilitating two-way trade between the two countries. Nowadays, it takes only 15 days by rail for Chinese goods to reach Poland, or for Polish agricultural products to reach China. The upgrade of Baltic countries’ ports with Chinese investment is also underway, not to mention the upgrade of the port facilities in Piraeus, Greece by Cosco.

To date, the most ambitious Chinese infrastructure project in the region is the building of a very fast rail link between Piraeus and Hungary, connecting Athens and Skopje with Budapest via Belgrade. Not very far behind are the Russians, who are planning to build a gas pipeline from the Balkans to Central Europe along the same route. The Russians have also agreed to finance, to the tune of a few billion euros, the upgrade and construction of nuclear reactors in Hungary in spite of vehement EU protests.

The leaders of Central and Eastern European countries are now in a position to choose from the two geo-economic agendas the one that best suits the needs of their economies. As matters now stand, it seems that the West has largely exhausted its economic growth potential and is instead trying to exploit – colonial-style – the resources or populations of the new member states accepted after 2004. With its large cash reserves and “win-win” economic philosophy, China looks set to capitalize on local disenchantment with the EU by expanding steadily into this region.

The "New Europe" NATO Summit in Bucharest

November 6, 2015

The fact that the EU is undergoing its most profound existential crisis ever is by now an open secret. The Greek debt crisis had produced a North-South divide in Europe, whereas the migrant crisis has prompted a rebellion against the EU leadership from Eastern bloc members. Nowadays, NATO itself is contributing to the existing divisions by bringing back to life the “Old Europe – New Europe” division of the Bush Jr. era.

Thus, on the 3rd and 4th of November, NATO has organized a “ Presidents’ Summit “ which took place behind closed doors in Bucharest. The meeting was attended by nine presidents of EU member countries from Central and Eastern Europe, and resulted in a declaration which could rightly be called an anti-Juncker document. The final document stressed the need to strengthen ties with the United States and stand united against “Russian aggressiveness”.

It is an undisputed fact that the EU’s eastern and southern borders are far from secure as a result of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Both conflicts were ignited by American covert operations or outright military intervention in those regions, which have very little to do – if at all – with EU foreign or neighbourhood policies’ objectives.

Still, the EU is paying the price for American foreign policy amateurism, which is what has prompted Juncker and Merkel’s recent overtures towards Russia and Turkey. To be sure, Juncker’s declaration concerning Russia and Merkel’s visit to Turkey are by and large part of a PR exercise meant to soothe the leadership in Moscow and Ankara and maybe pave the way for a reset of the EU’s relations with the two countries.

The summit in Bucharest went largely ignored in the international media because of the current street protests in the Romanian capital. By reviving Rumsfeld’s “New Europe” concept, however, and by trying to pitch the leaders of Central and Eastern European countries against the president of the European Commission, the Americans are contributing plenty towards aggravating the rifts that threaten the very existence of the EU. Whilst this might not be their ultimate intention, the outcome of the latest NATO strategy in Europe is going to hurt transatlantic ties more than it would stunt Juncker and Merkel’s efforts to patch up relations with Russia or Turkey.