First, to all my loyal readers: It’s been a while. The reason? I run a startup business. But I’m back. The business is growing and I can get back to important things like feeding you all the news and analysis you don’t have time to find for yourself. Now to the Turks.
The Turks have started another civil war. Erdogan has had enough. His purge of the military was in preparation for this moment. It has been a long time coming.
But where to begin. There’s so much to cover. I’ll leave the how’s and skip straight to the why’s.
Why is the Erdogan cracking down on Turkish Kurdistan?
The answer is as old as time: Internal threats and external opportunities.
We’ll go through them in order of importance.
- Erdogan’s Justice and Development party was under fire and at risk of losing their parliamentary majority. This would have been a 1st grade disaster. It would have brought Erdogan’s crimes and corruption to light and broken the back of the Justice and Development party after decades of work to seize power.
- Erdogan’s shady role in creating and funding the jihadis in Syria were coming to light. It was a race against time for his cadre to distract the already suspicious people of Turkey and bind them against a new menace. This menace was the PKK and potential Kurdish independence.
- The Kurds have been a continual, and now deadly, thorn in the side of the Turkish attempt to incorporate Syria into their zone of influence. The success of the YPG against Daash, Jabhat al Nusra, and other rebel groups has closed multiple supply lines. The new YPG alliance with Russia and Syria is drawing even more soldiers to the fight as victory gets closer.
Erdogan purged the military of potential coup plotters and Ataturk loyalists years ago in preparation for his less popular policies. Now that those policies are on the table or have been implemented he is facing enormous backlash.
Meanwhile his divide and conquer strategy in Syria has failed dramatically. News of his sons dealings with the Daesh Oil market and Turkey’s direct support for Jihadis has entered the minds of the public at large.
Further embarassment is on the horizon. Russia’s opening of their downed bomber’s black box will certainly reveal that the Turkish fighters ambushed their bomber on the Syrian side of the border. Their open support of Ukrainian Militias and sending of Turkish mercenaries into Mariopol, in violation of the Minsk agreements, will eventually be caught on film.
Combined with the loss of 10s of billions of USD in Russian tourism and investment, such as the cancellation of the Turk Stream, and it’s final. Erdogan and his party need a legitimacy restoring victory, or they’ll suffer a loss of such magnitude that execution and disgrace may be their fate.
And the Russians are just beginning; There is already talk of formally recognizing the Armenian genocide and revealing more Turkish dirty laundry.
Meanwhile and already rocky Turkish lira plummets and makes export, the lifeblood of the Turkish economy, an even more haphazard venture. Things aren’t looking good. The Russian sanctions were bad enough but now their unstable financial situation makes worldwide trade a challenge.
Like the Eastern Roman Empire on whose land Turkey survives, power is an all or nothing game for Erdogan and his cadre. And that is why they have launched an unprovoked civil war, after an unprovoked and certain false flag suicide attack in Ankara against the Kurdish backed minority party (many members of which are now jailed, perhaps dead).
Will they succeed? Probably not. Time is against Erdogan. The Syrian Army continues to make gains, as do the Kurdish YPG. The Turkish foray into Mosul has met with major blowback from Iraq and many other nations. And the PKK, though unprepared to fight the modern Turkish military toe to toe, finds itself in a position to rally new moderates into militants as a result of Erdogan’s gamble. This fight is only just beginning.
I predict that within two years Erdogan will fall. Even the Americans have given signs that they are open to turning against their ally of convenience. Or perhaps that was their intention all along, with their condemnation of Turkish troops in Iraq and rapid withdrawal of new jets from Turkish bases.
The world is heating up and Erdogan’s Turkey, so eager for a chance in the limelight a year ago, now finds itself at the center of a widened and very ugly current of events.