The Sultan 2.0 will heavily tilt east
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Bill Totten
Jun 6, 2023, 1:03:03 AM6/6/23
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The Sultan 2.0 will heavily tilt east
It's not that Erdogan has a scheme to head east at the west's expense.
It's just that the world's grandest infrastructure, development, and
geopolitical projects are all in the east today.
by Pepe Escobar
https://thecradle.co (May 31 2023)
https://media.thecradle.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Pepe-Escobar-on-Erdogan-and-the-Turkish-elections.jpg
Photo Credit: The Cradle
The collective west was dying to bury him - yet another strategic
mistake that did not take into account the mood of Turkish voters in
deep Anatolia.
In the end, Recep Tayyip Erdogan did it - again. Against all his
shortcomings, like an aging neo-Ottoman Sinatra, he did it "my way",
comfortably retaining Turkiye's presidency after naysayers had all but
buried him.
The first order of geopolitical priority is who will be named Minister
of Foreign Affairs. The prime candidate is Ibrahim Kalin - the current
all-powerful Erdogan press secretary cum top adviser.
Compared to incumbent Cavusoglu, Kalin, in theory, may be qualified as
more pro-west. Yet it's the Sultan who calls the shots. It will be
fascinating to watch how Turkiye under Erdogan 2.0 will navigate the
strengthening of ties with West Asia and the accelerating process of
Eurasia integration.
The first immediate priority, from Erdogan's point of view, is to get
rid of the "terrorist corridor" in Syria. This means, in practice,
reigning in the US-backed Kurdish YPG/PYD, who are effectively Syrian
affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - which is also the
issue at the heart of a possible normalization of relations with
Damascus.
Now that Syria has been enthusiastically welcomed back {1} to the Arab
League after a 12-year freeze, a Moscow-brokered entente between the
Turkish and Syrian presidents, already in progress, may represent the
ultimate win-win for Erdogan: allowing control of Kurds in north Syria
while facilitating the repatriation of roughly 4 million refugees
(tens of thousands will stay, as a source of cheap labor).
The Sultan is at his prime when it comes to hedging his bets between
east and west. He knows well how to profit from Turkiye's status as a
key Nato member - complete with one of its largest armies, veto power,
and control of the entry to the uber-strategic Black Sea.
And all that while exercising real foreign policy independence, from
West Asia to the Eastern Mediterranean.
So expect Erdogan 2.0 to remain an inextinguishable source of
irritation for the neocons and neoliberals in charge of US foreign
policy, along with their EU vassals, who will never refrain from
trying to subdue Ankara to fight the Russia-China-Iran Eurasia
integration entente. The Sultan, though, knows how to play this game
beautifully.
How to manage Russia and China
Whatever happens next, Erdogan will not hop on board the
sanctions-against-Russia sinking ship. The Kremlin bought Turkish
bonds tied to the development of the Russian-built Akkuyu nuclear
power plant, Turkiye's first nuclear reactor. Moscow allowed Ankara to
postpone nearly $4 billion in energy payments until 2024. Best of all,
Ankara pays for Russian gas in rubles.
So an array of deals related to the supply of Russian energy trump
possible secondary sanctions that might target the steady rise in
Turkiye's exports. Still, it's a given the US will revert to its one
and only "diplomatic" policy - sanctions. The 2018 sanctions did push
Turkiye into recession after all.
But Erdogan can easily count on popular support across the Turkish
realm. Early this year, a Gezici poll {2} revealed that 72.8 percent
of Turkish citizens privilege good relations with Russia while nearly
90 percent rate the US as a "hostile" nation. That's what allows
Interior Minister Soylu to remark, bluntly, "we will wipe out whoever
is causing trouble, including American troops".
China-Turkiye strategic cooperation falls under what Erdogan defines
as "turning to the East" - and is mostly about China's multi-continent
infrastructure behemoth, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Turk
Silk Road branch of the BRI focuses on what Beijing defines as the
"Middle Corridor", a prime cost-effective/secure trade route that
connects Asia to Europe.
The driver is the China Railway Express, which turned the Middle
Corridor arguably into BRI's backbone. For instance, electronics parts
and an array of household items routinely arriving via cargo planes
from Osaka, Japan are loaded onto freight trains going to Duisburg and
Hamburg in Germany, via the China Railway Express departing from
Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Changsha - and crossing from Xinjiang to
Kazakhstan and beyond via the Alataw Pass. Shipments from Chongqing to
Germany take a maximum of 13 days.
It's no wonder that nearly 10 years ago, when he first unveiled his
ambitious, multi-trillion dollar BRI in Astana, Kazakhstan, Chinese
President Xi Jinping placed the China Railway Express as a core BRI
component.
Direct freight trains from Xian to Istanbul are plying the route since
December 2020, using the Baku-Tblisi-Kars (BTK) railway with less than
two weeks travel time - and plans afoot to increase their frequency.
Beijing is well aware of Turkiye's asset as a transportation hub and
crossroads for markets in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia,
West Asia, and North Africa, not to mention a customs union with the
EU that allows direct access to European markets.
Moreover, Baku's victory in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war came with a
ceasefire deal bonus: the Zangezur {3} corridor, which will eventually
facilitate Turkiye's direct access to neighbors from the Caucasus to
Central Asia.
A pan-Turkic offensive?
And here we enter a fascinating territory: the possible incoming
interpolations between the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BRICS+ - and all that
also linked to a boost in Saudi and Emirati investments in the Turkish
economy.
Sultan 2.0 wants to become a full member of both the Chinese-led SCO
and multipolar BRICS+. This means a much closer entente with the
Russia-China strategic partnership as well as with the Arab
powerhouses, which are also hopping on the BRICS+ high-speed train.
Erdogan 2.0 is already focusing on two key players in Central Asia and
South Asia: Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Both happen to be SCO members.
Ankara and Islamabad are very much in sync. They express the same
judgment on the extremely delicate Kashmir question, and both backed
Azerbaijan against Armenia.
But the key developments may lie in Central Asia. Ankara and Tashkent
have a strategic defense agreement - including intelligence sharing
and logistics cooperation.
The Organization of Turkic States (OTS), with a headquarters in
Istanbul, is the prime energizer of pan-Turkism or pan-Turanism.
Turkiye, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are full
members, with Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Hungary, and Ukraine
cultivated as observers. The Turk-Azeri relationship is billed as "one
nation, two states" in pan-Turkic terms.
The basic idea is a still hazy "cooperation platform" between Central
Asia and the Southern Caucasus. Yet some serious proposals have
already been floated. The OTS summit in Samarkand late last year
advanced the idea of a TURANCEZ free trade bloc, comprising Turkiye,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and as
observers, Hungary (representing the EU), and Northern Cyprus.
Meanwhile, hard business prevails. To fully profit from the status of
the energy transit hub, Turkiye needs not only Russian gas but also
gas from Turkmenistan feeding the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline
(TANAP) as well as Kazakh oil coming via the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC)
pipeline.
The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) is heavy on
economic cooperation, active in a series of projects in
transportation, construction, mining, and oil and gas. Ankara has
already invested a whopping $85 billion across Central Asia, with
nearly 4,000 companies scattered across all the "stans".
Of course, when compared to Russia and China, Turkiye is not a major
player in Central Asia. Moreover, the bridge to Central Asia goes via
Iran. So far, rivalry between Ankara and Tehran seems to be the norm,
but everything may change, lightning fast, with the simultaneous
development of the Russia-Iran-India-led International North-South
Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which will profit both - and the fact
that the Iranians and Turks may soon become full BRICS+ members.
Sultan 2.0 is bound to boost investment in Central Asia as a new
geoeconomic frontier. That in itself encapsulates the possibility of
Turkiye soon joining the SCO.
We will then have a "turning to the East" in full effect, in parallel
to closer ties with the Russia-China strategic partnership. Take note
that Turkiye's ties with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are
also strategic partnerships.
Not bad for a neo-Ottoman who, until a few days ago, was dismissed as
a has-been.
Links:
{1} https://thecradle.co/article-view/25401/assad-in-jeddah-tangibly-what-does-this-mean-for-syria
{2} https://thecradle.co/article-view/20190
{3} https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/azerbaijan-intensifies-work-on-construction-of-railway-stretching-to-zangezur-corridor/2907155
_____
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those
of The Cradle.
Pepe Escobar is a columnist at The Cradle, editor-at-large at Asia
Times, and an independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia.
Since the mid-1980s he has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent
in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Bangkok. He is
the author of countless books; his latest one is Raging Twenties
(2020).
https://thecradle.co/article-view/25429/the-sultan-20-will-heavily-tilt-east
TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click
the appropriate link at the top or bottom of
https://billtotten.wpcomstaging.com/2023/06/06/the-sultan-2-0-will-heavily-tilt-east/
It's not that Erdogan has a scheme to head east at the west's expense.
It's just that the world's grandest infrastructure, development, and
geopolitical projects are all in the east today.
by Pepe Escobar
https://thecradle.co (May 31 2023)
https://media.thecradle.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Pepe-Escobar-on-Erdogan-and-the-Turkish-elections.jpg
Photo Credit: The Cradle
The collective west was dying to bury him - yet another strategic
mistake that did not take into account the mood of Turkish voters in
deep Anatolia.
In the end, Recep Tayyip Erdogan did it - again. Against all his
shortcomings, like an aging neo-Ottoman Sinatra, he did it "my way",
comfortably retaining Turkiye's presidency after naysayers had all but
buried him.
The first order of geopolitical priority is who will be named Minister
of Foreign Affairs. The prime candidate is Ibrahim Kalin - the current
all-powerful Erdogan press secretary cum top adviser.
Compared to incumbent Cavusoglu, Kalin, in theory, may be qualified as
more pro-west. Yet it's the Sultan who calls the shots. It will be
fascinating to watch how Turkiye under Erdogan 2.0 will navigate the
strengthening of ties with West Asia and the accelerating process of
Eurasia integration.
The first immediate priority, from Erdogan's point of view, is to get
rid of the "terrorist corridor" in Syria. This means, in practice,
reigning in the US-backed Kurdish YPG/PYD, who are effectively Syrian
affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - which is also the
issue at the heart of a possible normalization of relations with
Damascus.
Now that Syria has been enthusiastically welcomed back {1} to the Arab
League after a 12-year freeze, a Moscow-brokered entente between the
Turkish and Syrian presidents, already in progress, may represent the
ultimate win-win for Erdogan: allowing control of Kurds in north Syria
while facilitating the repatriation of roughly 4 million refugees
(tens of thousands will stay, as a source of cheap labor).
The Sultan is at his prime when it comes to hedging his bets between
east and west. He knows well how to profit from Turkiye's status as a
key Nato member - complete with one of its largest armies, veto power,
and control of the entry to the uber-strategic Black Sea.
And all that while exercising real foreign policy independence, from
West Asia to the Eastern Mediterranean.
So expect Erdogan 2.0 to remain an inextinguishable source of
irritation for the neocons and neoliberals in charge of US foreign
policy, along with their EU vassals, who will never refrain from
trying to subdue Ankara to fight the Russia-China-Iran Eurasia
integration entente. The Sultan, though, knows how to play this game
beautifully.
How to manage Russia and China
Whatever happens next, Erdogan will not hop on board the
sanctions-against-Russia sinking ship. The Kremlin bought Turkish
bonds tied to the development of the Russian-built Akkuyu nuclear
power plant, Turkiye's first nuclear reactor. Moscow allowed Ankara to
postpone nearly $4 billion in energy payments until 2024. Best of all,
Ankara pays for Russian gas in rubles.
So an array of deals related to the supply of Russian energy trump
possible secondary sanctions that might target the steady rise in
Turkiye's exports. Still, it's a given the US will revert to its one
and only "diplomatic" policy - sanctions. The 2018 sanctions did push
Turkiye into recession after all.
But Erdogan can easily count on popular support across the Turkish
realm. Early this year, a Gezici poll {2} revealed that 72.8 percent
of Turkish citizens privilege good relations with Russia while nearly
90 percent rate the US as a "hostile" nation. That's what allows
Interior Minister Soylu to remark, bluntly, "we will wipe out whoever
is causing trouble, including American troops".
China-Turkiye strategic cooperation falls under what Erdogan defines
as "turning to the East" - and is mostly about China's multi-continent
infrastructure behemoth, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Turk
Silk Road branch of the BRI focuses on what Beijing defines as the
"Middle Corridor", a prime cost-effective/secure trade route that
connects Asia to Europe.
The driver is the China Railway Express, which turned the Middle
Corridor arguably into BRI's backbone. For instance, electronics parts
and an array of household items routinely arriving via cargo planes
from Osaka, Japan are loaded onto freight trains going to Duisburg and
Hamburg in Germany, via the China Railway Express departing from
Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Changsha - and crossing from Xinjiang to
Kazakhstan and beyond via the Alataw Pass. Shipments from Chongqing to
Germany take a maximum of 13 days.
It's no wonder that nearly 10 years ago, when he first unveiled his
ambitious, multi-trillion dollar BRI in Astana, Kazakhstan, Chinese
President Xi Jinping placed the China Railway Express as a core BRI
component.
Direct freight trains from Xian to Istanbul are plying the route since
December 2020, using the Baku-Tblisi-Kars (BTK) railway with less than
two weeks travel time - and plans afoot to increase their frequency.
Beijing is well aware of Turkiye's asset as a transportation hub and
crossroads for markets in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia,
West Asia, and North Africa, not to mention a customs union with the
EU that allows direct access to European markets.
Moreover, Baku's victory in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war came with a
ceasefire deal bonus: the Zangezur {3} corridor, which will eventually
facilitate Turkiye's direct access to neighbors from the Caucasus to
Central Asia.
A pan-Turkic offensive?
And here we enter a fascinating territory: the possible incoming
interpolations between the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BRICS+ - and all that
also linked to a boost in Saudi and Emirati investments in the Turkish
economy.
Sultan 2.0 wants to become a full member of both the Chinese-led SCO
and multipolar BRICS+. This means a much closer entente with the
Russia-China strategic partnership as well as with the Arab
powerhouses, which are also hopping on the BRICS+ high-speed train.
Erdogan 2.0 is already focusing on two key players in Central Asia and
South Asia: Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Both happen to be SCO members.
Ankara and Islamabad are very much in sync. They express the same
judgment on the extremely delicate Kashmir question, and both backed
Azerbaijan against Armenia.
But the key developments may lie in Central Asia. Ankara and Tashkent
have a strategic defense agreement - including intelligence sharing
and logistics cooperation.
The Organization of Turkic States (OTS), with a headquarters in
Istanbul, is the prime energizer of pan-Turkism or pan-Turanism.
Turkiye, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are full
members, with Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Hungary, and Ukraine
cultivated as observers. The Turk-Azeri relationship is billed as "one
nation, two states" in pan-Turkic terms.
The basic idea is a still hazy "cooperation platform" between Central
Asia and the Southern Caucasus. Yet some serious proposals have
already been floated. The OTS summit in Samarkand late last year
advanced the idea of a TURANCEZ free trade bloc, comprising Turkiye,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and as
observers, Hungary (representing the EU), and Northern Cyprus.
Meanwhile, hard business prevails. To fully profit from the status of
the energy transit hub, Turkiye needs not only Russian gas but also
gas from Turkmenistan feeding the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline
(TANAP) as well as Kazakh oil coming via the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC)
pipeline.
The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) is heavy on
economic cooperation, active in a series of projects in
transportation, construction, mining, and oil and gas. Ankara has
already invested a whopping $85 billion across Central Asia, with
nearly 4,000 companies scattered across all the "stans".
Of course, when compared to Russia and China, Turkiye is not a major
player in Central Asia. Moreover, the bridge to Central Asia goes via
Iran. So far, rivalry between Ankara and Tehran seems to be the norm,
but everything may change, lightning fast, with the simultaneous
development of the Russia-Iran-India-led International North-South
Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which will profit both - and the fact
that the Iranians and Turks may soon become full BRICS+ members.
Sultan 2.0 is bound to boost investment in Central Asia as a new
geoeconomic frontier. That in itself encapsulates the possibility of
Turkiye soon joining the SCO.
We will then have a "turning to the East" in full effect, in parallel
to closer ties with the Russia-China strategic partnership. Take note
that Turkiye's ties with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are
also strategic partnerships.
Not bad for a neo-Ottoman who, until a few days ago, was dismissed as
a has-been.
Links:
{1} https://thecradle.co/article-view/25401/assad-in-jeddah-tangibly-what-does-this-mean-for-syria
{2} https://thecradle.co/article-view/20190
{3} https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/azerbaijan-intensifies-work-on-construction-of-railway-stretching-to-zangezur-corridor/2907155
_____
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those
of The Cradle.
Pepe Escobar is a columnist at The Cradle, editor-at-large at Asia
Times, and an independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia.
Since the mid-1980s he has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent
in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Bangkok. He is
the author of countless books; his latest one is Raging Twenties
(2020).
https://thecradle.co/article-view/25429/the-sultan-20-will-heavily-tilt-east
TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click
the appropriate link at the top or bottom of
https://billtotten.wpcomstaging.com/2023/06/06/the-sultan-2-0-will-heavily-tilt-east/
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