P.s. Spike Jones

P.s., it may be that a few of you won't remember music heard three-quarters of a century ago, so, for you, here's Spike Jones, who should never be forgotten.

Turkey’s Domestically Driven Foreign Policy

Here is a great opportunity for Mr. Trump to cooperate with Russia, help Europe and the Syrian Kurds, and hurt the Islamic State if he hasn't been frightened off by bad, and deservedly bad, publicity.

You always hurt
The one you love
The one you shouldn't hurt at all 
(so to speak)
Spike Jones:You Always Hurt The One You love (my memory has Peter Lorre singing the first verse. Lope that's right.)

Turkey’s Domestically Driven Foreign Policy

MARC PIERINI

Ankara faces a number of foreign policy challenges, from the war in Syria to relations with the West. In each case, Turkey’s options are determined by domestic priorities.

February 27, 2017

As citizens of Turkey head to a crucial vote on April 16 on whether to adopt a new constitution, the country’s leadership is facing multiple challenges on the external front: Syria, Russia, the United States, NATO, and the EU. Typically, each of these challenges is closely linked to Turkey’s tense domestic political situation.

With Operation Euphrates Shield, Turkish armed forces are involved in Syria in a rare expeditionary combat mission. Albeit geographically limited (no troops or armor are more than 19 miles from the Turkish border, meaning all resupply, maintenance, and rescue operations are completed within hours), the mission has already taken a substantial toll on soldiers and equipment.

Euphrates Shield is officially designed to fight troops of the self-styled Islamic State and push them away from the Turkish border. This goal has been partly achieved, including through Turkey’s proclaimed capture of the Syrian town of al-Bab on February 24. But the actual aim of the mission is to prevent Syrian Kurdish forces (the People’s Protection Units, or YPG) from reuniting their frightened district, east of the Euphrates River, with their westernmost district of Afrin, as that would give the Syrian Kurds control of most of the Syrian-Turkish border. Ankara’s narrative is that both branches of the Syrian Kurdish organization—the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the YPG, its military wing—are mere subsidiaries of the Kurdish separatist movement of Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

This is where foreign policy blends with domestic politics. To succeed in its current domestic strategy of crushing both the pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and the insurgent PKK to win the upcoming referendum, given the Kurds’ opposition to the proposed constitution, the leadership in Ankara needs international support. That implies convincing Russia and Western powers to drop their support for the Syrian Kurds.

But the reality on the international scene is very different. Both Washington and Moscow crucially rely on the YPG to advance on Raqqa, the so-called Syrian capital of the Islamic State. The YPG troops are remarkably effective and have received military supplies and operational support from the United States and other Western countries. They are also supported by Moscow.

More importantly, in the current proxy war against the Islamic State, the YPG forces are by far the most battle ready and the most successful in combat. Retaking Raqqa without the YPG, as Turkey is demanding, is next to impossible. Neither Washington nor Moscow is likely to risk mixing Syrian Kurdish forces with Turkish troops, a recipe for inevitable trouble and possible failure on the ground.

Ankara is replicating its request on the political front and wants to exclude the Syrian Kurds from the international talks on Syria that have just restarted in Geneva. This, again, is almost impossible, as Washington has consistently argued in favor of their involvement for the sake of lasting peace in northern Syria. Ankara is probably betting on a policy reversal by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump—although, as with other U.S. foreign policy choices, the White House’s next move is anybody’s guess.

In addition, Turkey will face Moscow’s opposition, because Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly stated in September 2015 Russia’s desire to see the Syrian Kurds as one of the pillars of a political settlement. In other words, Ankara faces two major challenges in Syria: a military and a political one.

Yet, Turkey repeatedly boasts about its military operation on Syrian territory and its participation in direct talks on Syria with both Russia and Iran. Turkey has consistently aimed at restoring close cooperation with Russia since a Turkish fighter jet shot down a Russian Sukhoi aircraft in November 2015 and an off-duty Turkish policeman assassinated the Russian ambassador to Turkey in the heart of Ankara in December 2016. This reconciliation has been achieved in part, allowing Turkey to break the diplomatic isolation that followed the extensive repression after the July 2016 failed coup and entertain a proud nationalist narrative internally.

However, seen from abroad, Turkey’s foreign military operation and its diplomatic successes are rather limited and offset by risks taken along the way. In particular, the question arises of whether Ankara has become a pawn in Moscow’s vast chess game aimed at systematically undermining both NATO and the EU, especially in defense and energy.

The Turkish minister of defense declared on February 22 that discussions on the purchase of Russian S400 missiles for Turkey’s antimissile defense were progressing well, which was revealing of the country’s current foreign policy conundrum. If Ankara were to build its entire missile defense architecture around Russian systems, it would associate itself with Moscow and strike two major blows to NATO’s policies: first, by introducing Russian-made systems and accompanying experts into NATO’s second-largest conventional army; and second, by leaving a gaping hole in NATO’s own missile defense shield, to which Turkey has repeatedly committed itself.

One can easily comprehend Ankara’s tactical appetite for such a move, but its strategic implications would be of unfathomable depth, especially if a yes vote in the upcoming referendum gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan almost unlimited powers until 2029.

In comparison with these strategic stakes, Turkey’s relationship with the EU now looks almost benign, although greatly significant on the economic and rule-of-law fronts. With the state of emergency imposed after the failed coup, Turkey’s rule-of-law architecture has been so degraded that no progress on the country’s EU accession talks can realistically be expected. Similarly, steps toward visa liberalization—a mutually desirable objective—are impeded by Turkey’s firm priority to keep its antiterrorism law as it is.

Again, a yes vote in the referendum is likely to result in an almost permanent state of emergency and minimal rule-of-law standards. That is nothing that would worry Moscow much, but it would bring the EU-Turkey relationship to a transactional rather than a strategic level. A modernized EU-Turkey Customs Union is likely to become the only flagship project between Turkey and the EU.

All politics are local: Turkey’s current foreign policy choices are dictated by domestic political imperatives. Ankara’s foreign military operations and postures, as well as a key defense decision and deliberate backtracking on progress toward EU membership, are only parts of an internal power drive. The likely winner: Putin, more than Erdoğan.

Pierini is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, where his research focuses on developments in the Middle East and Turkey from a European perspective.

Marc Pierini, Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Europe

More from this author...

Turkey’s Gift From God; Turkey’s Impending Estrangement From the West;Capitalizing on Tunisia’s Transition: The Role of Broad-Based Reform

@MARCPIERINI1

Senator Grassly and the Second Amendment

Congress Says, Let the Mentally Ill Buy GunsBy THE EDITORIAL BOARD FEB. 15, 2017 

•   The New York Times

Sen. Charles Grassley, of Iowa, on Capitol Hill earlier this month.Credit Drew Angerer/Getty Images

For all their dysfunction, the Republican Senate and House have managed to act with lightning speed in striking down a sensible Obama administration rule designed to stop people with severe mental problems from buying guns.

My Editorial Contribution

durell douthit

attorney emeritus

2423 francis street

honolulu,hawaii 96815

808/675-8750

And how right you are, O Congress!  The 2nd Amendment  by its very Words and Original Intent perforce applies to homicidal maniacs such as Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa may be.  

None can cite one jot or tittle of the Constitutional excluding homicidal maniacs from the beneficent application of the 2nd Amendment.

What a piece of work is the 2nd Amendment! How noble in reason! In form how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of Words on Paper. 

How blessed are we that Man is endowed with The 2nd Amendment, and with Mad Senator Grassley!  We now have nowhere to go but Up Into The Heavens!

The United States should take a deep breath, and stop killing Muslims. Killing Muslims is especially unproductive, as the US recent history shows

This is in response to this article:  Trump Pushes Dark View of Islam to Center of U.S. Policy-Making - The New York Times

A friend, son of a theologian, read the entire Quran and came to the same conclusion, that it is inherently war-like and expansionist. A reading of the whole Bible would likely lead one to the same conclusion.  Surely the Crusaders thought that. 

Saudi, in their Wahhabist beliefs, share that view and have spent billions on Madrases throughout Southern Asia and Salafi jihadists in Syria to propagate the view that Sharia is inherently at odds with all other beliefs, and all others are apostate or worse and should be converted, by force of arms if necessary.  

Saudi Arabia, with vast oil money and the corruption that brings, has weakened that view and now cooperates with the West. 

The Islamic State’s main objective is to capture Mecca  and establish Wahhabism as it was originally practiced by Saudi Arabia.  The Islamic State correctly regards Saudi Arabia as lapsed and apostate and a proper object for invasion.  Not incidentally, if the Islamic State were to control Mecca, its claim to be the Caliphate would be greatly strengthened.  See The Kingdom and the Caliphate: Duel of the Islamic States - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

The United States is at war with the Islamic State to protect Saudi Arabia, since none of its Islamic neighbors has agreed to lend a hand.  The United States has had a cooperative agreement with Saudi Arabia on oil, from the end of WWII.  Up until the First Gulf War, the  Saudi gave the United States a 20% break on the price of oil, which helped propel the United States into global military superiority.

The Islamic State' war on the West (and the rest of the world) is secondary to the war on Saudi Arabia, in the view of the Islamic State; or was until the United States  began bombing the shit out of ‘em.  The United States has now made another longstanding enemy in the Middle East. 

Each member of the Bushco-Obama-Trumpist cabal has had as a core foreign policy to kill Muslims, no matter how the foreign policy is expressed.   Trumpists are the most open about their eagerness to kill Muslims no matter the Muslims' actual beliefs and so the Trumpists are the most likely to unbalance the precarious and existentially necessary peace that has now lasted since the end of WWII, with local exceptions (Vietnam, e.g.). Necessary because of the Bomb.

(for younguns who may not remember

. . . "that man is endowed with a mushroom-shaped Cloud". . . .)

Iran’s religion, for example, is not expansionist, or wasn’t until recently.  See Nasr, The Shia Revival. Expansionism is not an integral part of Shia beliefs, but a reaction to external threats.  Peace with Iran is possible.  Peace with the obesely-rich Saudi is probably possible because it needs the West to buy its oil, but we must stop killing Yemeni and must pay to rebuild that unhappy land. 

Letting the only two Wahhabist states in the world — Saudi Arabia and the  Islamic State -- settle their own differences is a better course of action than trying to protect Saudi Arabia by  killing more Muslims. Killing Muslims has not worked out well for Bushco or Obama, and will not work out well for the Trumpists either.  

Bad for all the world. Sad but, I think, true.  Hope still springs eternal, but not as spritely as it used to do.