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68 Opinion
bne September 2018
president’s pursuit of his erstwhile ally’s followers has proved to be a divisive issue in the region.
Ankara has been urging regional governments to shut private schools run by Gulenists and to deport Turks linked with the movement. A political scandal broke out in Kosovo in March when six Turkish nationals allegedly linked to Gulenist schools were arrested and then extradited to Turkey. The incident led to the Kosovar interior minister and secret service chief being sacked by Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj who insisted that he had no knowledge of the operation. A month later, a Bosnian court rejected the extradition of an alleged Gulenist activist to Turkey.
The interference has alarmed the EU, which worries about the influence of Erdogan’s policies on the region, in particular over the governments of Serbia and Bosnia whose leaders have at times been zealous in their support for the Turkish president.
MOSCOW BLOG:
Turkey's crisis a
golden opportunity
for the Kremlin
Ben Aris in Berlin
The Turkish meltdown is a golden opportunity for the Kremlin to further its goal of breaking up Nato and loosening the alliance that Washington has been trying to build to contain Russia’s European ambitions.
The Kremlin has long had a very angry bee in its bonnet about Nato’s expansion eastwards. The recent announcement that Macedonia is to join the military bloc caused outrage
in Moscow. It was already protesting that promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev by virtually every Western leader at the start of the 90s have been broken. Russian President Vladimir Putin complained loudly about the breached pledges in his now famous 2007 Munich Security Conference speech and recently declassified documents confirm that Gorbachev was indeed given verbal promises, although nothing was put on paper.
Turkey has been a Nato member for six decades and it is a key piece in the West’s security arrangement as a leading foothold in the Middle East. It even hosts part of the US nuclear arsenal. However, with the EU failure to admit Turkey to its trade club,
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Given Erdogan’s lack of respect for human and civil rights, the concern is that his illiberal agenda could prove to be a source of instability and slow progress on governance reforms, setting back European integration even more.
Erdogan has stressed that he wants to promote stability
in the Western Balkans, and given the turmoil on Turkey’s southern flanks he would hardly want otherwise. Yet while his investment and trade are contributing to healthier local economies, his authoritarianism is a risk for the region. He professes to support its EU aspirations, yet his engagement may do just the opposite.
Yigal Chazan is an associate at Alaco. Alaco Dispatches is the business intelligence consultancy’s take on events and developments shaping the CIS region.
Putin and Erdogan reset bilateral relations after the huge row over Turkey's 2015 shooting down of a Russian fighter. Might they now take that relationship one step further, leading to Turkey exiting Nato?
relations with Western powers have been decaying for years. Now they are approaching breaking point.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had his issues with Russia, which imposed painful economic sanctions after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter-bomber over the Syrian-
“The recent announcement that Macedonia is to join the military bloc caused outrage in Moscow”
Turkish border in November 2016. But Moscow has been working hard to drive a wedge between the West and Ankara. US bullying since Donald Trump took office has gone up a notch and the thin-skinned Erdogan has not taken it at all well. In particular, Washington’s refusal to extradite Erdogan’s nemesis and Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen from his home
in Pennsylvania has been a major source of friction. Ankara’s