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proposition could be something like “Erdogan, indulged and built by the West, has abandoned Turkey. But Turkish citizens have no way of wishing him good riddance”. And, “the West” as referred to in the latter argument, refers to the times when a real sturdy alliance taking that name existed and was bombing Iraq and Syria.
Never stale. The age-old stories of Third World dictators being established but later bombed by the West never go stale. Nor do the tales of Western support for ‘just’ military coups hailed as delivering democracies (with the definition kept deliberately loose). So there’s no need to spend any more time on who constructed Erdogan and who still finances him—but the Bloomberg Editorial Board’s perspective shows that plentiful folk in the West still have no appetite for facing up to what’s really going on. “For the past few years, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has railed ever more belligerently against the U.S., Europe and NATO, Washington’s foreign-policy establishment has argued for patience. Erdogan’s fusillades, mostly intended for domestic consumption, were thought to be a small inconvenience—certainly not enough for the West to abandon Turkey,” Bloomberg Editors also wrote. According to said editors, there is a “foreign-policy establishment in Washington” and they also “think”. If the establishment in question had spent a little more time on “understanding” before “thinking”, they may have become aware why yelling at the US sells. Unlike the Western media and the purported Washington establishment, Erdogan is aware that “the West” has collapsed and he has built his very own banana republic thanks to its incomprehension and ongoing financing.
No idea? Bloomberg Editors have also written a series of pieces advising the EU, the US and Nato on how to deal with Erdogan. But let’s just be a little bit more honest here. Let’s not fool people. "The West" either wants a tinpot dictator in Turkey or it has no idea about what it has done since the beginning of the 2000s. Erdogan’s share in Germany’s total arms exports jumped to 60% in January-April from one-third last year with deliveries this year mainly comprising of maritime goods, including six submarines. And German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen was this week elected as the President of the European Council. Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of Nato, reiterated on July 18 that Turkey remains an important ally, Bloomberg reported, as Trump groused about no longer being able to sell Erdogan billions of dollars of F-35 fighter jets because he’d crossed the Rubicon in buying Russian S-400 missile defence systems.
Attempting to squeeze more out of the distraction, Erdogan said that the S- 400 deliveries would be completed by April 2020.
All in all, Erdogan is still able to keep the markets and "the West" under control but the ongoing wretched deterioration in the Turkish real economy does keep digging his prospective grave at home. His continuous efforts to buy time on all fronts fuel rumours that he is getting ready for snap elections. But attributing some certain meaning to Erdogan’s actions usually ends up as a desperate folly, with the Istanbul revote fiasco that put egg all over his face, despite grim warnings that he would certainly steal the vote, a prize example of that perilous pursuit. Erdogan does what he knows, or perhaps, we should say, what he can, and there’s truly nothing left to control him. Whether he will trip over himself and meet a sorry end is really the only question.
Meanwhile, the economic storm clouds that could trigger a fateful action once more gather over Turkey. Officials only have enough ammunition and devilish schemes to hold off economic realities for so long. There is no rigid forecast discussed on the markets at the moment but many who foresee an upcoming collapse talk of September. But this is the Turkish darkness we’re talking about. There’s no guarantee it won’t happen tomorrow.
9 TURKEY Country Report August 2019 www.intellinews.com