Briefly Noted: First Takes From Turkish Election; Ukraine Off-Ramps Under Discussion

Erdogan ended up winning the runoff for the Turkish presidential election handily, easily defeating the US/NATO candidate—after barely missing an outright win in the first round. Which raises the question: What accounted for that near miss in the first go round?

I won’t pretend to have any deep knowledge of Turkish politics. However, the answer, as previously noted, is clear enough. Sinan Oğan, the candidate of the “ultra-nationalist” Ancestral Alliance, won just over 5% percent of the vote. While it’s true that Oğan was never going to support Erdogan’s main opposition (the National Alliance) because of its appeal to Kurds, it remains that that 5% probably pointed toward deeper dissatisfaction with Erdogan. That was also reflected in pre-election polling. The fact that Erdogan received a surge of support to get to just over 49% in the first round probably says more about ethnic Turkish voters drawing back from the National Alliance than about stronger support for Erdogan. Again—that 5% of the electorate remained symptomatic of dissatisfaction and was a warning signal to Erdogan that his support wasn’t as strong as before.

The standard narrative was that the main issue in the election was the unsatisfactory response by the Erdogan government to the earthquake disaster along the Syrian border. However, my guess is that the support that went to the nationalists was also an indication of dissatisfaction with Erdogan’s Syria policy, which brought a flood of unwelcome Arab refugees into Turkey. Erdogan had hoped to make territorial gains in border areas by cooperating with the Neocon regime change move against Syria’s Assad government, but his plans backfired in a big way. For that reason I take the 5% vote for Oğan as representings, as well, a more generalized anti-Western attitude. Interestingly, if you follow the link to Oğan’s page, you’ll find that he received a PhD from Russia’s top diplomatic school.

While that’s all somewhat speculative on my part, the news today does appear to strongly suggest that, in the wake of the election, Erdogan is taking a more confrontational attitude toward his NATO partners. The question is, Is this part of a negotiating scheme, typical of Erdogan’s modus operandi in the past, or does it reflect a more basic shift dictated by electoral politics—and possibly part of a deal for Oğan’s support in the runoff (both denied, for the record, that there had been any “deal”). Does this also reflect Turkish anger at transparent NATO meddling in the Turkish election?

Here’s what’s going on:

War Monitor

@WarMonitors

Norway Foreign Minister: Sweden must become a fully-fledged NATO member as soon as possible and before Vilnius summit

7:51 AM · May 31, 2023

Well, that can’t happen without Turkey’s support—which doesn’t appear to be forthcoming:

Dagny Taggart

@DagnyTaggart963

Trying to interfere in elections come with consequences: The Turkish Foreign Minister will not come to a meeting with NATO colleagues in Oslo, where it was planned to discuss the admission of Sweden to the alliance, the Norwegian Foreign Minister.

11:16 AM · May 31, 2023

Furthermore, Turkey is also refusing to take part in a more general Russia-bashing conference in Moldova:

Trollstoy

@Trollstoy88

President of Turkey, Erdogan refuses to participate in the European summit in Chishinau – Politico

10:08 AM · May 31, 2023

Meanwhile, the big issue facing Erdogan is finding an off ramp from Turkey’s involvement in Syria. Turkey and Syria will be meeting to try to work that out in Moscow. Erdogan, it is said, stipulated that Iran should not be present. From one standpoint this is typical of Erdogan’s foreign policy which emphasizes Turkey’s independence. On the other hand it may also reflect Erdogan trying to tread a fine line amid the shifting geopolitics of the Middle East, mending fences with the new Arab alignments. That process is certainly not finished.

While Erdogan navigates a complicated geopolitical course between NATO and Russia and the Middle East, DC insiders are debating off ramps from the Ukraine disaster. That’s the theme of a video at The Duran today. This is a 34 minute video that I’ve cued up at the 25:30 mark—so, more or less 9 minutes from the end. I found it to be the most compelling part.

We start with Alexander Mercouris pointing to the fundamental dilemma facing the collective West, but especially the Neocons. In the earlier part of the video the two Duran guys have discussed the “darkening mood” in the West, as the West has come to the realization that their excellent Ukraine/Russia adventure is turning into a globalist catastrophe. The also reviewed the various proposals for a “frozen conflict” with a DMZ—which they both agree Russia will reject. Russia, after all, is on track for victory. Why would they screw things up by agreeing to lose?

That puts the West behind the eight ball. Russia has made it perfectly clear that what they want, ideally, is a total revamping of the security architecture of the West with Russia. That is unacceptable to the US. So the dilemma facing the West becomes, How to avoid that? Mercouris is clear that the solution is to end this war sooner rather than later, even if that means dumping Zhou. The hegemony of a US led NATO over Europe takes precedence over all other considerations for the Deep State. If Zhou and his Neocon handlers attempt to somehow keep the war going through 2024, Mercouris is of the view that the Deep State may start looking very seriously for a way to pull the plug—on Ukraine and on Zhou if necessary. There are already signs of a split developing over these issues in the White House. Mercouris sees the Deep State attitude as this: Better for Ukraine to go down to total, abject defeat—which the West agrees could happen in a matter of days if NATO support were withdrawn—than for Russia and China force a new security architecture on US led NATO.

Alex Christoforou has been thinking this over and has a solution—beginning at 28:50. What he thinks would be the clever solution would be to simply pull another Afghanistan. Tell the Ukrainians to do a deal with Russia on their own and, if they’re unwilling, simply kiss them off. Put up with a week of criticism, do a few softball interviews, but the American people won’t really care because most of them still wouldn’t be able to find Ukraine on a map. Sure, the Euros will be unhappy, they’ll know they’ve been betrayed—but so what? What options would they have, except to come crawling back to the Imperial City on the Potomac and its Deep State oligarchy? For the US, Nordstream is destroyed, Germany is being deindustrialized and forced to relocate its industries to the US, NATO still exists, the American public will forget it all, everything is fine. The key is to make a quick, clean break.

I can see the strength of that argument, but I’m not convinced. There are areas of Europe who might see their future in doing a deal with Russia and leaving NATO. Hungary, Bulgaria, and Greece come to mind. Serbia would be in the wings, and possibly Croatia. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but I can see advantages for many countries in mending fences with Russia and the emerging Eurasian bloc. Eastern and Central Europe will soon learn that the Western countries aren’t really interested in them. We shall see.