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The Middle East - bOUTeflika
[Tycho?]![[Tycho?]](https://us.v-cdn.net/5018289/uploads/userpics/934/nHG8VEMRTY5QM.gif)
As elusive as doubtRegistered User regular
As elusive as doubtRegistered User regular
Welcome back to the Middle East Thread, 8th edition.
Previous thread.
This is a quickie, I had intended to pass on the duty of the OP, but the thread is moving so quickly that didn't happen.
Here's a map of the places we talk about in this thread:
Trump campaigned on a platform of non-intervention, of not calling for Assad's ouster, and of not butting heads with Russia abroad.
Well, that didn't last long!
The Trump administration has already launched an airstrike openly targeting Syrian government forces. This had not been (openly/intentionally) done under Obama, even after his infamous "red line" statement.
What does it mean? Nobody knows! Except that the ever complicated Middle East just got a new fun layer of complexity for the bright men of Washington to deal with.
Other issues of the day:
Erdogan of Turkey just got himself massive new powers.
The Saudi-led war in Yemen continues to be brutal and mostly ignored.
Afghanistan is set for a busy fighting season, watch to see if Trump gets more involved here too.
IS is on the ropes. Mosul in Iraq has been surrounded and is falling block by block.
Raqqa in Syria is a few more SDF pincer movements away from being surrounded as well.
The aftermath of IS will be at least as complicated, and maybe deadly, as their rule. It will take a lot of careful diplomacy and management to keep anything together. This is my vote for the most important ME issue of the next few years.
Rouhani of Iran is up for election this summer. The nuclear deal, and much else, hinges on the result.
Libya is broken, and still receives US airstrikes fairly regularly.
Some more US special forces have been around Somalia lately.
Egypt continues to ineffectually fight IS in the Sinai, while suffering (especially its Copts) periodic bombings.
Plus the refugee issue remains unsolved, with thousands still making the crossing in the Med.
And that doesn't even mention Israel/Palestine! Whew.
Constantly updated map of Syria and Iraq:
https://syria.liveuamap.com/
Previous thread.
This is a quickie, I had intended to pass on the duty of the OP, but the thread is moving so quickly that didn't happen.
Here's a map of the places we talk about in this thread:
Trump campaigned on a platform of non-intervention, of not calling for Assad's ouster, and of not butting heads with Russia abroad.
Well, that didn't last long!
The Trump administration has already launched an airstrike openly targeting Syrian government forces. This had not been (openly/intentionally) done under Obama, even after his infamous "red line" statement.
What does it mean? Nobody knows! Except that the ever complicated Middle East just got a new fun layer of complexity for the bright men of Washington to deal with.
Other issues of the day:
Erdogan of Turkey just got himself massive new powers.
The Saudi-led war in Yemen continues to be brutal and mostly ignored.
Afghanistan is set for a busy fighting season, watch to see if Trump gets more involved here too.
IS is on the ropes. Mosul in Iraq has been surrounded and is falling block by block.
Raqqa in Syria is a few more SDF pincer movements away from being surrounded as well.
The aftermath of IS will be at least as complicated, and maybe deadly, as their rule. It will take a lot of careful diplomacy and management to keep anything together. This is my vote for the most important ME issue of the next few years.
Rouhani of Iran is up for election this summer. The nuclear deal, and much else, hinges on the result.
Libya is broken, and still receives US airstrikes fairly regularly.
Some more US special forces have been around Somalia lately.
Egypt continues to ineffectually fight IS in the Sinai, while suffering (especially its Copts) periodic bombings.
Plus the refugee issue remains unsolved, with thousands still making the crossing in the Med.
And that doesn't even mention Israel/Palestine! Whew.
Constantly updated map of Syria and Iraq:
https://syria.liveuamap.com/
Elki on
+3
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
I wonder what caused that change in policy? :rotate:
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Not good, but here's some quick points:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39617700
Turkey has... well, used to have, a parliamentary system more like the UK. The PM has the most power, but is held directly accountable through parliamentary votes. A presidential system means straight up more power for Erdogan.
It's a big deal for Turkey, because it will apply to everyone after Erdogan as well. The man in the top seat becomes even more important, and being able to mess with the courts legally makes the president difficult to restrain.
I'll watch out for a better analysis.
Well, given that Erdogan just pulled a Putin, there may not be a "everyone after Erdogan"....
Annnnnd here we are. It's not even a question what is happening anymore and, if the oath the Turkish military swears to is still a thing, they need to try again. Only in a more united sense rather than a minority effort.
Since long before then.
The term limits will almost certainly be either abolished by 10 years or a new Supreme leader type "advisory" position will be created for Erdogan.
And still Erdogan/AKP just barely managed a simple majority. Either they severely overestimated their popularity, or they're just bad at bullying/manipulating elections.
Imagine if the election had been guaranteed to not have any meddling.
Now let me see if I can find one with Erdogans face edited in...
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Will this whole thing end out leaving the nation a puppet?
I find foreign politics kind of out of grasp most of the time because there are all sorts of cultural influences I can't understand or relate to. This seems bad, though.
Part of the treaty is that the EU will "accelerate" the process of EU membership.
This means that if the EU cuts the membership off, he can easily blow the refugee treaty up and blame the EU.
Those two are now entangled.
Erdogans way of doing business is simply not EU compatible. Turkey membership in the EU isn't happening as long as Erdogan is in power.
The only upside is that this generation of Turkey gets a real taste of the Caucasus/Middle-East brand "presidential" authoritarianism. I hope it doesn't appeal to them.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Not that it matters too much since Erdogan is going to use his new superpowers to hunt/torture/kill anybody that dared to oppose him, so expect A LOT more reports of human rights violations.
It's always sunny in Tropico Turkey!
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Yeah. For a long time Turkey has been keen on jailing journalists. This increased hugely since the coup, and these powers will only increase it further.
Does this realignment cause any issues with NATO membership?
I don't get to say this that often: fixed that for you.
I could say in a sing-song voice, "One of these men dissolved parliament and made himself Defense Minister, one of these men didn't," but aside from my own field of study, it speaks to something that I think we'll need to look at: the future of the AKP, versus Pres. Erdogan's tendency to portray himself (or at least attempt to) as "an above-politics independent"--someone correct me if this is incorrect in his national persona. B. Yeltsin did the same thing as an "independent", though to a large part that came from the banning of the largest political party in the country, and the very visible if intermittent persecution of its successor--the party that replaced him was a a formal organization, very much a centrist institution, that was focused on the maintenance of power rather than a specific hard-line ideological commitment, which you can translate publicly towards "being above it".
Obviously, Turkey is not Russia, but I for one will be very interested to see how AKP gradually evolves with whomever becomes Erdogan's successor: they have framed themselves as not strictly left or right, which was part of their success, though in practical terms there has obviously been a shift from centre-right to right-wing (though not with the usual arms-locked-march with its counterpart in the military--which isn't to say AKP wasn't close to the military, they just don't seem closer to the institution at large outside of their own effective purges). As I understand it, no small part of the AKP's religious positions came from its merger with the outright religious short-lived People's Voice/Purity Party.
I'm also one of those people who loves studying on the minutia of party manifestos and declarations, and the responses from their rivals. To others this could easily be boring shit window dressing, I'll admit.
It's worth remembering Turkey has been doing this a lot--they were doing it in the 1950s and 1960s too, amid their integration into NATO, for violating that country's censorship laws (criticizing NATO, criticizing Ankara, criticizing anti-communist campaigns, the usual). Then again, who wasn't in the 1950s?
Oh come on. RIGHT NOW Erdogan clearly just pulled a Putin, going from PM to President and then inverting the roles of the two positions. :mad:
I see. I meant the the deliberate concentration of executive powers an power vacuum, not to occupancy of two positions, re: Tycho's point. Boris Yeltsin did far more to increase the power of the presidency under the aegis of of "independent politics", than Vladimir Putin (or Dmitry Medvedev) have, especially in formal terms. Though--and this is the sort of thing that would be perfect for a joke in Archer--did you know Boris Yeltsin actually did this too?
I'm not making this up: Boris Yeltsin was the final chair of the council of ministers of the government of the Russian SFSR and before that he was the second to last chairman of the presidium of the Russian SFSR's Supreme Soviet. So, in effect, Mr. Yeltsin went from being prime minister of Soviet Russia directly to being president of Soviet Russia before he became President of the Russian Federation. So, Yeltsin literally did it first (and everyone kind of forgot).
(Now you can see what I mean by "Archer joke.")
Last distraction: Serbia's Aleksandar Vucic just went from PM to president too.
They are also reporting an emergency law extension for 3 months has been signed by Turkish cabinet and sent to parliament. Are they going to bother making it permanent at some point?
It's...an interesting theory. I'm skeptical because it's not hard to remember when the hope was to drag Moscow loudly, publicly into a fiery hell along with Damascus, and when the White House was bragging as much--and I'm convinced Washington has a high level of inertia. But it makes many compelling points.
Not the same thing. In Russia, the president has all the power (and has had the power since before Putin first became president in the 90s). There are no overall term limits, but they are limited to two consecutive terms. After serving two years as president, Putin switched over to prime minister (following all the rules of the constitution), and Medvedev took over as president--but because Putin is the de facto head of Medvedev's party, he was a kind of toothless president. And after serving his term as PM, the constitutional term limit ended, so Putin was able to switch back to his position as president. Compare the US situation of Trump promising hypothetical Vice President Kasich could be the real president. In that case, the president (Trump) still technically has power, there are no changes to the law, but they're just rubber stamping everything the VP/PM passes their way. In 2024, presumably Putin will switch back to being PM (assuming he's still alive and has the same level of power as he does not).
What Erdoğan is doing is different. He's actually changing the office to suit his needs. Unlike Putin, he's not adapting to the (current) letter of the law.
Erdogan has essentially made it into calvinball, giving himself dictatorial powers. Sure there are term limits now, but he's already established those can be removed at any time by a simple referendum which may not need to be overwhelming in support or particularly fair. And even if he abides by them, what about the next guy or the guy after that? You have established a precedence where all it takes is someone having a 50%+1 approval rating at some point and they can make themselves dictator for life.
Another thing unmentioned is voter supression/intimidation. You think is bad on the American South? Hah! Getting on the way of the 50%+1 approval rating of President for Life, with the full might of the State on his side, means that you can lose goverment benefits, go to jail, tortured or even get killed.
Turkey referendum: 2.5 million votes may have been manipulated
The opposition has filed a complaint with the election board.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2016/10/the_yemen_conflict_is_not_just_a_proxy_war.html
https://warontherocks.com/2017/04/yemen-the-graveyard-of-u-s-policy-myths/
(I'm really not a WotR shill. I was just reading it today and they had that piece up about Yemen with good links in it and all.)
This is the second time I've read of IS using mustard gas in Iraq, but it's still surreal for me. Mustard gas was always in the "ancient history" part of my brain until IS started using it.
It was pretty big during the Iran-Iraq war.
I thought everyone was ok with Turkey joining NATO pre-Erdogan, and NATO may be a factor in reigning in their bad impulses. Of course this was thrown out for he window when Erdogan took over and has been playing the dictator playbook ever since.