If Turkey leaves NATO, that would be a big change. Turkey has been in the pockets of Washington for a long time. If Washington was behind the coup, this probably has damaged the relationship permanently. Erdogan has very strong motives to realign with Russia despite the problems he had caused. The Russian government has a very strong interest to overlook Turkey’s past behavior and to befriend it, because it weakens NATO on Russia’s borders. There is a possibility, but I don’t know how quickly it happens and what Washington will try to do to retrieve the relationship. It will be some sort of a competition to establish relations with Turkey.
Category: Head Stories
Will Hungary be the next nation to exit the dysfunctional European Union? The question isn’t at all as far-fetched as it might seem. On October 2, voters in Hungary will participate in a nationwide referendum to vote whether they agree to the forced settlement of migrants in Hungary by the EU or not. It’s a major issue in Hungary, a land of proud and staunchly independent-minded people who have endured 150 years of Ottoman rule; wars with Habsburg Austria until the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 created a peaceful coexistence under the dual Monarchy of Austria–Hungary.
Six Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers have hit Islamic State positions outside the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, destroying command centers, ammunition depots, and numerous tanks, while decimating the terrorists’ manpower, the Defense Ministry said. “[The bombers] which took off from a Russian air base have conducted a concentrated airstrike with high-explosive munitions on IS in areas located southwest, east, and northeast of the city of Deir ez-Zor,” the ministry’s Sunday statement said. The airstrike destroyed two Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) command centers, six large ammunition depots, two tanks, four infantry fighting vehicles, seven SUVs with mounted machine guns, and also decimated the terrorist group’s manpower.
The new Cold War is more dangerous for a second reason. … The Cold War began during the Truman administration and lasted through the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations and was ended in Reagan’s second term when Reagan and Gorbachev came to an agreement that the conflict was dangerous, expensive, and pointless. The Cold War did not cease for long—only from the last of Reagan’s second term and the four years of George H. W. Bush’s term. In the 1990s President Clinton restarted the Cold War by breaking America’s promise not to expend NATO into Eastern Europe. George W. Bush heated up the renewed Cold War by pulling the US out of the Anti-ABM Treaty, and Obama has made the war hotter with irresponsible rhetoric and by placing US missiles on Russia’s border and overthrowing the Ukrainian government.
The Bloomberg news agency has named a number of European countries that its experts believe may soon turn into hotbeds of instability. These include Germany, Spain, Austria and the Netherlands. Great Britain, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Romania, Croatia and Hungary can also be included for their part in furthering the region’s instability. The news agency links any possible unrest to the forthcoming parliamentary, presidential and local elections in these countries, as well as the forthcoming referendums. According to Bloomberg experts, the state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin on 4 and 18 September, in which the opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD) may be successful, will determine what the political landscape will be as Germany nears the Bundestag elections in autumn 2017.
“Turkey is slowly leaving the Atlantic system. That is the reason behind this coup. That is the reason why NATO is panicking. This is much broader and much bigger than Erdogan. This is a tectonic movement. This will affect Turkish-Syrian relations, Turkish-Chinese relations, Turkish-Russian relations and Turkish-Iranian relations. This will change the world.” — Yunus Soner, Deputy Chairman Turkish Patriotic Party“It is becoming clear that the attempted putsch was not just the work of a small clique of dissatisfied officers inside the armed forces; it was rather the product of a vast conspiracy to take over the Turkish state that was decades in the making and might well have succeeded.” — Patrick Cockburn, CounterPunch On August 9, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg The two leaders will discuss political developments following the recent coup-attempt in Turkey, tourism, and the launching of Turkstream, the natural gas pipeline that will transform Turkey into southern Europe’s biggest energy hub.. They are also expected to explore options for ending the fighting in Syria.
Theories and speculations about the failed military coup in Turkey abound, ranging from a botched CIA coup; to one inspired by Erdogan’s arch-enemy, the self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, now living in Pennsylvania, USA; to a combination of both, CIA-Gulen; to a purposely failed auto-coup by Erdogan and his close military allies – and possibly many more, or combinations of different conspiracies. – The old question Cui Bono is in order. As of now, Erdogan looks like the big winner. He has regained popular support, was able to accuse his ultra-rich preacher enemy, Gulen, as well as Washington as the coup instigators, and he can pursue his new alliance with Russia and renewed friendship with Bashar al-Assad.
The US air strikes on Libya this week mark a major escalation of American overseas military operations. A Pentagon spokesman said,the air campaign would continue indefinitely in support of the UN-backed unity government in Tripoli against Islamic State (IS) jihadists. It was the first “sustained” aerial intervention in Libya since 2011 when US and other NATO warplanes conducted a seven-month bombing campaign in order to oust the government of Muammar Gaddafi. The timing of the latest US air strikes on the Libyan port city of Sirte seems significant. For nearly two months, the Tripoli-based government has been making inroads against the IS brigades in Sirte. So why should US air strikes be called in at this precise juncture?
The undercurrents of the coup flow directly from Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil enterprise, currently under fire after Operation Car Wash unearthed several massive corruption scandals in 2014, and multi-partisan thievery saw Rousseff inherit the company’s $130 billion debt. Fortunately, to protect the country’s national currency, the Brazilian real, Petrobras cleverly retained its debt in US dollars for easy convertibility into bonds, while maintaining revenue in reals. “[…] 80 percent of the company’s debts are dollar-denominated, but much of its revenue comes from domestic fuel sales in reals”, an Energy Fuse article stated. Unfortunately, last year the dollar strengthened and fluctuated, which inflamed the nation’s debt burden. “Inflated by a stronger dollar, Petrobras’ gross debt swelled to 799.25 billion reals [$223 billion] at the end of 2015 […] even as the company slashed investment spending and spent the last six months of the year trying – with limited success – to sell off assets,” MarketWatch states. A combination of weakening exchange rates, high global oil supply, and falling domestic demand, did little to stop Petrobras’s hemorrhaging revenues amidst the corruption scandal.
What “Drill, Baby, Drill” Means in the South China Sea There is a blue hole in the South China Sea. Longdong («Dragon Hole») is an astonishing 300,89 meters deep, in deep blue waters around Yongle, a major coral reef in the Paracel islands (or Xisha, in their Chinese denomination). Cynics may argue that after the recent ruling in The Hague largely against China’s «nine-dash line», the whole South China Sea would be more like a black – not blue – geopolitical hole, where serious turbulence is all but inevitable. I have examined before how the South China Sea’s history is now colliding with imperatives derived from the Westphalian system, and how the US’s «pivot to Asia» is accelerating conflict.