Turkish Elections

Turks will be going to the polls this weekend, in an election that is likely to determine the future of their country, and have major consequences for US foreign relations.  Recip Tayip Erdogan, who has become increasingly Putinesque over the past decade, is hoping to win a 60% majority in Parliament, enabling him to change the Turkish constitution and solidify his power.

As a NATO member, Turkey is a vital participant in US Middle East operations.  The US looks to Turkey as a partner in its struggle against ISIS (aka etc. etc.), but that partnership has not been what the US might have expected before Ergogan's Islamist party came to power.  It well may be that Erdogan feels more comfortable with ISIS across the border than the Kurds, and his participation in the war against ISIS has been sorely lacking.

As Iraq fragments into Shi'a, Sunni, and Kurdish sectors, and the likelihood that the Kurds finally will achieve the Kurdish homeland they have aspired to for at least the past century, Erdogan feels increasingly threatened by the PKK and other Kurdish nationalists in Turkey.  Personally, I believe that the Kurds deserve a homeland, including Kurdish Iraq, Kurdish Syria and, ideally, Kurdish Turkey as well.  It is understandable that the Turks are unwilling to see a significant chunk of their country pulled away to become part of greater Kurdistan, but tacit support for ISIS by the Erdogan government can only help to further exacerbate conflict in the Middle East.

It also is in the best interest of the US for the secularists who led Turkey since the days of Ataturk maintain essential political influence.  If the current election gives Erdogan the ability to aggrandize his increasingly autocratic power, we all are losers.

..........
Later:
Great news!  Not only did Erdogan not make his 60%, he lost his parliamentary majority!  Better yet, the biggest gains were by the pro-Kurdish HDP (People's Democratic Party), which made significant outreach to secularists, gays, women, and others not comfortable with Islamism.  Hooray!

Yemen

Is the enemy of my enemy, etc. etc... ?  Apparently not.

We have heard Yemen described as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and I suppose that's accurate enough a description.  We've also heard it described as an outgrowth of the classic Middle Eastern conflict between Sunni and Shi'a Islam.  That, I'm pretty sure, it is not.

The Houthi are adherents of the Zaydi sect, which is an offshoot of Shi'a Islam, but not nearly orthodox enough to satisfy the clerics who hold power in Iran.  Iranian Muslims supporting the Houthi because they're, sort of, Shiite, would be kind of like the Roman Catholic Church supporting Seventh Day Adventists because they're sort of...  well, you get it.

Move over to Iraq, and you find Sunni clients of the USofA fighting the Sunni zealots of Daesh, aka all those other names and acronyms tirelessly repeated in the American press.  Why are Sunni fighting Sunni?  Not because IS (aka etc. etc.) is especially naughty what with the beheadings and whatnot.  No, it's all about the usual, just as it was from the time of the Cheney invasions or even the CIA's 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected Mosaddegh government in Iran and installation of the Shah.

It's about the oil.

That's why Saleh could be fighting the Houthi one minute and supporting them the next.  That's why the Egyptian military, an equal opportunity oppressor of Islamists no matter what branch of Islam they spring from, is out there trying to restore Hadi to power.  That's why Americans, even some in government, are having such a hard time figuring out how and why anybody is putatively allied with anybody out there around the Persian Gulf.

Don't be confused.  Just follow the money.  Follow the oil.

World Tour

Ukraine
It's getting to look a lot like a Russian win in Ukraine.  The most recent "cease-fire" never even got started, much less held.  There are those in Congress calling for the USofA to arm the Poroshenko Ukrainians, but that would do nothing to end the conflict or bolster the Poroshenko government — all it would do is confirm Putin's narrative that Russia is in conflict with an aggressive West led by the usual enemy (us).  The only remaining sanction that might make a difference is to deny Russian banks access to SWIFT, but that's something of a "nuclear option," and the USofA cannot do it unilaterally.

Libya
It's a mess, best avoided if at all possible, bearing in mind that just because some bunch of international criminals say they're part of Islamic State doesn't mean there's any real coordination.  If the Egyptians want to screw around there, let them, unaided by the USofA.  It's their border, and their citizens, not ours — and we always can be counted on to make things worse.

Nigeria
While the Goodluck Jonathan government is too corrupt and inept to stop Boku Haram, no likely alternatives have presented themselves.  Chad, we're told, is making some progress, and Niger and Cameroon are stirring, but only time will tell.  As long as oil prices remain low, nobody in the West will be bothered to do anything about Africa.

Israel and Iran
Netanyahu continues to agitate for a US military attack on Iran, but even American Jews are starting to have serious doubts about the sanity of Likud policies.  Hopefully, the era of knee-jerk Congressional obedience to AIPAC is ending.  Working cooperatively with Iran should not be any more difficult that working cooperatively with Saudi Arabia or, say, Turkey.  Face it, we don't give a shit about spreading democracy.

Argentina
Let's just hope Cristina Fernandez de Kirshner's government can hold it together.  The bourgeoisie are wavering, but she still has the support of the working classes, and our State Department already is overstretched.  Yes, we're all curious to know who killed the special prosecutor, but we don't need another crisis in Latin America.

Syria and Iraq
If Obama prefers not to use the modifier "Islamic" when referring to Islamic extremists, I suggest he just refer to them as "those shitheads."  Throughout history, various groups have used religion to justify all kinds of awful behaviors, and will continue to do so.  Come to think of it, "those religious shitheads" just may be more to the point.

Just who the hell IS "Charlie?"

Cries of "Je suis Charlie" are echoing across the world, and a million extra issues of what is likely to be the magazine's final issue are being printed.  It took twelve deaths, but Charlie Hebdo suddenly is popular.  A month ago, they were suffering the common fate of the world's print media, and begging their small number of subscribers for contributions so they could stay in business a while longer.

Well, I guess they found the formula — the same formula used by their fundamentalist antagonists.  It seems all they needed were some martyrs.  Now they have them, and the world is paying attention.  Too bad it took a dozen deaths to draw attention to some studiously offensive cartoons, but that's life in the twenty-first century.

Egypt

Egypt is a mess, but what should the USofA do about it?

A better question would be, what can the USofA do about it?

I suspect the answer to both questions is, nothing.  I suppose we could, shall we say, postpone our planned joint military exercises with the Egyptian army.  We could call a coup a coup, and discontinue military aid.  Whatever we do, though, we lose.

There is a perception in the Muslim world that the USofA might even have had a hand in instigating the coup, and who knows? — that perception might be right.  It's always been easier for us to deal with autocrats and military dictatorships than with the messiness of emerging democracies.  Kings and Shahs and Generalissimos are better for business.

Anyway, I'm sure we'll "support" whoever comes out on top, although it's likely to take a while before we find out just who that will be.