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Turkey's relations with Turkmen in northern Syria, and opposition to the bombing of this part of Syria by Russian planes is cited as the reason for Turkey shooting down a Russian warplane in November 2015. Prime minister Erdogan stated this by saying: "we strongly condemn attacks focusing on areas inhabited by Bayibucak Turkmen- we have our relatives, our kin there." Following the incident Turkey provided media with footage showing 10 repeated warnings in the space of 5 minutes to the two Russian planes before Turkish F-16's shot down the Russian plane. The area where the plane was shot down is a small part of Turkey that juts into Syria. This part of Turkey is called the Hatay province, with Turkmen in Hatay forming a republic in 1938 breaking away from the French mandate over Syria set up following the first world war. The following year it joined Turkey. Parts of the Turkmen in Hatay are still in Syria and this is the region Russia began bombing 2 months ago, with Turkey opposing the bombing. Russian president Putin's claim that this is part of the bombing of Islamic State positions is refuted by Turkey's prime minister Davotoglu, who says "No one can legitimize attacks on Turkmens in Syria using the pretext of fighting the Islamic State." ...

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This letter in the WSJ praises Chancellor Angela Merkel for her sense of decency and humanitarian sensibility. It asks what else could she have done in the refugee crisis. It says Merkel's "we can do it," is also the same spirit Germany showed for successful reunification of the country.

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One of the problems facing the Republican People's Party, the CHP, is how to connect with religious voters. CHP is the party that is most closely associated with modern Turkey's founder, Kemal Ataturk. CHP was the main party in Turkey till the recent dominance of the AKP Party in elections. AKP drew support from the more religious and rural population in the parts of Turkey outside cities such as Ankara and Istanbul. CHP rarely identified itself with street protest and remained aloof from ordinary people making it hard for it to contest elections against the AKP - winning Ankara and Istanbul but losing the elections in the last decade. The AKP also allied itself with Turkey's Ottoman heritage and appealed to nationalist sentiment against a conservative aloof CHP leading to a split in Turkey between the secular urban and the religious minded more rural people. CHP also did not work with minorities such as the Kurds to build a broader coalition. This is changing with the march from Ankara to Istanbul led by CHP leader Kilicdaroglu. The march came after the justice system appeared to be allied with president Erdogan, and a 25 year sentence was given to one of Kilicdaroglu's deputies. Erdogan now appoints the judges in the judiciary and the crackdown on the opposition since the failed coup of 2016, has led to a sense that Turkey is now run as a one party state. An estimated 1.5 million Turks participated in the rally in Istanbul, according to DW, showing that the opposition is forming to the arbitrary rule since the emergency powers assumed by the president. For the last decade Erdogan and the AKP Party formed the government. What changed since 2016 is the new constitution that gives new powers to the president and the arbitrary rule since the crackdown on the opposition that intensified after 2014, and which has increased since the failed coup in 2016.  ...

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Pierre Razoux, a French historian provides this account of the Iran-Iraq war that lasted from 1980 to 1988, at a cost of 680,000 people killed and $1.1 trillion in war destruction and money diverted from the economy. In 1980 Saddam Hussein of Iraq launched the war by attacking Iran which had just come under the Ayatollah Khomeini with the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979. The war dragged on for 8 years with Khomeini persisting in the war. With U.S. and Saudi policy to increase production bringing the price of oil down from $30 to $10 designed to bring Iran and Iraq to the peace talks, as well as the Soviet Union to withdraw from Afghanistan, all three being major oil producers. The dollar also weakened by 37% during this period. The diplomatic isolation of the Khomeini regime made it more difficult for Iran to buy arms on credit than Iraq could, leading to the war ending with Iran finding it no longer possible to continue the human losses. The Carter administration, particularly with National Security Advisor Brzezinski, tilted towards Iraq to oppose Soviets in Afghanistan, and the Saudis also supported Iraq during the early period. Under president Reagan the U.S. began covert and direct assistance to Iraq to prevent an Iraqi defeat early in the war. Rumsfeld visited Baghdad in December 1983 and March 1984 to organize the U.S. effort to oppose Iran. This may have laid the seeds for future conflicts that lasted through the administrations of the elder and junior Bush. As Razoux points out the Revolutionary Guards became entrenched from this period in Iran's history, making it difficult for election process to work or elected governments to operate. 23 months following the end of that war in 1988 Saddam Hussein launched a war on Kuwait, leading to the U.S. led Gulf war and the entry of the U.S. into a ground combat role, which was followed by the invasion of Iraq under George Bush after 9/11 attacks. The twin wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are estimated to have cost the U.S. over 1 trillion dollars. The result today is largely the division on the ground into Shia regions under the Revolutionary Guards and the Shiite government in Baghdad, and Sunni regions led by Islamic State and autonomous Iraqi Sunni tribes, ignoring the Iran-Iraq boundaries set in the colonial period by the French and the British. In all the amount spent in the Khomeini-Saddam war of $ 1 trillion being about $2 trillion in today's money, and the $1 trillion spent by the U.S., means about $3 trillion has gone into the wars in this region. This comes at a time of deficits in government budgets in the U.S. and a deep recession in the U.S. and Europe. It also explains why the U.S. public is reluctant to take even the minor action such as giving a standoff "no-fly zone" protection to the rebels in Syria, and supported the Obama administration in its reluctance to keep even the basic military force in place to protect its diplomatic mission in Libya, where the cost would be small relative to earlier enlarged military missions under the two elder and junior Bush administrations. The result is that refugees are pouring into Europe from Syria and Libya, through Turkey. Turkey itself is host to millions of refugees in camps along its border. The vacuum and the withdrawal of the Obama administration from the region has led to the rise of Islamic State with covert assistance from Sunni regimes in the region to counteract the growing influence of Shiite Iran. It also may explain the Iranian people's support for the nuclear weapons effort through years of sanctions, leading finally to an agreement with the Obama administration that relaxes sanctions in exchange for a future possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons. Lost in the conflict is the Arab Spring of 2012-2013, with the Tunisian democracy the only surviving result of that movement for democracy and awakening among Arab peoples. The Reagan administration in its aggressive anti-Soviet position made large errors- including ignoring human rights abuses and use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war, by supporting Iraq and reversing position after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, having a disastrous effect on the entire region decades later. Much of the Obama administration's reluctance for any action may stem from the U.S. role in this period and its consequences of protracted conflict. ...

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A whole range of issues can be seen in the debt crises in developing countries. The margin for error shrinks with poor governance, lack of honest assessment and transparency for finances, wars and conflicts within or outside the countries, living beyond their means, lack of focus on development, infrastructure that is unproductive or unaffordable including some Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure at higher interest rates. Countries that are dependent on overseas remittances, tourism, that were hit hard by the pandemic have seen their finances further weakened reducing the margin for error even more to the point that the smallest tipping point can lead to huge crises. Once the finances are weak all it takes is an external tipping point that creates serious crisis. The war in Ukraine with shortages of wheat, fertilizer and skyrocketing oil prices acted as that tipping point. Because this was a major blow the crises have a level of magnitude that is more than a payments crisis. One sees this in South Asia in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and in the Middle East for countries such as Egypt and Tunisia shown in this WSJ report. It is now not simply a crisis but a crisis of great magnitude because in the case of Sri Lanka and Pakistan this WSJ report says that both countries foreign exchange reserves have dwindled to the point where they can pay for only one or two months of imports according to central bank data, analysts and IMF. This crisis has affected countries that were seeing steady foreign investment such as Turkey for decades, then a sharp falloff in foreign investment with a change in the climate for foreign investment. The crisis has taken the form of high inflation, significant depreciation of currency that makes imports costlier so that shrinking revenues from loss of remittances, tourism, or other sources will now have less value in supporting import needs. Lack of a credible path can delay setting a path out of the crisis. The $1.5 billion fuel and electricity subsidy made by the prime minister of Pakistan in late February was done without IMF approval leading to the IMF program having to be renegotiated. Lack of national political and cultural consensus on a solution simply makes it that much more difficult to find the way through it. In this regard South Korea was able to tackle the 1997 financial payments crisis effectively because of a national consensus. The situation in Egypt- Egypt has borrowed $20 billion from the IMF since 2016., placing it second to Argentina in aid from IMF since 1980's.  In 2020 and 2021 Egypt' government spent more than 40% of its revenue servicing its debt, and is forecast to do the same in 2022. The situation in Tunisia- A shortage of sugar, flour, and other critical supplies, and government delaying wage payments to civil servants. The government got $400 million in financing last month from the World Bank and hopes to secure a lifeline from the IMF. Compared to the period between the 2 World Wars the two bright spots are China and India where lessons of the past of civil wars, religious or political conflict, and poor governance, lack of knowledge of how the western countries industrialized and modernized, was replaced with the conviction that drives patient effort, courage in the face of adversity, honesty, and humility to learn including from western countries that have forged their own path through the same difficult road. The most difficult experiences have offered lessons which were learned- for South Korea the Korean War and invasion from the north, China the civil war and Japanese invasion, for India the partition of India and million of refugees. Stagnation from stumbled efforts also taught lessons, the Great Leap Forward in China, the License Raj with corruption in India.       ...

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A terrorist attack in Istanbul, Turkey, in Jan. 2015. Most of the people killed and injured are German tourists. The attack targets Turkey's tourism industry.

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Mark Landler describes the situation on the Syria-Turkey border and Turkey's position. On the same day U.S. Senate leaders McCain and Graham pointed to the contradictions in U.S. president Obama's policies in Syria and Iraq leading to the serious problems in the Middle East. Turkey says the U.S. needs to resolve the contradictions before it can actively commit its forces especially asking the U.S. to establish a no-fly zone in Syria.

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Kristof of the NYT recalls how his own father was a refugee from Eastern Europe, swam the Danube river to safety, and was given refuge by a family in Oregon. He points to the failure of world leadership in both Washington, Moscow and Arab capitals leading to the conflict in which about half of the Syrian people are dislocated by civil war.

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A complete breakdown in negotiations between the U.S. and Russia happens after Russia continues its bombing campaign in Aleppo. About 275,000 people and 100,000 children are in the war torn area in northern Syria. The U.S. had called on Russia to stop the bombing campaign, but Secretary of State Kerry failed to persuade Russia to commit to a ceasefire. The result has been international criticism of the Russian role in the war, and speculation on what president Putin sees Russia gaining from this intervention in DW.com and other sites. 

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Fred Hiatt of The Washington Post describes U.S. president Obama's mishandling of Syria during his second term as president leading to the situation today.

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GDP expanded at 3.5% in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to the Turkey Statistics Office. This follows a contraction by 1.8% in the third quarter of 2016. For the full year the GDP growth is 2.9 percent, a decline from the 6.1% in 2015. In 2015 Turkey gained from lower oil prices. This was offset in 2016 by the politics in the region- the increased instability in the country following a crackdown on the opposition and media, internal conflict in the Kurdish region which appeared for a time to be leading to peaceful settlement. As a result tourism revenues declined by 30% and this was offset by increased government spending. The uncertainty before the referendum also leads to decline in foreign investment and investment by domestic firms.

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This editorial in the Washington Post describes joining Russia in joint action in Syria and Iraq as a dangerous policy for the U.S., for several reasons. The main being that Russia has been the obstacle to peace in the region because of the way all Sunnis in the Muslim world now see Russian actions as leading to millions of refugees and the prolonged war. It also says Russian forces are not effective in the current campaign. It cites Secretary of State Kerry's comments about Sunni perceptions of Russia's role.