The Turkish crisis can revive Eurasian discourses and temptations

After decades of unstoppable growing rates around 7% with crescent commercial volumes and after periods of rapprochement with Europe, Turkey is now facing a huge financial and economic crisis. While the currency is persisting falling (1 US dollar is 5.79 Turkish liras), the recently re-elected President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is not opening a real debate about causes and solutions, but simply blaming United States and Western countries for trying to speculate and manipulate Turkish internal order. Even though we cannot exactly know what his real reasons and purposes are, it’s clearly understandable that these events are deteriorating an already fragile relation between Ankara, Washington and EU. Therefore, closing the doors to the “European dream” and restoring contacts with Russia could lead Turkey to open its eastern doors towards renovated Eurasian objectives.

   Causes and consequences of the crisis behind (and ahead) this shattering financial scenario are both economical and geopolitical issues that, looking at the impetuous growth without long-run programs, were quite foreseeable. GDP’s percentage has been persistently rising but, together with dangerous high levels of inflation, has provoked something common for developing countries – the so-called risks of “overwarming”. Turkish lira’s loss of value is not due to governmental competitive devaluation policies aimed to encourage exportations, but it’s simply the result of an uncertain climate among external investors, intensified after AKP’s authoritarian shift and its unpredictable objectives. Practically, stockholders are exchanging huge amounts of liras with more stable currencies, so that its value is being buried as well as population’s purchasing power.

   However, the lack of economic prevision and realism is another element that caused instability, as demonstrated by some unnecessary expenditures in public infrastructures and in trying to restore the “good but old” military apparatus. This obsession for restoring a Turkish power based on imperialism and national grandeur made Erdoğan and his right-hand men blind to real and immediate necessities. Except for an unpopular increase in interest rates, the government didn’t give concrete answers to the population, but accused United States to create a western speculative attack against Turkey to punish its search for more independence from NATO (et similia) in making political choices. Although there may be true basis, the slogan “they have their dollars, but we have our Allah” underlined the absence of capabilities to react against difficulties and a step-back in domestic political discourses. If Ankara should be able to solve this crisis under an economic point of view – the debt-to-GDP ratio seems to be manageable –, real impending perils are of a geopolitical nature. Firstly, Turkey is maintaining an ambiguous and autonomous modus operandi on the Syrian field, secondly it’s evident that the end of the emergency alert doesn’t mean the end of repression against opposition parties. And the economic crisis is just exacerbating these cracks.

   Erdogan’s aggressive policy in Middle East is in contrast with American objectives, especially regarding PKK and military operations in Kurd regions. No common points seem to be reachable between Washington and Ankara, even if the latter is still the most convenient NATO ally to keep alive the idea of a western blockade protecting Europe from Russian hegemony. In case there will not be a significant reconciliation, Turkey will face the hazard of isolation and the necessity of revaluating its enmities and alliances, starting from what stands very close to Russia. Despite many transformations occurred after the Cold War period, the post-Soviet space and Central Asian routes towards China have always been attractive for Turkish policymakers. On the one hand, speaking about expanding to eastern areas is useful to those political parties that obtain consensus through promising a restoration of the Ottoman power and a reunification of Turkic people. On the other hand, what has real influence over Turkey’s interests is more pragmatic and based on geostrategic intents and necessities.

   In early 1990s, Ankara dedicated many efforts in trying to define a new Turkic hinterland stressing on a common sense of historic, cultural and linguistic identity, but recent Islamist tendencies in Turkey’s society have put in contradiction its political relations with neighboring countries’ secularism. In addition, expanding to East means dealing with Russia, a country that has always limited and conflicted Ottoman

imperialism. In order to avoid any direct contrast, Turkey has promoted a soft approach to Eurasia endorsing numerous multilateral initiatives – for example the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization and the Turkic Council – that have created new sub-regional mechanisms. Working together along the same Eurasian path has not only strongly intensified some opportunities of economic, infrastructural and energetic integration, but it has also encouraged Kremlin to leave behind historical hostilities in favor of realist guidelines that could allow both powers to extend their influence without compromising bilateral relations.

   Being at the crossroads of the East and the West, Turkey will certainly play a crucial role in any future project that will interest this strategic macroarea, but it’s to be seen how active it will be. China’s New Belt Road – a huge billionaire program of investments aimed to bridge the distance between Asia and Europe – probably represents the biggest chance for all the countries that are geographically interested. The South Caucasus and the Caspian Basin, full of hydrocarbon and gas resources, embody a checkpoint between two continents and a noticeable source of supply thanks to the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum) pipeline, and the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP). Nevertheless, before obtaining great benefits from this forthcoming linkage, Turkey must take over the resolution (or at least the cooling) of some Central Asian intricate situations, like Nagorno-Karabakh dispute or Georgia and Russia’s glitches over Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

   Turkey’s Eurasian vision should consider two principal challenges. Primarily, the fact that Russia, China and Iran will continue to be central actors in the region and they will not easily concede ample space to a potential powerful rival as Turkey. Indeed, Ankara must prudently play its cards to not transform new hypothetical alliances into an escalation of controversies, as already done with the missed opportunity to join the European Union. Secondly, Turkey can’t concentrate all its efforts to Eurasia without bearing in mind that its Middle Eastern borders are constantly subjected to instability. Iraq is a failed state and Syria is not getting through the war, reprisals against PKK and Kurds are daily occurrence and millions of refugees are still undermining Turkish social equilibrium.

   What Turkey should do in midterm time is to find a balance between the resources committed for domestic security policies and the ones dedicated to its long-term objectives. Differentiation is surely positive for a country that needs to overcome its developing status and to reach a fully powerful status, but it’s equally important to evade any radical or excessively impetuous transformation. Turkey needs to recover its relations with European countries because EU remains its best commercial partner. With regards to the breaking point with US, it would be better to find an alternative way before leaving NATO and giving birth to years of excessive military expenditures. Only after having put every piece in order and having found adequate substitutes to conventional methods, Turkey will be able to follow a more self-determining strategy as Russia did in the last decade. And only without completely closing western doors, Ankara can best benefit from opening its eastern ones because it would be better to preserve the aura of a powerful bridge-country between Europe and Asia.

Samuele Carlo Ayrton Abrami