by Burak Bekdil
Erdoğan’s worst nightmare is President Donald Trump following through on his threat last year to “devastate the economy of Turkey.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, photo via Office of the President of Russia
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,558, May 10, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Turkish
president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is faced with a dilemma: in order to
avoid US sanctions, he must keep the S-400 system he purchased from
Russia unopened, but doing so might open Turkey up to Russian sanctions.
Erdoğan’s worst nightmare is President Donald Trump following through
on his threat last year to “devastate the economy of Turkey.”
The coronavirus pandemic has deepened fundamental
imbalances in the Turkish economy, making a post-crisis freefall quite
likely. However, as far as Turkey’s difficult foreign policy challenges
are concerned, the virus was like a bell going off at just the right
moment to rescue a boxer cornered in the ring. Turkey’s Islamist
president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan might be privately hoping the world never
goes back to normal.
The post-coronavirus period could be payback time
for Erdoğan’s policy miscalculations and blind ideology calculus. At the
start of the “Arab Spring,” he thought he’d found his moment to build
Turkey-friendly Sunni regimes across the Arab Middle East with which he
would eventually revive the Turkish empire. Nearly a decade later, those
visions of a caliphate, a worshipful umma, and Ottoman grandeur spread far and wide appear as illusory as Erdoğan’s ambitions to make Turkey a major world power.
One very hot potato is the Russian-made S-400 air
and anti-missile defense system Moscow delivered to Ankara last July. No
doubt, champagne will be uncorked in Moscow the moment the Turkish
military turns on the system, which it promised would happen in April.
Turkish officials cite coronavirus as the force majeure that
has delayed that deeply controversial activation. Turkey’s top defense
procurement official, Ismail Demir, told state broadcaster TRT on April
28 that the pandemic inevitably slowed down the activation process due
to restrictions on official visits and meetings. That may well be true,
but Erdogan’s government—especially at a time when unemployment is
skyrocketing, the national currency is in freefall, and there is a
booming debt stock and prospects of stagflation—does not wish to be
questioned about the merits of spending $2.5 billion on a system that
will never be used.
On April 20, Reuters quoted
a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity as
saying, “There is no going back on the decision to activate the S-400s
(but) due to COVID-19 … the plan for them to be ready in April will be
delayed.” The phrase “there is no going back” may keep Turkey in the
Russian orbit, but this will come at a cost.
“We made our position quite explicit to President
Erdoğan, to all the senior leadership of Turkey, and that is the
operation of the S-400 system … exposes Turkey to the very significant
possibility of congressional sanctions, both those that invoke the
[Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act] legislation and
additional freestanding legislative sanctions,” David Satterfield, the
US envoy in Ankara, told
an online panel hosted by the Atlantic Council. The ambassador added:
“We do not have in our possession the assurances from the government of
Turkey that would allow us to mitigate those concerns.”
“This will be a top-down decision coming from
President Erdoğan,” a senior defense official told this author on May 4.
“There have been no signs that the president may be rethinking the
activation of the system.”
Turkey has already paid a price for the S-400
purchase by being suspended from the US-led multinational consortium
that is building the next-generation F-35 Lightning II fighter jet. If
sanctioned via CAATSA, Turkey’s entire thriving defense industry will
suffer. But Erdoğan fears even worse consequences.
Activating the S-400 might trigger punishing
sanctions on state lender Halkbank, which is facing US charges of
violating the sanctions on Iran. A multibillion-dollar fine on Halkbank
could cripple Erdoğan’s post-corona economic recovery plans. His worst
nightmare is President Donald Trump following through on his threat last
year to “devastate the economy of Turkey.”
That would be a losing war for Erdoğan, with both
economic and political repercussions. A debt default, collapsing
markets, and a further nosedive of the Turkish lira would be the perfect
recipe for a punishing financial crisis that could spark early
elections.
Ironically, Erdoğan’s only option to avoid US
sanctions—keeping the S-400 system unopened—could expose Turkey to
possible Russian sanctions. Russian economic sanctions cost Turkey
billions of dollars within just a few months early in 2016 in the
aftermath of the Turkish shooting down of a Russian Su-24 fighter jet in
Syrian airspace in November 2015.
In order to minimize diplomatic damage, Erdoğan
has launched a public diplomacy campaign to make himself look as pretty
as possible to the world at large. Turkey sent medical kits to 57
countries to show solidarity in the fight against coronavirus, including
two consignments of supplies to the US. The boxes bore the words of 13th-century
poet Jalaluddin Rumi in Turkish and English: “After hopelessness there
is so much hope and after darkness there is much brighter sun.”
Abdulkadir Selvi, a prominent pro-Erdoğan columnist, wrote in Hürriyet:
“America has moved from sanctions talk to a favorable opinion of Turkey
… You could not do this [PR] work even if you spent billions.” That may
be too optimistic, but Erdoğan’s Islamist supporters continue to
believe a few cargo planes full of medical supplies can win hearts and
minds in a world half of which remains hostile to Erdoğan’s Turkey.
As the S-400 is being frozen because of the
pandemic, a Syrian town near the Turkish border awaits a return to
normal so it can resume its challenge to Ankara. The Turkish military
embarrassingly suffered the deaths of around 50 soldiers in February in
Idlib. The fire came from Syrian forces with air support from Russia.
These deaths shocked Turkey: If the Russians are our allies, why did
they kill our soldiers? It’s a good question, and one Erdoğan prefers
not to answer. Once coronavirus fades, fire will resume in the Idlib
theatre.
On May 3 a convoy of 30 Turkish military trucks entered
Syrian soil, most likely carrying supplies to Turkish military outposts
around Idlib. On the same day, local observers reported that Hayat
Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), one of the jihadist groups fighting in the Idlib
area, blocked
a Turkish Army column from entering the militant stronghold of Daret
Izza near Aleppo. Erdoğan should prepare for the moment when his Russian
friends, in the show’s final act, force his troops and their jihadist
auxiliaries out of Syria.
In addition, accession talks with the EU remain
stalled; Turkey will have to find a better way out than gunboat
diplomacy if it wants to amicably resolve the disputes over Eastern
Mediterranean hydrocarbons; and tensions might well deepen in Libya and
elsewhere in the Middle East between Turkey and Egypt, the UAE, Saudi
Arabia, Israel, Cyprus, and Greece.
This may be a long, hot summer for Erdoğan.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/turkey-coronavirus-challenges/
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