Signal: Erdogan Constrained? – Blowback Blasts in Africa – Crazy Dream Canals

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TURKEY: THE BACKSTAGE TROUBLES OF A ONE-MAN SHOW

No one can dispute that Turkish politics is increasingly a one-man show. After winning a first-round presidential ballot outright on Sunday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who has already purged thousands of officials, warped the courts, and muzzled the media – jumped through what looked like the last hoop in his multi-year push to bring the country’s political system more firmly under his control. He will begin a fresh five-year term with vastly-expanded new presidential powers.

But Mr. Erdogan isn’t yet the modern Sultan that he seemingly aspires (and his critics sometimes make him out) to be. His election victory – in which he managed to secure just 52.4 percent despite almost complete control over domestic media – was by no means resounding. Turkish society remains deeply divided, and despite growing constraints, real political parties that oppose him continue to thrive, at least for now.

What’s more, his AKP party suffered a decline in support and failed to win outright control over parliament, meaning it will rely on a partner for a legislative majority. That partner is the ultranationalist MHP party, which joined forces with the AKP in the election. Erdogan will need MHP votes to pass legislation or to stave off parliamentary challenges to his decrees. Erdogan will also need the MHP’s help to win some difficult municipal elections next year.

The MHP could prove to be a thorny partner: its demands for harsher policy towards the Kurds will inflame tensions at home and risk fresh tensions with NATO allies who support Kurdish enclaves across the border. The MHP also wants to loosen the budgetary purse strings, precisely when foreign creditors are already punishing Turkey for pumping too much money into the economy.

To be clear, Erdogan has done much to bend the Turkish political system to his will over the past fifteen years. The country is already one of the world’s biggest democratic “backsliders.” And yet there are still parts of that system that remain resistant to his brand of authoritarianism.

Whether Erdogan will use his new powers to break those last ramparts of resistance – and whether that effort decisively levels his opponents or ends up destabilizing his country more broadly – will be the critical story as Turkey lurches into a new and deeply uncertain phase of its history.

THE IMAGINARY EAVESDROPPER: ERDOGAN CONGRATS EDITION

Three foreign leaders were quick to call Mr. Erdogan to congratulate him on his presidential victory—Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. A brief imagining of what each might have said.

Orban: Recep! Nicely done. Love what you’ve done with the place — controlling media and the courts is pretty real, right? Listen, can’t help but notice that you’re still housing 3.4 million refugees from Syria. If you… eh... have any plans to stick it to the EU by letting them through, let’s talk ahead of time, shall we? Btw, if you need any anti-Soros swag, I’ve got TONS left over.

Putin: Recep Ahmetovich! Only 52% of the vote and a coalition in parliament? Psht! If people really think you’re trying to be me, you’ve got a long way to go, patsan… But anyway, nicely done and of course, next time NATO or the Europeans give you grief, I’ve got that relief.

Rouhani: Hi. Hassan here. Thanks for taking my call. . . Hello? . . Oh good, you’re still there. Listen, nice job with the election – remember, our annual Implacable Opponents of Israel and Saudi and the Kurds BBQ/Bakesale is coming up and you haven’t RSVP'd, but I know you’ve been busy – see you there?

GRAPHIC TRUTH: WHERE THEY’VE GONE

As the EU prepares for a contentious summit meeting in which the fate of the Union’s policy on refugees and asylum-seekers will be the critical issue, here is a map showing which countries have taken the most refugees since the crisis began almost four years ago. 

CHANNELING GEOPOLITICS: THREE STORIES ABOUT CANALS

Some people build walls to cut off their rivals, but Saudi Arabia is taking its ongoing diplomatic dispute with Qatar to a whole other (sea) level. Riyadh reportedly wants to dig a canal along their shared 38-mile border that would turn the small, peninsular kingdom into an actual island. If that weren’t enough, part of the canal zone is to be used for dumping nuclear waste. Last year, Saudi Arabia and the UAE isolated the Qataris symbolically, by imposing an air and sea blockade over Doha’s alleged support for terrorism (psst: it was really about long-running tensions between a House of Saud that sees itself as the neighborhood heavy and a Qatari monarchy that has shrewdly sought to be an independent player in the Gulf.) But a year later, the embargo seems only to have strengthened Qatar’s economic and diplomatic resilience. If the canal gets built, how bad could island life be?

Meanwhile, now that Turkey’s President Erdogan has secured his supercharged presidency, let’s see if he follows through on a megalomaniacal infrastructure project to match. The Kanal Istanbul – which would bypass the treacherous Bosporus strait as an easily navigable link between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean – is by Erdogan’s own admission a “crazy” project and a “dream.” But officials have been laying the groundwork for the project in recent months. What a way it would be for Erdogan to celebrate the centenary of the modern Turkish state in 2023. One critical issue to consider is that while international law regulates free passage for merchant and military vessels through the chronically-congested Bosporus, any new canal would be entirely under Istanbul’s jurisdiction, giving Erdogan huge discretion over Russian, American, and potentially Chinese access to the Black Sea. That won’t sit well with Putin, Trump, or Xi, will it?

Da ultimo, we travel to the most famous canal city of all – Venice – where Chinese policemen have recently completed a seasonal pilot program to patrol the city’s plazas and waterways with their Italian counterparts. The program, which Marco Polo himself would doubtless love, is now in its third year and it reflects the tremendous surge of Chinese global tourism in recent years. According to the latest figures from the UN World Tourism Organization, Chinese tourists spent $261 billion abroad in 2016, roughly equal to outlays by American, German, and British travelers combined. That China is sending its own policemen – unarmed and accompanied though they may be – to patrol foreign cities (Rome and Milan are also part of the program) is a subtle but extraordinary milestone in the expansion of China’s global clout. In a sense it mirrors the broader sweep of Chinese power today, in which Beijing is broadening its commercial and infrastructure networks first – and then slowly looks to expand its military reach to protect those assets thereafter.

BLOWBACK BLASTS: ZIMBABWE AND ETHIOPIA

Both men took power only recently. Both come from within the broken authoritarian systems they promise to fix. And both – Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (pictured above) – were apparently targeted for death last weekend.

In Zimbabwe, a bomb exploded inches from Mr. Mnangagwa during a campaign rally. “It is not my time,” he said. (We’ve written backgrounders hereand here on Mnangagwa, nicknamed the Crocodile, who once survived attempted assassination by ice cream.)

Who did it? Ahead of what could be Zimbabwe’s first remotely fair elections in decades, the field of suspects is wide. Some within the ruling ZANU-PF party hate Mnangagwa because he toppled long-serving strongman Robert Mugabe last November—and because he’s pledged to open the system in ways that threaten them. Opposition supporters hate him because he was once Mugabe’s enforcer, the head of his ruthless security service. The attack on Mnangagwa took place in the city of Bulawayo, an opposition stronghold, but the near miss suggests it might have been an inside job.

In Ethiopia, someone lobbed a grenade at Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as he addressed tens of thousands at a rally in Addis Ababa in support of his reform plans. Two were killed and more than one hundred injured.

The youthful Mr. Abiy took power in April after months of riots against government repression left hundreds dead. Since then, Abiy has lifted a state of emergency, begun a nationwide listening tour to ease ethnic tensions, released thousands of political prisoners, pledged to privatize struggling state companies, and signaled agreement on a long-frozen deal to formally end the war with neighboring Eritrea.

It’s still more talk than action, but the promises themselves are big news in one of Africa’s most historically repressive regimes.

Now, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia sit 2,500 miles apart. They are very different countries with different strengths, burdens, and political histories. But they have this in common: each has a new leader who promises big changes to a deeply entrenched authoritarian system. And each man has enemies who want to see him dead.

HARD NUMBERS: NORTH KOREA EDITION

 813 million: The population of China’s cities has quintupledsince 1980, reaching 813 million people today. By 2030, a fifth of all the world’s city-dwellers will be in China.

433,236: At the end of 2017, there were 433,236 refugees and asylum seekers living in a single German state – North Rhine-Westphalia. That is seventy-eight thousand more than you will find in all of Italy, which is now under the control of a ferociously anti-immigrant government.

95: Some 95 percent of homicides in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador go unpunished, according to the Atlantic Council. That level of impunity, coupled with some of the highest murder rates in the world, is one of the main factors pushing people to seek refuge in the United States.

5: According to FIFA, five of the top seven countries that purchased Word Cup tickets in advance were Latin American. The biggest football fanaticsare, in order, Brazil (73,000 tickets), Colombia (65,000), Mexico (60,000), Argentina (54,000), and Peru (44,000).

This edition of Signal was written by Alex Kliment (@saosasha) and prepared with editorial support from Kevin Allison (@KevinAllison), Gabe Lipton (@gflipton) and Leon Levy (@leonmlevy). Spiritual counsel from Willis Sparks.

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