Good article on a very important subject. Which the MSM seem – so typically – to be largely ignoring (though I must admit, I don’t really do TV and radio news much these days, so I might be wrong).
Turkey really does seem to behave far more like a non-aligned country than a NATO one much of the time (I’m not saying that’s necessarily wrong or may not be in Turkey’s best interests). But not sure they’d get into NATO today if they weren’t already members.

Please don’t inflate what happened on January 6th to the place of a serious challenge. It was a bunch of understandably frustrated people with the usual smattering of crazies who watched much bigger and more violent and destructive protests get a nod and a wink the previous year testing the waters. As could have been predicted, the same indulgence was not shown to Trumpies as to BLM. The capitol is fine but several major US cities are a shell of what they were three years ago and that’s okay with the progressives.

“The President’s complete control of state institutions and his dominance of the media creates nothing close to a level playing field.”
Sound familiar?

There is a good (though skewed) BBC documentary about him at the moment. Of course it glosses over his achievements and paints even his political success in a sinister light – not that there isn’t a darker side to him. It relies heavily on english-speaking liberals wringing their hands and dead-eyed cronies who uniformly say “nothing to see here”. I haven’t finished it yet but would definitely recommend. The BBC should concentrate on making more things like this.

I just spent a week in small-town Turkey on business, which is not nearly enough to really gauge a public mood, but people I spoke to do seem fed up with Erdogan. More on inflation and (alleged) corruption. The freedom thing didn’t seem uppermost in their minds. Although all I spoke to thought that the media was concealing Erdogan’s (alleged) illness.
The announcement of a “new” (actually long-existing and known about) “billion barrel” oilfield discovery near the Syrian border was greeted with cynicism as timed electoral propaganda.
I watched the BBC documentary last night and would concur with Milton Gibbon’s assessment in the comments here.

Bookies are making Kilicdaroglu the clear favourite to win the election. But what are the odds that he would then survive long as the next President?

Thanks for this highly explanatory essay. The 2016 coup was exciting at first, but strangely incompetent. They could easily have won, but inexplicably let E. simply proceed unimpeded.

As for his use of “takkiye” as a cover for pan-Islamism, much under-studied. But to do so could compromise our role via a vis Bosnia in the Balkan wars. Severely.

Does anyone seriously believe Erodan will go quietly into the political night, whether he wins the election ir not? I suspect the election fix is already in.

Turkey might not be a good fit for the EU politically but there’s no good reason it shouldn’t be able to join the European Economic Area and keep working on its EU membership. The right kind of trade and diplomacy could make Turkey a major power not only in its own immediate back yard but amongst its fellow Turkic peoples to the east all the way to northern Afghanistan and (this next part could be really interesting) Xinjiang Province, China, otherwise known as East Turkestan. A new government might even want to improve relations with its NATO allies and take a look at the Irish Good Friday Accords playbook and use it as a guide for easing tensions with the Kurds on both sides of the border. This could be a real “Morning in Ankara” moment if Erdogan loses and his handpicked generals don’t keep him in office anyway..

No mention of the disastrous multiple devaluations of the Turkish currency?