Giant Turkey with feet of clay: an assertive foreign policy cannot compensate for the economic crisis for long
If there is a country in the Middle East that is a giant with feet of clay right now, that country is definitely Erdogan's Turkey. Although Ankara has shown a certain amount of unscrupulous foreign policy, in reality it is going through a period of severe internal economic and financial turmoil. Erdogan has tried in every possible way to hide the dust under the carpet, directly intervening in the decisions of the Central Bank. In November 2020, after the dismissal of Governor Murat Uysal and the appointment of Naci Agbal in his place, the Turkish president seems to have partially retraced his steps. Agbal, in fact, looks more like a pro-market technocrat who doesn't appreciate political interventionism in monetary policy.
Goldman Sachs estimates that Turkey consumed about $ 100 billion in reserve currency in 2020 alone with the sole purpose of protecting the Lira from free fall. In the end, however, the precarious economic fundamentals of the Turkish state, also and above all after the Covid crisis, came to the surface and the Lira recorded the worst performance among the currencies of emerging countries, losing 30 percent against the dollar in 2020. . Also in 2020, there was a $ 7.5 billion sell-off from Turkish bonds, the worst capital flight since 2015. The far from rosy performance of the Turkish economy also affected the polls. and in August 2020, so in the midst of the first wave of Covid , support for the AKP (Erdogan's party) dropped from 43 percent in the 2018 parliamentary elections to 31 percent.
Therefore, the economic cataclysm facing Turkey should have led Erdogan's foreign policy to milder advice. However, this was not the case. Ankara intervened heavily in Syria and continued military operations against the Kurds in Iraq. It also militarily supported Azerbaijan in the recent conflict with Armenia over control of Nagorno-Karabakh. Not to mention the military and logistical support provided to al-Serraj's Government of National Accord in Libya and the tensions with Greece over the issue of territorial waters and exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean.
The feeling is that Ankara now relies less and less on diplomacy and tends more and more to an assertive foreign policy, for which the military tool boots on the ground becomes the first option to go.
But is Turkish interventionism sustainable in the long run? The Turkish economy reached its peak in 2013, with a GDP of 951 billion dollars. In 2019 it had fallen to 754 billion, a free fall of 200 billion dollars, almost as much as the entire Greek economy. However, the negative performance of the Turkish economy did not stop Erdogan's military adventures, whose aim, rather than hitting foreign policy objectives, is to stabilize and compensate for internal instability. The continuous conflicts in which Ankara is involved as a protagonist serve the Turkish president to further fuel the dichotomy between economic well-being and security, as well as to contribute to an image of Turkey as a country under siege by Western powers and, consequently, in need of protection. offered by the neo-Sultan. Despite the electoral fluctuations, the Turkish people have always responded positively to the narrative proposed by Erdogan.
Such conduct can be beneficial in the short term, bringing many political dividends, but if Turkey's economic performance continues on the path of degrowth, it will be difficult to imagine an assertive regional power role for Ankara. With all due respect to Erdogan's neo-Ottoman dreams.
The post Giant Turkey with feet of clay: an assertive foreign policy cannot compensate for the economic crisis for long appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/turchia-gigante-con-piedi-dargilla-una-politica-estera-assertiva-non-puo-compensare-a-lungo-la-crisi-economica/ on Wed, 17 Mar 2021 04:54:00 +0000.