How Turkey Ran Out of Friends and Money: How Erdoğan has Fundamentally Changed Turkey - TLDR News

hello and welcome to another tldr explains video in this one we're gonna be taking a look at turkey and why it's in a bit of a tough spot at the moment turkey has popped up in the news a fair bit in the past few years and it's difficult to follow turkey and russia are friends but they're also in a proxy war trump seems to like erdogan but then has him under a military trade embargo turkey has applied to be part of the eu but is nearly at war with greece at the moment anyway we thought we'd try and resolve some of this confusion and explain why turkey is where they are at the moment and how their plans have backfired you might already know but we have a bunch of countries with shoes pin badges for sale now we've had to make a whole bunch of new countries and flags for this video but we do already have pins for over 50 countries including every single eu country so if you want to represent your country or a country you like then be sure to grab a pin now the store's linked down below so let's start with some context and go back to about 2012. prior to 2012 turkey was a pretty bog standard country now this is obviously a simplification but turkey seems to be following the same path as most other developed countries it had a secular constitution it was becoming more democratic with every election and it was on friendly terms with most european countries erdogan had been prime minister since 2003 and in 2014 he'll become the president but in 2012 and 2013 two major things happened that changed turkey's trajectory for years to come firstly the arab spring was kicking off and most importantly for turkey the syrian civil war was starting secondly in 2013 there were major anti-government protests let's start with syria and it's worth clarifying that turkey shares a border with syria in its south east now when assad's regime started crumbling turkey deployed troops against syria this was in part because of skirmishes between syrian government forces and turkish forces at the border especially the shooting down of a turkish jet that tune but turkey had other interests as well the power vacuum in syria and northern iraq had to be filled and after iraq in 2003 the us weren't super keen on getting involved so that basically left iran and turkey as the main contenders turkey and iran didn't get on particularly well not least because iran or at least the iranian government is shia muslim whereas turkey is sunni basically turkey saw an opportunity to replace iran as the big player in the middle east and well they went for it however there is a third player in all of this and that's the kurds the kurds are an ethnic group who live in the mountainous regions in the south east of turkey the northeast of syria northern iraq and western iran kurdistan is not an officially recognized state so it's hard to tell exactly where its borders lie but turkey has an uneasy relationship with the kurds since the 1970s there has been a small latent kurdish independence movement in turkey and after a failed coup attempt in 1980 the turkish state banned the kurdish language and arrested and imprisoned many kurds in response the kurdish nationalists called the pkk started an insurgency campaign against turkey since then more than 40 000 people have died fighting between turkey and the pkk mainly kurdish citizens now as you might know by now there's a kurdish contingent fighting in syria called the ypg the ypg are different to the pkk but turkey sees them as essentially one and the same this was another reason for turkey to get involved in syria to stop the ypg or the kurds more generally establishing themselves in the region so this was a big thing turkey started throwing its military weight around in the light of the arab spring but the second thing that happened were the anti-government protests against what protesters saw as the erosion of secularism and free expression in turkey these were the casey park protests and some three and a half million turks took part they were largely peaceful but in response erdogan's government deployed tear gas and water cannons some 8 000 people were injured 11 died and hundreds were detained erdogan was widely condemned by the international community including the eu for his authoritarian response to protesters so these were the two major things that changed turkey's trajectory internationally turkey started throwing its weight around and domestically it's become more authoritarian and these trends have continued since then with commentators beginning to describe turkey's new positioning as neo-ottoman and domestically erdogan's embraced this image he's described his party the akp as the grandchildren of the ottomans akp candidates for the 2015 general election appeared on election posters in traditional ottoman dress and ottoman language courses have been made a requirement from primary school onwards he's been less explicit with his language when it comes to foreign policy but it's clear that his foreign policy is informed by turkey's history he basically seems to back anyone who's ethnically turkish or sunni muslim that's why he backed turkic azerbaijan against armenia it's why he criticized macron for quote islamophobia and why turkey is trying to reclaim the turkic side of cyprus it's worth noting here that obviously this neo-ottoman support for ethnic turks and sunni muslims means discrimination against other groups for example erdogan told non sunni allevi muslims who are largely turkish to pray in mosques instead of their traditional semivice as well as making sure that the renovation of non-muslim properties require government supervision but let's step back to syria for a moment basically turkey was fighting against assad and the kurdish ypg but when the us decided to ally with the ypg this left turkey all alone and when the u.s didn't include turkey in an assault of isis-held mosul in northern iraq erdogan actually argued that turkey had a historic claim in the area and that it was within turkish borders according to the turkish national pact which was basically a map written up by the ottoman empire that contradicts the 1923 treaty of luzerne on top of this when the u.s and nato pulled their patriot missile system out of turkey turkey decided it had had enough with being friends with the west and started counting on russia putin and erdogan hung out a lot despite the fact they're on completely different sides of the war in syria in fact in 2015 putin accused turkey of supplying isis and while erdogan disputed this it did make some sense turkey was supporting some extreme islamist groups in syria because they were fighting against the kurds and at the end of the day turkey's real enemy in syria has always been the kurds not isis anyway in 2017 erdogan shunned the west and bought a russian anti-missile system nato were unsurprisingly furious erdogan presumably thought that this would end up with some sort of agreement in syria with putin and assad but this isn't how it all panned out the u.s pulled out of syria the kurds made a deal with assad and russia and iran started backing assad this left turkey and some islamist offshoots fighting assad russia and iran turkey then asked nato and the eu for help threatening to release syrian refugees in turkey into europe but nothing was agreed mainly because the west didn't think turkey was a good enough friend to risk a proxy war with russia since then erdogan and putin's friendship has cooled in february russian-backed forces killed 36 turkish soldiers the most turkish casualties in a single attack since the war started russia refused to apologize and then humiliated erdogan by making him wait for a meeting with putin basically erdogan looks like he's out of friends there's a similar story for the us according to john bolton trump and erdogan had a quote bromance trump's administration stopped backing the kurds and trump held off imposing sanctions on turkey for purchasing the russian defense system but soon biden will be president and given that he's described erdogan as an autocrat and denounced trump for betraying the kurdish ypg he's unlikely to be so friendly the only friend that turkey has left is china and they make uncomfortable bedfellows turkey signed what's called a currency swap deal with china in 2012 which basically allows turkey to swap its currency the lira for the one this is good for turkey because the value of the lira has fallen 46 since 2018. unsurprisingly turkey has failed to convince any other countries apart from qatar to sign similar deals and this is why erdogan has been uncharacteristically silent about china's treatment of the uyghurs who are majority muslim and ethnically turkic so turkey's only friend at the moment is china and that puts erdogan in a really difficult position domestically things aren't going great either after a corruption scandal where turkey exploited a loophole in iranian sanctions in order to trade turkish gold for iranian oil in 2013 erdogan called the ensuing investigation a judicial coup he removed 350 police officers from their positions threatened journalists and restricted internet access after a failed military coup in 2016 erdogan cracked down even harder over 45 000 military officials police officers judges governors and civil servants were arrested or suspended including 2 700 judges 15 000 teachers and every university dean in the country erdogan then announced a three-month state of emergency temporarily suspending the echr which was then extended for another two years until july 2018 and then was replaced by a new anti-terror law passed by the turkish parliament in august 2018 but despite cracking down on the media and opposition politicians erdogan's akp is struggling politically in march 2019 the akp lost the ankara and istanbul mayor elections to the pro-democracy chp losing istanbul by just 13 000 votes the akp demanded a re-run claiming vote irregularities but then lost the re-run by a massive margin of 775 000 votes this was in large part because of the currency crisis we mentioned earlier basically erdogan appointed his son-in-law as the finance minister and it turns out that neither of them knew very much about economics when the value of the lira started falling in part because foreign investors got worried about his increasingly authoritarian tendencies they refused to increase interest rates which is what you'd normally do instead they bought the lira with us dollars to try and appreciate its value this didn't work at all and in the end they wasted a hundred billion us dollars buying their own junk currency to make things even worse because erdogan has its own eccentric theory about interest rates he refused to raise them which is what every economist ever will tell you to do to appreciate your currency and limit inflation anyway on november 8th the finance minister stepped down and on november 11th erdogan basically admitted that turkey was in economic trouble and headed towards some form of austerity on november 19th the central bank raised interest rates to an astounding 47.5 percent basically erdogan's new neo-ottoman policies have left the country in a very tough spot they've got very few friends abroad and they're struggling domestically what do you think will happen to the nation next we're here to rekindle international relationships or has the country got tough years ahead let us know your thoughts in the comments below be sure to subscribe the channel for more updates on topics like this one special thanks to our patreon backers who make videos like this possible and if you want to see your name at the end of videos then you too can back us on patreon the link to that's in the description you

Channel: TLDR News EU

Views: 944,857

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Id: Zm-bK_ZMCxg

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020