From Brussels to Shusha, and from there to Ankara after June 14

Was the June 14 meeting well worth the months of hard work and did it create the expected excitement? If we count half of it as the translation, the concrete result of the 45-minute meeting in terms of the alliance was the transfer of a security of Kabul airport to Turkey. I could not understand one thing: No, this issue was not the answer - “Praise to God, it did not” - of the Turkish president to the question - “Did the recognition of April 24 as a "genocide" come to the fore?” - of the TV channel correspondent, the most ardent propagandist of the government. It was not possible for that channel's correspondent to ask a question to the head of state without prior consent, and most likely, the content of the question was dictated to the correspondent in advance. So, was that question asked to get the answer - "Praise to God, it did not"? It cannot be convincing because Joe Biden's address 50 days ago, describing the events of 1915 as a "genocide", caused a catastrophe in Turkey, and Mr. Erdoğan and his team, along with the opposition, sent salvos to the President. The question is: Was it not clear as soon as the meeting ended that the Turkish President did not raise this issue? Undoubtedly, it was clear. So why did they have the correspondent of a channel, which is the most ardent supporter of the government, asked this question? I do not believe that Mr. Erdoğan was asked that way to answer in that way, one issue still remains obscure… While the transfer of a security of Kabul airport to Turkey from September 11 was, of course, promoted by the pro-government media as "another victory", there is also justification for the opposition and analysts' serious criticism of this: the government has been warned not to "enter the swamp of Afghanistan after the swamp of Syria". The party which was clearly satisfied with the meeting was Russia. After the meeting, 90% of the headlines in the Russian media were "Erdoğan announced that Turkey's position on S-400 missiles will not change". Headlines with this content did not need to be dictated by the Kremlin, and it was already impossible for the government-designed and government-controlled media to write news in any other form. Putting Russia's satisfaction aside, there is no need for astrology to say that the S-400 issue will continue to be a headache in Turkish-US relations. When protests over the purchase of S-400s came from across the ocean in July 2019, Okan Müderrisoğlu, the Ankara representative of the pro-government Sabah newspaper, claimed that "the missiles would be kept in Azerbaijan", and two months ago, Ahmet Takan, a columnist for the Korkusuz newspaper, claimed that the missiles would be "taken to Nakhchivan", and they gave good material to sane people to laugh…

The main area affected by the June 14 meeting will be domestic policy. It was well known that President Erdoğan, who traveled from Brussels to Baku and from there to Shusha, was patiently waiting for June 14 to intervene in the chaotic situation in public administration and politics. The impact of the June 14 meeting on the foreign exchange market was negative, the Turkish lira again depreciated against the US dollar. The videos shared by the mafia leader on YouTube since May 2 have caused practical problems for the government, businessmen close to the government, high-ranking officials, and the pro-government media, on which the government has spent billions of dollars. As I mentioned in previous articles, this is the first time I have seen public administration, government-denominated policies, and the media so involved in illegal activities. As the mafia leader describes the relationship within the state-politics-media chain with concrete examples, the economy sees a negative impact. Although President Erdoğan has demanded a reduction in interest rates, the Central Bank has not yet done so, and since the Fed did not change interest rates three days ago, there should be no question of the Turkish Central Bank lowering interest rates in the near future: if this happens, it will not be possible to prevent a new devaluation. But first of all, we must say that Mr. Erdoğan's inevitable personnel changes in the field of public administration have become inevitable. July 9 marks the third anniversary of the first government formed after a change in public administration. When he was Prime Minister, Mr. Erdoğan was preparing for a new election, replacing at least half of the members of the government between the two elections. Looking at the current situation, in the last 3 years since 2018, we have witnessed that the Turkish President dismissed the Minister of Communications and Infrastructure without any explanation, was forced to dismiss the Minister of Trade and Customs, dismissed the Minister of Labor and Social Security for failing to do his job and divided the ministry into two and appointed two ministers. It would be logical to expect Mr. Erdoğan to make serious changes in the government at this stage. It would be a simple approach to assess this only as the commitment of the Turkish President to his political tradition. In the current situation, unless there are many extraordinary developments, there is a chain of factors that makes it necessary. We will deal with those in the next article…

Mayis Alizade