Inexpensive apartments, nuclear power plants, and then the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?

The announcement of this project did not come as a surprise at all. Those who are familiar with Turkish politics are well aware that the 20-year-old Justice and Development Party (AKP) relies most on the construction sector of the economy, and if the Central Bank’s foreign exchange reserves and Treasury gold can run out, there will be no shortage of land to sell.

Despite the project for laying a second canal parallel to the Bosporus was put on the agenda by the leader of the AKP and the then Prime Minister R.T. Erdogan on the eve of the elections on June 22, 2011, it was not implemented even before the elections on June 24, 2018. When after the transition to presidential rule, the head of state R. Erdogan seriously raised the issue of the Istanbul Canal, not only his elder son-in-law, but also the Arab sheikhs acquired a lot of land in this region. However, the implementation of the project was again delayed: this time due to the principled objection of the Istanbul Municipality, of which Ekrem Imamoglu became chairman on June 23, 2019, endless complaints to the courts and the lack of necessary financial resources. For this reason, Mr. Erdogan, seeing that he would not be able to manipulate this project in the next election campaign, decided to bet on the construction sector.

In the promulgated project, low-income citizens are promised to build and rent 250,000 apartments in regions close to the center on a 20-year loan. And in just a few days, 1.5 million people expressed a desire to receive this housing. Although the opposition declared this project a fiction, we, based on 20 years of observation of the current government, declare that it was initially successful. The fact is that while leading a political party and the state, Mr. Erdogan always gives priority to solving issues important to society and goes to meet with the electorate with projects that meet this condition. In this aspect, it remains to agree with the exact characterization given by “Sozcü” newspaper columnist Soner Yalcin: 10 supermarkets. Which of these do you think will have the most impact on the contents of the ballot box?”

The tactics of Erdogan, who announced the named project eight months before the parliamentary and presidential elections, is as follows: the AKP government and the president, whose application of the norms of "ruthless capitalism" made citizens indebted when buying apartments, offices, shops and land, are hinting to voters: "If instead of AKP another party will come to power, the new government can take over your apartments, offices, acquired with our loans, which have not yet been covered, so you must support me.”

We have no doubt that this tactic, which has been successfully implemented for many years, will also prove effective in the next elections and bring additional points to the AKP. At the same time, for Erdogan and Turkey, problems may arise in the field of foreign policy.

In the previous article, we tried to predict the likelihood of Mr. Erdogan's participation in the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Samarkand on the recommendation of V. Putin. But, judging by Erdogan's statements to the media after Samarkand, Turkey's next goal is not only membership in the SCO, but also entry into the top five leading it. How is this possible? And in this case, how will Ankara correct relations with Western countries? The fact that Mr. Erdogan came to Samarkand on Putin's advice follows from the fact that construction work at the Mersin-Akkuyu nuclear power plant has again been entrusted to Turkey.

As you can see, V. Putin remained loyal to the classical and traditional method of Russian diplomacy: first he created tension in the context of the construction of a nuclear power plant, at a meeting on August 5 in Sochi he recommended Erdogan to participate in the SCO summit in Samarkand, and then returned part of the project for the construction of this plant to the Turkish company

The question involuntarily arises: will President Erdogan decide to transfer his country, which, having switched to a multi-party system on May 14, 1950, showed the world an example of democracy, into the league of such one-party regimes as Russia and China (we will not waste time listing the rest)?

I can't believe that the Turkish electorate, committed to democracy for 72 years, will agree to this...